


Droplets

by theprophetlemonade



Series: Droplets and Ripples [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Anxiety, Aquaphobia, Drama, Drinking, Family Drama, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Homophobia, House Party, M/M, Minor Character Death, Panic Attacks, Pool Boy AU, Pool Boy!Marco, Rich kid!Jean, Slow Build, Swimming Pools, Terminal Illness (of minor character), first person POV, for all your domestic JM needs, giant dorks, implied depression, with a side of Springles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2018-01-19 04:13:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 508,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1454983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprophetlemonade/pseuds/theprophetlemonade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean Kirschtein is not entirely sure why they need someone to clean the pool when no-one ever seems to swim in the darn thing, but when his socialite mother just can't stop ogling the new pool boy, Jean realises she might not be the only one. </p><p>Apparently balancing a growing relationship with the freckled pool boy is harder than it looks, when coupled with a more than dysfunctional family life, a cheating scumbag for a father, and a seriously lonely existence. </p><p>An AU of equal measures fluff and angst featuring pool cleaning, roof-top smoking, lots of parental problems, and mainly shirtless Marco.</p><p>(CH 26: in progress.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Baby Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Droplets](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3537425) by [JeanMarco_sCoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanMarco_sCoffee/pseuds/JeanMarco_sCoffee)
  * Translation into Italiano available: [Droplets](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3576336) by [bebouska](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bebouska/pseuds/bebouska)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Breaking Bad spoilers.

“ _Droplets, droplets: We are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path._ ”

 – Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium

 

To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure why we have the pool. I don’t swim in it. My dad doesn’t swim in it (or isn’t allowed to swim in it, over mom’s fear of the neighbours seeing how fat he’s become in his middle age). And I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my mom swim in it over the past few summers – all times when the twenty-something year old neighbour just happened to be trimming the hedges that connected our back yard to his.

So, I’m especially unsure why, exactly, mom thinks it’s necessary that she needs to hire a pool cleaner to clean said never-swum-in pool.

Apparently, it’s because the hedge likes to shed, and the leaves block the drain. Yeah, okay. I’m pretty sure I can see a grand total of three leaves floating in the water, from my perch on the kitchen bar stool. I drum my fingers against my temple, watching one leaf drift into the shallows, beaching itself upon the blue-tiled steps. It’s May. The hedge shouldn’t even be shedding at this time of year. Jesus.

But when you’ve got money, supposedly the logical thing to do is to spend it all on unnecessary commodities that we probably – definitely – don’t need. My mom’s pretty damn good at that.

Okay, so maybe it’s nice being spoiled once in a while. I’m not gonna lie about that – especially since dad brought back the new Xbox One the other week, to make up for not having made a single dinner at home for the past ten days. Not that I really noticed anyway. He couldn’t care less about his home life; I know for a fact he’s banging his secretary every night at the office. The blonde ditz has been stupid enough to call the house phone on more than one occasion whilst I’ve been here.

“Jean,” I hear my mom croon as she wafts into the kitchen in sky-high black heels, her ankles wobbling. She looks ridiculous, as usual, the epitome of a once-upon-a-time trophy wife, her lips and forehead strained with Botox. “Jeeaaan, darling, do you have twenty dollars on you? I forgot to go to the ATM this morning.”

I roll my eyes, and tug my wallet from the back pocket of my jeans; the mottled leather still stinks of tanning chemicals, despite having had the thing for almost a month now. There was nothing wrong with my old wallet, of course – but mom insisted the old one was ugly. It’s _Hugo Boss_ or the highway, in this family.

I have two, crumpled tens folded up; I hold them out to my mom, who plucks them from my fingers with her newly-buffed dark red talons.

“Thank you dear – I totally forgot to get any cash to pay the pool cleaner today,” she says, extending her vowels in a dramatic fashion. From the drawer adjacent to the stool I’m slumped on, she pulls out a plain envelope, tucks away the money, and presses it closed. In her near-illegible scrawl, she pens something along the lines of: _Trost Pool Servicing & Repair_.

The summers in Trost are pretty fucking hot, and pretty much start come the middle of April. I’m sure most houses in this neighbourhood have a pool – it can’t be a bad business to be in at this time of the year, that’s for sure. Although, saying that, I can’t quite remember at what point last year’s pool boy just stopped coming. It was probably something to do with the goo-goo eyes that my mom had the tendency of throwing his way, and my dad – the big, fucking hypocrite – probably picked up on that.

I can’t even remember what that pool boy looked like, to be honest. Last summer was a bit of a drag, what with all the studying for my high school finals, and then the following burn out after all that intensive brain-cramming, which lasted for pretty much all of July and August. I remember I watched a fuckload of TV that summer – mainly because, hey, the couch was pretty fucking comfy and I couldn’t really find it in myself to actually leave it, but also, because it was the best place to be to avoid my mom’s ridiculous attempts at flirting with said pool boy. Yeah, that was kinda fucking embarrassing. The “kinda” is an understatement.

But hey, I managed to marathon the first four seasons of _Breaking Bad_ in like, three weeks, because of that. So all was not lost.

I start daydreaming about the epic finale of the fifth season whilst my mom potters around the kitchen, placing the envelope on the marble counter-top right next to me. She spots her reflection in the window, and begins to plump up her perm – I sigh, deliberately loudly.

“What?” she hums, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

I spin around on the bar stool to face her, resting my elbow on the counter-top, and my chin in my hands.

“ _Mom_ ,” I say, laying it on flatly. Maybe this is why we have the pool. As an excuse for mom to enact a subtle form of revenge on the husband she’s-not-quite-sure is cheating on her, by fluttering her false eyelashes at whatever tanned, speedo-wearing college-dropout appears to unclog the pool drain of non-existent hedge leaves. Right.

“Oh Jean, come off it,” she replies with a sigh, tucking an ash-blonde curl behind her ear, watching me from the corner of her eye. Mum’s hair colour is the same as mine (at least, the top of mine), save hers is not natural. I reckon she only dyes it that colour because of the simple fact that I look nothing like my dad. He’s stocky, and round, with patchy, dark hair. I’m rather lanky, and I guess my face is more oval than my dad’s, and my eyes a lot lighter. She wants people to think that I take after one of them, at least.

Satisfied with her reflection, mom toddles across to the glass cabinet, and I return my stare to the stillness of the pool, the _clip-clip_ of her heels rattling in my ears. The backyard gate squeaks open, as a collection of large nets, brushes and hoses staggers into a back yard (accompanied by, of course, the person struggling to hold all of this crap in a pair of tanned, freckled, clumsy arms, half covered by the horrific cornflower blue of a uniform polo shirt).

“Pool boy’s here,” I say categorically, pushing myself away from the counter top abruptly. Fifteen minutes early, as well. Time to make a quick exit. Maybe I’ll rewatch the Breaking bad finale, actually.

“Oh no, Jean, wait a second,” my mum calls, setting a pair of crystal tumblers down on the marble surface. “Can you fetch the lemonade from the fridge, and pour a couple glasses?” She waddles over to the back door, carefully grasping the doorknob so as not to break one of her stupid nails. “Don’t forget ice, okay?”

I stare at the door blankly as she goes to greet the newest victim to her predatory cougar-ness, rolling my tongue in my mouth incredulously. Thanks, mom. Really appreciate it.

I guess Walter White will have to wait.

I trudge over the fridge – true enough, a pitcher of mom’s lemonade is resting in the inside of the door. I grab a can of Coke for myself, and kick the door shut with my foot, probably with more aggression than needed.

As I pour the lemonade into the two glasses, I try to pull the tab on my Coke can with one hand – of course, the lemonade sloshes over the side of the glass whilst my attention is elsewhere. A _fuck_ or two slips out beneath my breath, and I lunge for the paper towels.

I guess you’re wondering: Jean, why is such a handsome, charismatic, awesome guy like you kicking around at home, performing chores for his toy-boy desperate mom, when you should be out doing what normal nineteen-year-old university students do during a weekend (i.e. not studying).

Well let me tell you two things. Firstly, I’m pretty sure most university students equally prefer to lounge about the house all day doing pretty much fuck all.

But secondly, and this is kinda shameful to admit, I haven’t really spoken to any of my “friends” since half way through twelfth grade. And it may or may not have had something to do with the fact that I might have gotten a little trigger-happy with my fists in a certain Eren Jaeger’s face. He’s a dick, okay? He deserved it.

I’d much rather spend the day with mom than receive death glares from him and his posse. (Even if Mikasa is still absolutely smoking hot. Yeah.)

My eyebrows knit themselves into a deeper frown than usual, as my eyes roam over the photos plastered to the front of the fridge – the one of me, Connie and Sasha is still there, from when we took that road trip down south two summers ago. That was a good time. It kinda sucks that they avoid me too now, even if we do go to the same university, and I do happen to take three of the same classes as Connie. But I'm pretty used to the alone thing now.

I take another disgruntled swig of my Coke, as I toss the lemonade-soaked paper towel towards the trash. It’s cool. I’ve survived almost this entire first year of uni without talking to them. And I’m fine. Just peachy.

From the corner of my eye, I see mom engaged in an animated conversation with the new pool boy; she does that stupid, giddy little laugh, hiding her teeth coyly behind a well-manicured hand. I roll my eyes, and suck up my chagrin, taking one glass of lemonade in each hand.

“Oh Jean, there you are!” my mom coos, waving me over across the lawn as I emerge from the shelter of the kitchen, shoulders tightly hunched. “Come over here and meet Marco!”

They’re on a first name basis already. Wow, you move fast mom.

As I reach her, she procures both glasses from my hands, handing one out to the pool boy, and keeping one to herself.

“You must be thirsty, it’s soooo hot out today,” she smiles insipidly, fluttering her eyelashes against her cheeks. “I made some lemonade – would you like some?”

“Oh… yes please,” the pool boy replies, running a hand through his shallow, black undercut bashfully, “That’s awfully thoughtful of you, Mrs Kirschtein.”

I roll my eyes, and shove my hands deep into my jean pockets, hoping to be able to slink away as soon as possible. Leave my mom ample flirting time, of course. And not to mention that the sun is really, _fucking_ hot today.

“Please, you can call me Céline,” she chuckles, placing a hand on my shoulder and drawing me closer to her. “And this is my son, Jean.” The looks she shoots me is one that I’m pretty used to. Gritting my teeth, I extend a rigid hand. Do I really have to be doing this? I couldn't care less about mom's newest boy-toy to be.

“Marco, right?” I offered blankly, moving my gaze to look the taller guy in the face. My eyes are instantly drawn to the array of freckles scattered across his sun-tanned face, four of which, in particular, draw a straight line across the bridge of his nose.

Too much time in the sun, much.

Marco smiles blindingly, and I can practically see a sparkle spring from his white teeth. He shakes my hand firmly.

“Yep, that’s right,” he grins. “Nice to meet you, Jean.” His tone is far too chipper for my liking. That'll soon change, believe me. He doesn't know what he's got himself into yet.

My mom squeezes my shoulder a little tighter as I drop my hand to my side.

“Jean doesn’t get out much, so he’ll probably be around most of the time, especially once the summer break comes.” Thanks, mom. Way to big up your own son. “So, if you need anything, and I’m not here, you can probably find him.”

I glare down at the lawn, practically drilling holes in the ground with my imaginary laser vision. I mentally instruct my mom to let me go and hermit myself in the lounge for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe she gets the impression from the rigidity of my stance, because she drops her arm.

“Alright then, get back to whatever it is you do all day.” Great. Walter White, here I come.

My steps only falter ever so slightly as Marco raises his glass of lemonade and calls over my shoulder: “Hey, thanks for the lemonade, Jean!”

I think I mutter a: “don’t mention it” under a gruff breath, but I don’t look back, until my feet meet the cool surface of the kitchen floor. I retrieve my half-finished Coke and take a long swing, watching as my mom teeters over to the pool shed, seemingly pointing out the combination to the padlock that keeps the wooden doors closed.

I raise the Coke can to the window, in a mock toast. Good luck to you, Marco.

 

* * *

 

I watch the _Breaking Bad_ finale whilst comfortably reclined on the couch, with the air con on full blast. It’s just as epic as I remember. I can’t help but tap out the rhythm of Badfinger’s _Baby Blue_ into the couch cushions as Walt finally succumbs to his bullet wound. Great tune.

I had to shut the windows around half way through though, because mom’s incessant nattering had managed to reach all the way across the yard, and I wasn’t sure how much more of Marco’s mildly awkward laughter I could take.

Almost as soon as the credits role, the phone rings, the shrill tring making me jump approximately six metres into the air, sending the empty Coke can that was sitting on my chest halfway across the room. Ungracefully, I roll (read: fall) off the couch, and reach for the handset on the end table, pressing it to my ear as I lie, face-first, on the wooden flooring.

“Hello?” I ask awkwardly, wriggling to free my other arm from beneath me.

“Hiii, is Mr Kirschtein there?,” comes the high-pitched, girly trill, which I have already come to find causes me a migraine. “It’s Charlotte, from the office.”

“You know you’re so lucky my mom doesn’t pick up when you call here,” I reply, in a dead-pan. I start to pluck at the fibres of the furry, white rug beneath the coffee table. “Hasn’t my dad told you to stop calling him here already?”

I think the anger has long since subsided – mostly all I feel is a mix of irritation at my dad for being such a careless and insensitive moron, and guilt for the fact I’m not exactly helping my mom out in discovering that her husband is a cheating bag of shit-for-brains.

“Call my dad on his mobile if you want to get laid that badly,” I add, briskly, not waiting for a reply as I slam the phone back into its cradle. I lay for a little while staring at the grain in the floor. I can only think I look fucking ridiculous.

“Who was that?” my mom’s voice echoes through the house, accompanied by the clicking of her heels on the kitchen floor. With a groan, I pull myself up onto my knees, and then use the edge of the couch to lever myself upright. I stretch my arms above my head, and my joints click.

“Double-glazing bastards again,” I call back, lying easily. It’s either windows, or it’s central-heating salesmen. And geez, it shouldn’t be this easy to lie to her face. I can’t help but feel the pang of guilt fall heavily into the pit of my stomach.

“Ugh, when will they learn,” my mom sighs, as I make my way back into the kitchen, rolling my shoulders some more to relieve the tension resulted from laying so long without moving. She has her back to me, loading the two, empty crystal tumblers into the dishwasher. “Everyone’s going to have their windows open in this weather, anyway! Why would you even want double-glazing?”

I resume my perch upon the bar stool once more, spinning on it absent-minded. I notice the white envelope has vanished from the counter-top.

“Pool boy finished already?”

“Oh yes, he didn’t stay long,” mom replies, shutting the dishwasher with a swing of her hips. “Apparently we’ve got a… chlorine imbalance? I think he said something like that. Anyway, he says he’ll come back tomorrow and get that fixed for us. But I’ve got aerobics with the girls tomorrow, so you’ll have to look out for him, and give him his payment when he’s finished, okay? So that’s no sleeping in ‘til three tomorrow.”

Oh gee, how fucking great.

“You that bored of him that you’re dumping him on me already?” I jibe sarcastically, folding my arms across my chest. “Not young enough for you, mom?”

Mom makes a scoffing sound and rolls her eyes, mimicking my folded-arms as she leans back against the counter.

“Please Jean, I told you to stop saying things like that.” I simply shrug.

 

* * *

 

I spend the rest of the day kicking around in my room, scrolling through a couple miles worth of news feed on my laptop, praying for the heat just to die down a little bit so I don’t feel like I’ve been plastered into these jeans with my own sweat. (I refuse to wear shorts, okay? I look like an idiot in them.)

Every so often, my eyes drift over the messy pile of textbooks and course notes teetering over the edge of my desk, reminding me of the ever looming approach of my finals in just over a month and a half.

Man, am I looking forward to that being done and dusted. It’s been months and I still don’t understand most of my Philosophy coursework (I’m still not entirely sure what persuaded me to take that elective in the first place, if I’m honest). It’s probably entirely my fault for the simple fact that I couldn’t decide what major to pick. Still can’t, if I’m honest. The sooner the summer break comes, the better. I can at least wallow in misery that’s not university-related. Perfect.

I rummage through my desk drawer for the opened pack of Marlboro’s that I know are buried there. Good thing my mom doesn’t do the cleaning around here. She’d go ballistic if she founds these. (And the house keep tends not to go through my stuff anyway.)

I can’t smoke in my room, so I get a leg up on my window and clamber out onto the roof, scrambling up over the slate-grey tiles to perch atop the gable. It’s a decent enough place to sit – even if it does kill my balls sitting there for too long – because you can see most of Trost from here. The sea of identical, suburban roofs extends for block after block, but the far distance boasts the sky scrapers and office blocks of midtown, somewhere in which my dad’s probably shagging his blonde secretary over a desk.

My Zippo takes a couple attempts to catch – that’s something I probably do need a new one of – but soon I taste the sweet release of nicotine burning at the back of my throat. I inhale and exhale deeply a few times, letting the smoke delve all the way down into my lungs, and back up again. The ash falls away between my fingertips and rolls down the roof into the gutter.

My name is Jean Kirschtein. I’m nineteen years old. I’m a student at Trost University, and I’m failing Philosophy. I currently have no friends, and I like to angstly smoke cigarettes on the roof of my house. My dad is banging his secretary, and my mom probably wants to bang the new pool boy, but neither of them know about the other. Only I know.

Welcome to my life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since I attempted a multi-chapter fic, but these plot bunnies have been running rampant in my head for the duration of Easter break. So here we go.
> 
> I can't even remember how this idea started. Probably the thought of Jean being increasingly distracted at how Marco's freckles seem to pool in the small of his back. Or something. Maybe I just wanted to torture poor Jean with the thought of his freckled angel semi-naked most of the time.
> 
> I just had to get this out. Hopefully it'll go places... I have pretty much a general direction for the rest of the story. I hope you've enjoyed the beginning. Jean's a fun character to (attempt) to write.
> 
> Next time: Jean is forced to engage in conversation with another person his age. And actually, freckled pool boy isn't as bad as he expected?
> 
> All feedback is lovingly appreciated.
> 
> Edit: Now tracking the tumblr tag "fic: droplets", and looking forward to chatting with lots more of you guys!


	2. Welcome To The Black Parade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new pool boy really is a dork.

By some terrific feat, I manage not to sleep in until three in the afternoon.

And by terrific feat, I am of course referring to the fact that the neighbour’s Jack Russell decided that a fucking great idea would be to bark at the cat lounging on the roof of their conservatory, from the bright and early time of six. Six am. No good person should ever have to see that time on their own accord. Six am isn’t even a time. It’s a state of mind.

 _My_ state of mind was pretty fucking grumpy, let me tell you that.

I was subject to _at least_ a year of incessant barking from next door, until the neighbours eventually pulled their mutt inside to avoid being issued with some noise-nuisance court order or something. But the damage was done by then, and sleep seemed something that was not on particularly good terms with me. I had to resort to woefully lazing on my bed for a couple hours.

I wriggle around under my duvet, struggling to find a position in which I can lie for more than five minutes without feeling too warm. It doesn’t look like this heat is going to abide any time soon. I roll to the side of my bed closest to the wall, tangling my calves up awkwardly in my sheets, and feel around for what I’m after. I keep my sketchbooks tucked away down the side of my mattress – I guess it’s kinda ridiculous how I hide them better than I hide my cigarettes.

I flick through a couple pages of old sketches which I distinctly _dislike_ now, until I come to the first blank page.

Sometimes, I wonder why it never occurred to last-year me to pick up Art as my last elective, rather than fucking Philosophy. I’m actually half-way decent at Art. But I can recall more than one conversation between my parents listing what subjects are “real subjects”. Art was never gonna be one of those.

I sigh loudly, air shooting out through my nose as I tap a pencil against my sketch pad, waiting for inspiration to arrive. Mind pretty fucking blank. I could draw Mikasa. But I always draw Mikasa. It’d look pretty damn stalkerish if someone ever looked through my sketch books. I resort to balancing my pencil on my upper lip as I roll onto my back, and stare up at the thrilling spectacle that is my ceiling.

“Jean,” comes my mom’s sharp trill up the stairs. “Jeaaaaaaaan, I’m going out now! Make sure to pay Marco when he gets here!”

I let my pencil roll down onto my chest as I reach for my phone on my nightstand. 11.58 am. Well, that was a long time spent wallowing.

“Yeah, mom!” I shout back, though my voice is gravelly. I doubt she hears me anyway, as the front door slams shut.

I tuck my still-blank sketch book back into the crevice between my bed and the wall, making sure to adjust the duvet a little to conceal its hiding place, before attempting to roll out of bed. I say roll, but my legs are well and truly twisted in my sheets, so as I try to leave the comfort of my mattress, I fall flat on my face, on the hard, wooden floor.

“Fuck,” I groan. This seems to happen more than I’d care to admit. 

I lie on the floor for some while, contemplating the general misery of my existence. Also the dull pain in my wrist. Must’ve fallen on it awkwardly.

 

* * *

 

Eventually, I stagger down stairs into the kitchen, dragging my feet morosely across the off-white tiles. There’s still half a pot of coffee on the counter-top, so I pour myself a mug. It’s luke warm, and makes me grimace. But I drink it anyway. Can’t be bothered to make another pot.

As I take up a perch on the same bar stool as yesterday, I can’t help but feel today isn’t going to be great.

It takes about ten minutes of me staring dismally into the caffeine-abyss of my coffee before I notice the back yard gate open from the corner of my eye, and the tanned, freckled pool boy is dragging a pair of heavy looking buckets and a coil of hose across the lawn.

He stands, for a while, with his hands on his hips, staring down at the pool – really now, it can’t be that fucking interesting, can it? I’m pretty sure it’s just water. Correct me if I’m wrong there. A breeze ruffles his black undercut and the collar of his ghastly, cornflower blue polo, and then he’s striding briskly across to the pool shed. From the way he runs a hand over the back of his neck, I’m pretty sure he’s gone and forgotten the combination for the lock.

I roll my tongue inside my cheek, and reach up to knock loudly on the window pane. He jumps a fucking mile in the air, and it makes me snort.

 _Five-three-five-one_ , I mime with my fingers, to which Marco replies with an animated double thumbs up, and cheesy grin. What a dork.

After some degree of fumbling, he successfully removes the padlock, and turns back to face me, mouthing an over the top “thank you”. I roll my eyes, and jump down from the bar stool, my coffee now far too cold to pretend to enjoy. Down the sink it goes.

I grab a tea towel in my hand, and use it to twist the hot faucet, a spluttering gush of water sloshing out into the sink basin. I pinch the mug handle between my thumb and forefinger, and hold it out beneath the stream, keeping my hand as far away from the steaming water as possible. I rinse the mug a couple times, aiding it with a generous squirt of Fairy Liquid, before dropping it onto the draining board with a clang. I wrinkle my nose, turn off the faucet, and wipe down my hands vigorously on my jeans.

Marco’s inspecting what looks to be a strip of paper, holding it up in the air and shielding his eyes from the sun. Some sort of chromatography, probably. I did something like that in Chemistry last term.

I watch him run back and forth between the pool shed and the pump at least half a dozen times before I realise I’ve zoned out. Damn dog. I need more sleep. I pinch the bridge of my nose, and squeeze my eyes shut for a (long) moment.

When I open them again, I’m mildly surprised to find Marco staring at me from the other side of the window, his fist hovering just in front of the glass. His smile is apologetic and probably slightly worried – I try to placate the frown that’s almost certainly on my face. Mom says I look perpetually angry. It’s not my fault everything annoys me, geez. (Kidding, by the way.)

I raise my eyebrows expectantly, as he drops his arm to his side, before bringing it straight back up to the nape of his neck, which he rubs sheepishly.

“Sorry,” comes his voice through the glass. “Do you… happen to have a bucket or something that I can mix some chemicals in? It looks like I didn’t bring one with me…” His dark eyes glint in the bright sunlight as he meets my glare, his expression still anxious.

“Uh, yeah,” I mumble, before realising he probably can’t hear me all too well. Instead, I just point down the counter at the kitchen door, in a bumbling explanation of the fact that, _yes, that is the door I am going to open so that I can reply to your question._

“Sorry,” I say, stepping out onto the patio. Instant mistake. The concrete is fucking _hot_. I can practically smell my bare feet burning. “Oh shit! It’s fucking boiling!” I hop around, looking like a right fucking idiot, leaping onto the much, _much_ cooler grass.

“A-are you alright?” Marco laughs abashedly, his eyebrows quirked upwards, as I growl a string of curses under my breath.

“Fucking hate this weather,” I grumble, inspecting the soles of my feet for damage. They look alright. For now.

“Perfect swimming weather then,” he chuckles, as I stalk across the lawn towards the pool shed. I’m pretty sure there’re some old buckets in there he can use. All the crap that no-one can be bothered to throw away has a tendency to end up stashed there.

“Something like that,” I mutter over my shoulder, worming my hands into my jeans' pockets. Swimming. Or even better, an extended Titanfall marathon, accompanied by the beautiful thing that is air conditioning. Now _that_ sounds right up my street.

There aren't any buckets in the pool shed, so I’m forced to offer an old, suspiciously full-of-cobwebs watering can to do the job.

“Here,” I say gruffly, holding it out at a rigid arm’s reach. Apparently it’s not just swimming pools or me burning my feet on the concrete that make him smile. I'm pretty sure being so happy over a fucking watering can is pushing the boat out just a little bit. “Sorry, no buckets.”

“No, this’ll do just fine,” Marco says cheerfully, creases appearing at the corners of his eyes as he squints to inspect the can for any obvious holes. “Thanks, Jean.”

I shrug in a “no biggie” sort of manner, and slink out of the shed with my shoulders still hunched.

 

* * *

 

I find myself mulling around the house as usual, for the next few hours; I play a bit of Titanfall, but the jerks are out in full force, and I have enough of the constant harassment for not being the _best_ shot after about half an hour. Fuck those guys. Stupid twelve year olds with no lives.

 _You also don’t have a life, Jean,_ I mentally add. I can feel the frown heavy on my face.

As I stab the power button on the TV control, I hear the undeniably bad warbling of someone whose ears are definitely _not_ connected to their brain. I’m pretty sure the song is _Welcome To The Black Parade_ , but I wouldn’t put money on that. If you know what I mean.

It’s Marco singing, of course. (It would probably be slightly weird if it was just some stranger who has decided my back yard is the best place for a bad rendition of My Chemical Romance.)

They don’t give singing lessons in pool-cleaning school, that’s for sure.  

I move to shut the window, but pause as Marco makes ridiculous use of the pool net as a guitar. Wow. I almost shout out to him – to dutifully inform him that he looks like a complete dork – but quickly clam my mouth shut, deciding that alerting him to the fact I’m spying on his one man show is probably creepy.

He drops the net into the pool during a particularly energetic rift, splattering water up against his khaki shorts. I poorly conceal a choking laugh. This guy is too much.

Kneeling on the pool side, he reaches for the net floating an arms distance away – he stretches his fingers as far as he can reach, and yeah, I almost will him to fall in, just to be the icing on the cake. But he doesn’t. He retrieves the net, and hooks his headphones around his neck. I guess too much excitement for one day.

My stomach growls, and I slip away from the window, attempting to slide smoothly into the kitchen (but failing, because my feet stick to the tiles). The fridge boasts absolutely zero sustenance for my approaching starvation; I silently pray for mom to visit the store on the way back from aerobics (I certainly can’t be assed to drive over).

Marco’s packing up out in the back yard – rinsing out the watering can in the pool, before running it to the shed, and coiling up the long length of white hosepipe he’d brought with him (although pretty unsuccessfully, as I watch it spring away from his grasp multiple times). I check the drawer on the counter island, and sure enough, another white envelope, with mom’s crazy-ass scrawl: _Trost Pool Servicing & Repair (Marco)._ At least we’re free of the winky faces. Well… so far.

“Hey, I’m just about done here,” Marco says, as I emerge from the kitchen (jumping quickly across the patio). The translation is, of course: _hey, can I have my payment now_ , but apparently this guy is not only super cheery, but also saintly polite.

“Here,” I say simply, holding out the envelope to him. “My mom left this for you. Hope it’s all there.” He takes the money with a grateful smile.

“Thanks,” he grins. He pockets the envelope without even checking its contents, but pats his shorts’ pocket twice in affirmation. “I’ll be back on Wednesday to service again. Your mom – uh, Céline – said that Wednesdays are a good day for you guys, right? Wednesdays and Saturdays.”

I give him a casual shrug for a _yeah, I guess so_. I don’t have classes on a Wednesday, so I’m usually at home, and most of the time, mom is too. And dad likes to work late.

Marco gathers his equipment in his arms, and heads for the gate. I turn to head back into the house, but hesitate. Looking back over my shoulder, I call: “Hey man…”

Marco turns back to look at me, juggling the hose in his hands as he struggles to draw back the deadbolt. His eyes are wide, as if he’s surprised I’ve chosen to talk to him.

“… Lay off the MCR next time, alright?”

My mouth spreads into what can only be described as a shit-eating grin as his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline, and his cheeks turn the colour of a tomato.

“R-right…!”

I return to the house feeling pretty fucking pleased with myself.

 

* * *

 

The second coming of Christ occurs when my dad actually arrives home at dinner time. It’s Sunday, but he always finds an excuse to work. I can’t remember the last time he spent a whole day at home.

He strips his suit jacket the minute he comes through the door, lobbing it onto the end of the stair bannister, his stomach hanging over his pants’ waistband – and he tells _me_ that I look like a fucking slob.

My _Ramones_ t-shirt isn’t even that fucking tatty. Sure, it’s probably seen better days. But it’s _the Ramones_ , man. I shouldn’t have to wear a fucking suit in my own house.

Better than my mom though. She’d probably prefer to see me in sweater vests or something equally stupid looking. I’ve got enough unworn _Ralph Lauren_ polo shirts in my wardrobe to last me a life time without having to wash anything, so the last thing I need are _Ralph Lauren_ sweater vests.

I throw on a blazer to appease my dad anyway.

It doesn’t stop him from completely grilling me over the chicken that night. I’m kinda glad at how long our dining table is, because he’s far enough away from me that I don’t feel the overwhelming need to sink into my seat. Just the “slightly whelming” need. Ugh.

Of course he wants to know how Philosophy is going. Couldn’t care less about the fact that hey, I think I might actually get that A in Chemistry, despite the shitty professor. I outright lie, and tell him that the revision is going great, and I’m really clicking with this Bertrand Russell crap. (I hate Bertrand Russell with the power of one thousand burning suns, let me tell you.)

That changes his tone in an instant. He then goes on to inform me about the copies of _Battlefield 4_ and _Dead Rising 3_ he managed to get from a guy at the office – which is great and all, because I know that he’s only giving me these games as an easy apology for coming home gone ten the past few weeks, and I really couldn’t care less (because hey, I‘d much rather play on the Xbox than have to suffer more thrilling conversations with this man about my school life) – but mom just scowls.

She mutters something about games encouraging violence, anti-social behaviour, and the fact that I may or may not have not left the house in recent memory to do anything other than drive to and from college, but my dad rebuffs her.

“Come on Céline – Jean’s a nineteen year old guy. He can play video games if he wants to.”

That really tells you all you need to know about my father and his two-facedness. I kinda get the impression his concern about my school work is really only at face value. It doesn’t really matter what grades I get. It’s all lined up that I go to work for him once I finished university.

Pretty sure that I was never involved in _that_ decision.

 

* * *

 

Monday morning is like a power drill in my head. My bed is far too comfy, and I’m even willing to overlook the sweltering heat for just five minutes more. _Please_ , God, Jesus, Buddha, anyone.

Sadly, even praying to approximately fifty different deities will not get you out of 9 am Math.

Math is generally alright. I mean, in the sense that you’re either right or wrong – there’s no pretentious middle ground there. But it’s also one of the classes I share with Connie.

Armin also takes Maths too, but that’s not surprising because he’s smart. Hella smart. And he’s pretty decent as well, because he actually cares to give me the time of day once in a while, despite the fact I once pummelled the living daylights out of his best friend. (As I said before: not my fucking fault. Eren Jaeger got what he deserved.)

In fact, today is a particularly good day in terms of social interaction (for me, at least).

“Do you understand it better now?” Armin says to me, as I finally set my pencil down, having satisfactorily got to grips with this Taylor Series bullshit. “I think it’s easier if you do it this way, rather than the way that Professor Pixis does it…”

I nod firmly, retracing each step of my calculations, feeling relatively confident that I might have cracked it this time.

“Yeah, thanks Armin, I think I’ve got it now. Your method is waaaay better.”

“I’m glad,” he replies with a small, content-looking smile. “You seem to look like you want to pull your hair out most of the time these days, Jean. I’m glad I could help a bit.”

“Tch’yeah,” I scoff, running a hand through my hair. “Revision is driving me up the wall right now.” That’s a white lie. I spend most of the time staring at my ever growing pile of revision, moping over the fact I have zero motivation to actually get it done. Not that Armin needs to know – he’s probably never found school work a chore a single day in his life.

“Not that you even need to pass these exams,” Connie smirks, having turned around in his seat to join in our conversation. I’m not sure how much my surprise registers in my face, but Connie doesn’t seem to notice it. “You’re so lucky with your folks, man. You’ve got a job lined up after all this. I envy the hell outta you!”

Pixis yells at us then, telling us that we either talk math, or get the hell out of his class room. So we shut up.

But I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty fucking stunned. I can’t even remember the last time Connie spoke to me. I bite back a sly little grin.

 

* * *

 

That evening, as I crawl onto the roof with a self-pitying cigarette clamped firmly between my teeth, I replay Connie’s words over and over to myself in my head. I try to remember how his voice sounded, but the more and more I repeat his words, the more and more distant he seems to sound.

Embarrassingly (even though I’m completely and utterly alone), I find myself coughing on the smoke that coats my throat. I splutter, and have to slam my fist into my chest a few times to save myself from hacking up my lungs.

It comes in waves – how much this stuff bothers me. Usually if I drown myself in enough new Xbox games, I don’t have to think about Connie, about Sasha, about Eren Jaeger.

I wonder what would happen if I just... keeled over and died? Right now, here on this rooftop. How many people would care? How many people would _pretend_ that they care?

Fuck. 

The last time I felt this shitty was the morning after the last Titans’ game – Connie’s always supported the Trost Titans since before I can remember, and when his folks forked out for a season pass for him at the beginning of tenth grade, it became our thing. We never missed a game (not that football is really up my street, but I grew to sorta like it, you could say). Well, after the whole Eren Jaeger fiasco, I gathered that our thing was no longer _our thing_. Last week’s Titans game drove that stake in real deep; Connie had gone with Mikasa and Eren (and Sasha, of course) to the game, and they could _just not shut up about it_.

I take a cautious drag on my cigarette, once the general choking has subsided. The smoke is rough at the back of my mouth.

I’m not sure why it had bothered me as much as it did – I’ve been used to their lack of presence in my life for a year give or take, but this really stuck. I remember leaving my lunch half way through that day, because my appetite has suddenly done a Houdini on me when Eren started enthusiastically bragging to some of the others about the great seats they had gotten.

I wonder if Connie had noticed my uncomfortable, slinking-out-of the cafeteria, and put two and two together. And then decided to talk to me today to make sure I didn’t feel like complete and utter shite. Yeah, that’s probably it. God forbid they’ve actually gotten over what happened with Eren.

I laugh then – the noise sounds hollow. Who am I kidding? I haven’t even gotten over what happened with Eren. But apparently listening to my point of view is out of the question.

 _Jean_ , I mentally add. _Your point of view never stretched beyond: you’re a fucking dick, Jaeger! You fucked up._

 

* * *

 

I hope that the Connie thing is not a one-off, but Tuesday and Wednesday pass without it happening again. I’m pretty sure I could’ve bored holes in the back of his head with my glares, but of course he doesn’t notice. Oh well. I extinguish the idiotic bit of hope that was clinging to the idea that things could possibly go back to the way they were. Man.

On Wednesday, I wake up with memories of Sasha, Connie and mine’s road trip from two summers ago. I’m definitely glad I don’t have classes today. I sit with my head in my hands, listening to the _tic-tic-tic_ of my clock on my high stand – until it begins to irritant the fuck out of me, and I send the thing flying with a swipe of my hand. It lands face down on the floor. I really hope I haven’t broken it.

I pull on a pair of jeans strewn across my floor – and even I can admit my _Ramones_ shirt smells a bit funky, so I blindly pull out another white t-shirt from my wardrobe. I don’t notice until it’s splayed across my chest that it’s one of my seen-better-days, Trost U shirts. Mom will just have to deal.

I rub my eyes – tiredly, and because I just want to clear the images from my head. And ‘cause it feels fucking good. You know that feeling when you just can’t stop rubbing your eye? Fucking eye masturbation, man. Wait, that’s probably a weird thing to say.

I stagger downstairs, and robotically make myself a pot of _strong_ , black coffee; it takes some dazed minutes to realise I can definitely hear mom’s voice, but I can’t actually see her. Oh god, she’s doing _the laugh_.

I skulk through the back door, gripping onto the handle of my mug for the sake of my own sanity. My mom briefly throws me a glance, eyeing my bedraggled appearance sceptically, as I slip into the narrow shadows cast by the house alongside the kitchen windows, avoiding the sun-lit patio like the plague. She lounges in the recliner in true cougar fashion; her jeans practically look like they’ve been painted on, whilst her shirt is far too low cut for me to ever go without washing my eyes out with bleach for the rest of my life. She clutches a tumbler of lemonade on her now-silver manicure, gently stirring the ice cubes with a little, pink, cocktail umbrella. Her eyes are trained on Marco, knee deep in the shallow end, sweeping the pool floor with his net.

Poor, poor Marco.

“ _Mom_ ,” I dead-pan. “What. Are. You. Doing.”

Stupid question really. I can see exactly what she’s doing. She’s preying on the pool boy.

She whips her gaze away from Marco to stare discerningly at me, her fingers pausing in the swirling of her lemonade.

“Marco was just telling me all about his others clients,” she says, slightly louder than I anticipate, causing me to grimace, the hairs on the back of my neck bristling. “He says we have the _nicest_ pool that he cleans. And the nicest house.”

And then, below her breath, she adds an aside: “And doesn’t he have the _nicest arms_?”

Oh boy. I take a long, deep swig of my coffee; it fucking scorches my throat, but I force it down. I need it.

My mom suddenly sits up straighter on the lounger, propping her glass down on the accompanying table, alongside another, fuller lemonade.

“Marcoooo,” she croons (and I cringe), causing the pool boy to look up, his eyebrows high on his forehead in surprise. “You look like you’re baking out there! Come and have a drink!”

Marco is – as I noticed the other day – super polite. He comes jogging over without a second’s thought, a big, cheesy grin plastered across his freckled face. As he gets closer, I notice how the freckles closest to his eyes seem to disappear into laughter lines there. I wonder: is he just exceptionally naïve, or is he actually cool with being hit on by my desperate, forty-something year old mom? (I feel like shuddering at the thought.)

His eyes flit to mine as he approaches, but dart away just as quickly. I hide a snigger in another gulp of coffee. I’d put money on what he’s remembering.

“Here you go, dear,” my mom trills, carefully handing him the fuller tumbler, which he accepts gratefully in both sun-tanned hands. “Drink up! It looks like _hot_ work out there.”

He takes a quick sip, before placing the lemonade back on the table.

“It’s nothing I’m not used to, Mrs Kirschtein,” he chirps – _he fucking chirps_. “I was born in Jinae, and the summers are much hotter down there.”

“Oh, how lovely,” she purrs, resting her chin coyly in her palm. “Such a beautiful city, isn’t it? We’ve been there a few times on vacation, haven’t we Jean? Oh, but you hated it! Couldn’t stop complaining about the heat, could you!” She laughs floozily; Marco joins in, but his awkwardness radiates through.

“Not a fan of the hot weather, are you, Jean?” Marco adds, turning towards me, one hand resting on his hip. I roll my eyes and mutter: “yeah, I think we established that _last_ time.” I’m not sure if he hears or not, because the phone starts to ring from inside the kitchen.

“Excuse me for a moment, Marco,” my mom chimes, shimmying to her feet. I grit my teeth, far beyond the point of simple exasperation. I feel like it’d be pretty great to just be eaten up by the ground right about now.

She totters into the kitchen, and shortly I hear the sound of her crooning into the phone. Marco scratches the back of his head sheepishly, as I continue to glare at the point in the concrete where I want really badly for it to open up.

“Your mom is… really something,” he offers, somewhat hesitantly. I snort loudly, and then drain the remainder of my coffee. “Is she always so… nice?”

Oh my god, he’s an _idiot_.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, and can’t stop myself from laughing lightly to myself. This has got to be beyond “exceptionally naïve” by a fucking mile.

“Dude, she’s trying to _hit on you_.”

He’s stares dumfounded at me for some time, his mouth completely a gape.

“O-oh. Oh. _Oh god_.”

His transition from completely not-getting-it, to horrific realisation is a fucking picture. He runs his hand again and again through his undercut, before glancing at me in a serious state of concern.

“A-are you sure? I thought she just--” he stops himself, taking my expression surely as an answer to his amusing panic. “Oh, how I could I not pick up on that…”

I shrug, but can’t wipe the grin off my face. This guy. _This guy._ His state of panic is really something that needs seeing to believe. Wow.

“She didn’t get to shag the last pool boy before my dad threatened to cut his balls off,” I snigger, at which Marco looks horrified. “You should probably think about… not encouraging her, man. Like…”

I pause, watching Marco’s face, as he seems to hang on my every word, hoping that I might be kind enough to offer him some pearls of wisdom for rebuking my mom’s sexual harassment.

“Like… the smiling thing. Maybe cut back a bit on the cheer.” I don’t why I choose that of all things to say, but it comes out none the less. Marco appears to flush, his freckles disappearing into his cheeks. “…And don’t accept the lemonade in the future, alright?”

He nods earnestly, rubbing one arm bashfully. I open my mouth to say something more, but am interrupted by my mom’s loud warble of: “Jeeeeean, it’s your grandma on the phone! Come and talk to her!”

I roll my eyes extra dramatically, and Marco flashes me a smile both sympathetic and grateful. I turn towards the kitchen door, but looking back over my shoulder, I smirk: “Good luck, man. You’re gonna need it.”

 

* * *

 

I talk on the phone with my grandma for almost a full hour. Well, I say that, but what I really mean is: my grandma talks _at_ me for an hour, and I offer vague affirmations of “yes” and “no” every so often.

It’s all the usual grandma-y stuff: is school going okay? Are you studying hard? How are you friends getting on? Have you got a girlfriend yet?

“ _No_ , grandma,” I sigh, drumming my fingers on the kitchen counter which I lean on, as I watch Marco’s increasingly awkward body language as my mom continues to flirt with him, out on the patio. It almost looks like he’s sunburnt, he’s that worked up. He’s putting his all into making sure he’s got _every speck of dirt_  out of that pool.

He finishes up at just about the same time that grandma relinquishes her verbal hold on me, and I am able to hang up the phone. My mom seems to pounce on him the minute he puts down his pool net, waving around the thin, white envelope as she talks animatedly at him. I watch the fiasco from the safety of the other side of the kitchen windows, chuckling to myself evilly.

Somehow, by the grace of some sympathetic God, Marco manages to edge himself towards the back gate, clutching his equipment to his chest as a protective barrier. I decide to be a nice guy, and save him the continuing horror.

“Hey, mooooom,” I shout, causing her to turn, “Can you help me with something a sec?”

I watch as mom bids farewell to Marco, and begins to totter back across the lawn towards me. Marco’s red face quickly slips into an appreciative grin, and he extends his hand in a brief wave in my direction. I smirk. Idiot.

 

* * *

 

I take a cigarette up onto the roof as per, just as the sky is beginning to get really dark. It’s not as painful as it was the last time, and I enjoy the taste of the nicotine and the smoke, attempting – and thoroughly failing – to blow smoke rings. Gandalf makes it look so easy.

My mind reels back to Monday as I soak up the cooler air. I think of Connie, and the others. The possibly only “friendly for friendly’s sake” conversation in Math.

And then, for some reason, that reminds me of Marco.

I take a deep, drawn-out draught on my cigarette. Friendly just for friendly’s sake. I really hope that’s not the case. He seems like a pretty funny sort of guy.

I find that I have a slither of anticipation for Marco’s next visit resting in the bottom of my gut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slightly longer chapter this time! It's still mainly exposition as I'm setting the scene and the main themes that I'm planning on exploring later on.  
> What actually went down between Jean and Eren (that caused the others to ignore him) will be dealt with later in the story... but it's pretty important. I just don't want to reveal it yet.
> 
> I choose MCR as Marco's thing purely due to the general head cannon in the fandom that he likes them. My personal head cannon for Jean's music taste is 70s/80s classic rock - thus the Ramones thing. I imagine he's probably got a very large record collection.
> 
> This chapter was fun to write! I hope it is fun to read too.  
> I will continue to work hard and produce more chapters! There's lots of fun and awkward stuff to come (including Erwin in a speedo ???), so stay tuned.


	3. Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

When I was in middle school, most of my friends envied my house. I remember Connie used to come over most days after school simply to sit on our couch (which he proclaimed was practically as big as his own living room), rather than actually enjoy my company. When Sasha would join us, it was always hard to drag her away from the fridge freezer (Connie often joked that we should just shut her in it, because hey, it was big enough for her to probably live a pretty comfortable existence in there) – and then, Sasha would resort to smacking Connie ‘round the head with whatever was nearest: usually a cushion, or her sweater, but the time it was the Xbox remote will _always_ be memorable.

I can’t remember the last time I had friends over at the house – sometimes, I ask myself why I didn’t make the most of remembering what occasion it was, and penning it to memory. But then again, it probably would’ve been something trivial – maybe Connie had left his phone between the couch cushions _again_ , or perhaps Sasha had wanted to borrow some textbooks, because her dog had decided that its _Iams_ just wasn’t sustenance enough. And trivial hurts the most.

There’s no way I could ever be envious of this house. The older I get, the bigger it seems to feel. Or maybe I’m just annoyed that I will have to get off the sofa in order to reach the fucking remote on top of the TV. Yeah. That’s ten steps too many.

I almost regret the fact that I didn’t go for dorms when I started at college last year – I say almost, because however lazy I am, and however reluctant I am to move my ass to get something on the other side of a room, I’d probably be even less willing to be forced to share a room with someone else.

Plus, there’s not like there was ever much point for me to move away for college – the drive to campus is only fifteen minutes, maybe twenty on a bad day. And if I moved away, who’d be at home to intercept all of dad’s secretary’s calls to the house phone? No-one, that’s right.

I laze on the sofa, one arm behind my head as I stare at the TV. The theme for _Spongebob_ _fucking_ _Squarepants_ begins. Now there are some things I am _definitely_ willing to cross the room for. Saturday day time television really scrapes the barrel.

 _Good bye and good riddance_ , I mentally growl, stabbing my finger into the power button of the remote. The TV blips to black.

With the chorus of “aye aye, captain” no longer destroying my ear drums, I become aware that my mom’s got company in the kitchen. I wrestle my phone out of the pocket of my jeans, and check the time: it’s 2.30 pm. I purse my lips. Marco’s probably here by now. I hope, for his sake, that whatever my mom is subjecting him to is not going to traumatise the freckled pool boy for life.

To my surprise (and slight relief), it’s not actually Marco who my mom’s managed to drag into the kitchen – it’s another woman, probably one of her friends from aerobics, or from the hairdressers, or from the _whatever the hell my mom actually does with her time_. They’re both perched on the pair of barstools that overlook the kitchen window, both cradling cocktail glasses in their painted nails, and both crooning to one another.

Three guesses about what.

“Mom,” I say, alerting her to my presence at the kitchen door, causing them both to start. “This is bordering on sexual harassment, I’m not gonna lie.”

“Jean,” she moans, tilting her glass towards me in her hand, “We’re just _admiring_.” Her friend giggles insipidly, and she joins in; I groan.

As I cross the kitchen to inspect the fridge, I glance out of the window, and halt in my tracks, my jaw dropping. Marco really doesn’t make things better for himself.

“Please tell me you didn’t have anything to do with _that_ ,” I say, gesturing wildly to the fact that the tanned, freckled, and very, very, uh… _toned_ pool boy is currently without his shirt.

“No,” my mom whines – although I seriously doubt that she would have objected to the possibility of being the cause of his semi-nakedness, had it arisen. “He did it himself. Is that really what you think of me, Jean? Gosh.”

 _I think you’re pretty fucking desperate_ , I muse – and I’m pretty sure she’s humouring me anyway. I continue on a beeline for the fridge, glare trained on the floor.

The fridge light is a beacon of normalcy in this fucking crazy household, and I reach for a can of Coke, my hand grazing over the jug of lemonade in the door. Just as my fingers curl around the cool red aluminium of the can, my mom calls over my shoulder:

“Oh, go and offer Marco something to drink, okay?”

Really now. What did I ever do to deserve this.

I grumble a string of fucks under my breath, and grab a can of the Dr. Pepper that always seems to appear in the fridge, despite the fact I‘m sure no-one in this family actually drinks it.

I trudge out into the garden, deliberately dragging my feet with every step, just to prove to my mom how much I’m not cool with… whatever this even is. Marco looks up from where he’s sifting the net through the shallows, and a grin lights up his face.

“Hey,” he chimes, tossing the net onto the pool side, hooking his headphones around his neck, and striding over to greet me. I take back any and all statements about how toned he is. He’s not just toned. You could practically grate cheese or something on his abs.

I feel my shadow shrinking as I start to think about my own pasty, scrawny torso. This is not fucking fair, Jesus.

“Brought you a drink,” I mutter, holding out the Dr. Pepper with a rigid arm. I try to claw back what slither of general decency I still have. “… or you can have my Coke if you want.”

His freckles seem to disappear into his red cheeks. I briefly wonder if he bothers with sun block or not. He holds up his hands in front of himself in a flustered gesture.

“N-no! Dr. Pepper is good for me! Thanks!”

He takes the can from my hand quickly, and pops the tab. I shrug, and follow suit, gulping back almost half of my Coke in one breath.

“…You know you’re not helping the situation here, right,” I add hesitantly, lowering the can from my lips. I tilt my head back towards the kitchen, and Marco’s dark eyes follow my movement. I’m pretty sure he recoils slightly. “What’s with… _this_?” I gesture with my free hand at his bare chest, as the redness rises in his face, and he awkwardly rubs the back of his neck.

“I’m sorry,” he says, ducking his head. I’m not entirely sure why he’s apologising to me, when I’m pretty fucking used to this nonsense from my mom. “I kind of spilt the chlorine solution on my shirt earlier. It bleached a giant stain down the front of it, and it really _smelled_ -”

I snort loudly, hiding my smirk behind my hand. Marco opens his mouth to say something more, but stops, biting his lip.

“That’s some… bad luck, man,” I remark, rocking back on my heels. I briefly glance back over my shoulder at the kitchen window – sure enough, they’re both still there, eyes fixed on my conversation with their prey – I mean their… nope, prey is probably about right. My mom raises a hand to coyly wave in our direction. Marco reluctantly offers a polite smile in return.

“Do I even want to know what they’re saying in there?” he asks, folding his arms protectively across his chest.

I shake my head, unable to stop the smirk that spreads into a sly grin.

“Nope,” I snigger, chuckling as his shoulders drop. “Wanna borrow a shirt? You know, to save your decency and all.”

He nods, and I chug back the last of my Coke. The bubbles of carbon dioxide fizz in my nose painfully, so I exhale sharply, which must sound something like a scoff. I crunch the can in my hand.

“Not that I can guarantee I’ll have anything to fit you,” I add sarcastically. “Pretty sure what you’ve got going on is not really humanly possible, Marco.” I roll my tongue in my cheek in satisfaction at the flustered reaction that passes across his face. I snicker to myself as I turn back towards the house, calling over my shoulder: “I’ll see what I can find.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m getting Marco a shirt,” I state as I breeze through the kitchen. Despite mom’s noises of protest, I continue: “ _Someone_ has to save him from your lechery, okay.”

I take the stairs two at a time, arriving at my bedroom door mildly more out of breath than I’d actually care to admit.

 _Look at you actually being friendly_ , my mind snarks. _You should take a picture to treasure this moment, Jean._

I’m sure one of the _Ralph Lauren_ polo shirts (which my mom regularly fills my closet excessively with) would be my best bet for a fit for Marco – mom’s only recently started getting my size right (despite having lived with me for _nineteen_ years, I might add), and she used to always buy on the bigger side of things. I check the labels of a few of them, until I find what I’m looking for in the collar of a pretty basic, white one: medium. I tug it off the hanger, which clatters to the floor. I’ll pick it up later.

I almost trip over my own feet as I gallop back downstairs, skidding into the kitchen on my socks, very nearly risking winding myself on a counter which I barely miss. Mom and her friend have not moved, but they’re enamoured in a pretty serious conversation about some mutual friend’s affair with her boss.

Marco’s got his back to me when I emerge back out into the yard, crouched over his skimmer, fiddling with the power pack. A line of freckles follows the curve of his spine, pooling in the small of his back – I mentally slap myself for staring. What _are_ you doing, Jean.

“H-hey,” I say, finding my voice strained a little. I cough to clear my throat. “ _Ralph Lauren_ alright? ‘S all I got.”

“O-oh, are you sure?” he says, hauling himself to his feet with a heavy breath. His face is kinda red again. Sun burnt? “Isn’t that quite… expensive?”

“No biggie,” I shrug pretty nonchalantly, tossing him the white shirt, which he catches blunderingly in both hands. “I’ve got a ton. And I don’t wear them much. It’s a mom thing.”

Marco still seems to hesitate, holding the shirt tight in his hands. I raise my eyebrows expectantly. He admits defeat, and tugs the shirt on over his head.

He’s a couple inches taller than me, and his shoulders and back definitely a lot broader than mine (how, I wonder, because what exercise do pool boys actually do? But then again, I’m the one who lazes around on the sofa all day doing fuck all…), so even the medium is a little tight across his chest, and the hem a little short, a slither of his belly visible between it and the band of his khaki shorts. He brushes his palms quickly over his stomach a couple times to smooth down the fabric, seemingly pleased with himself.

“You make that shirt look so much better than I do, and it doesn’t even fit you,” I mutter off-handedly, but he hears, and an unusual smile pops up on his dark features. Not going to lie, I’m mildly jealous here. I fold my arms across my pretty-fucking-scrawny-in-comparison chest, defensively. “But you know, I’m saving you from potentially being exploited by my mom, so I can forgive you.”

Marco laughs – it’s a musical, pleasant sort of laugh, and I can’t help the way it dugs a more genuine smile out of my sarcastic smirk. His face seems to open up as I do.

“I guess I owe you one, Jean.”

 

* * *

 

For once in my life, I don’t have the over whelming urge to smoke that night. Instead, the inspiration to draw _finally_ arrives after a rather extended vacation.

My pencil moves across the paper in halting, unfamiliar lines – I can’t quite get the details right from memory. It’s not like Mikasa – I’ve drawn her so often that I could probably sketch her with my eyes closed (not that she’d be particularly pleased if she ever found out… she’d probably sock me one. And then Eren would probably sock me one as well…). The anatomy looks a bit dodgy, and the muscles are most likely not in the right place, and there’s almost certainly not enough freckles – but somehow, it comes out kinda looking like him. Kinda.

I wipe my hand across the paper to clear away the rubber filings, but smudge some of the pencil lines beneath my carpal ligament. I grunt in annoyance. But it’s only a simple sketch. I flip the page over, and keep drawing.

I don’t really come up with anything concrete, but it’s good to get some pencil lines out of my system once in a while. I draw Marco a few more times; I draw my mom and her friend, hunched over the counter crowing over their cocktails; I draw my dad, and the way he slumped in his chair like a pig at dinner time. I end up scribbling out my entire day in a bunch of messy pencil lines and hatches.

By the time midnight rolls by, I’ve filled up half a dozen pages of scribbles. I probably won’t like any of them in the morning. But it was probably worth the therapeutic value… I go to bed feeling mildly less angry at the world than usual.

 

* * *

 

Sunday isn’t without incident, however.

I roll out of bed cursing the fact it’s still too hot to rock the duvet-burrito look around the house for the whole day. I opt for matching Trost U sweatpants and t shirt, deciding: yep, I feel like a hobo today.

My mom’s face when I appear at the bottom of the stairs gone lunch time is a picture; she scowls and turns her nose up, complaining loudly about what the neighbours would think if they saw me dressed like this.

I crassly remind her that the neighbours probably wouldn’t give a shit.

She joins me in the kitchen as I brew the necessary pot of coffee to fuel my body through today, leaning over the island counter as I sleepily stab the buttons on the coffee machine.

“So I ran into Mrs. Braus at the hairdressers this morning.”

It comes very much out of the blue, and there’s an edge to her voice that suggests her statement is not just casual conversation.

I turn to face her, moving to put my hands in my pockets – but forgetting that these sweatpants do not in fact have pockets, and so looking like an idiot as my hands fall limply to my sides.

“Oh yeah,” I try, casually, “She alright?”

“Mhm, yes, she’s fine,” my mom replies, with an honest nod. “She asked after you, you know.”

“Oh yeah?” I’m not particularly fond of the direction this conversation is looking to be taking. I use all my mental strength to will my coffee to be done already.

“Yeah. She says that Sasha doesn’t talk about you much anymore.”

Well, no surprises there, mom. It’s not a great shock.

“… Are you still not talking to them, Jean?”

The coffee machine beeps loudly, and I spin around to retrieve the pot of black, caffeinated sustenance. I quickly decant it into a mug, and take a sip; it practically tastes of petrol, it’s so grim. I swallow my mouthful with a loud gulp.

“No,” I say, my voice a little softer than intended. I then add: “But they’re also not talking to _me_.”

My mom seems to study me for some time, so I just stare back at her, clutching the mug of putrid coffee in my hand. I don’t think she gets anything out of me, however. When she speaks again, it’s the mom I’m more used to.

“Shame, that. I did like Sasha. She’s a pretty girl. Good family too. She’s the sort of girl I’d like to see you come home with one day, you know.”

I roll my eyes, and blow the cloud of steam away across the top of the mug. _Well done, Jean. When they don’t care, you hate it. When they do care, you hate it. Congratulations on being so spectacularly difficult._

“Sorry to disappoint you, mom. ‘S not gonna happen.”

 

* * *

 

The second, mainly shitty thing that makes Sunday generally suck balls, is the fact that I intercept a phone call from the blonde ditz.

The phone rings during the middle of a particularly tense shoot out on NCIS, and I answer with a particularly grouchy: “yeah? Who is it?”

I feel my eyes roll back as far as physically possible in my head as he horrific shrillness echoes across the line.

“Hiii, can I talk to Mr. Kirschtein, please?”

I don’t even grace her with a response, marching straight upstairs and into dad’s study, without a knock.

“Whatever happened to knocking, Jean-” he starts, minimising the document on his desktop, and turning in his chair to look at me sternly. I hold the phone handset out towards him with a glare that I hope is even half as pissed off as I feel.

“Make her stop ringing the house phone,” I state.

“She’s my secretary, Jean. How many times? It’s work.”

He tries to pull the wool over my eyes every single time. And every single time, I want to punch him in the face. Ideally with the phone still in my hand.

He takes the handset from me, and covers the receiver with his palm. He obviously realises I’m not buying his bullshit.

“We should talk,” he says.

 _About what_ , I think. _Because all I want to ask you is why I’m still covering for you on this._

“No, we shouldn’t,” I reply. I turn on my heel, and leave, making sure to slam the door on my way out. I stop at the top of the stairs, and listen. There’s silence for a little while, but then comes the low voice of my dad into the phone.

“Charlotte, what did I tell you about calling the house phone? I don’t want my wife to pick up.”

I don’t think I want to hear the rest of this conversation.

 

* * *

 

I try to focus on my revision for finals for the rest of the week – mainly because the fact that most of my text books are laying on my desk unopened despite the fact exams are only a month away is fucking terrifying me – but also to try to get my mind as far away from everything else as possible. I even begin to find a silver lining to Bertrand Russell. I must be losing it.

Even on Wednesday, I heroically sacrifice my lie in to start on some Chemistry problems early. I sweep my open sketch book to the side of my desk, and open up my notes to epoxide mechanisms. Organic chemistry, I will crack you.

A lot of swearing, screwing up a dozen failed mechanisms, resorting to blasting some _Dead Kennedys_ very loudly, and half an attempted past paper later, the sun is blaring through my open window, scorching my back. It must be around midday.

As _California Über Alles_ comes to a close, I hear the sound of my mom talking loudly out in back yard. I turn down the volume on my laptop to try to make out what she’s saying.

“-listens to that god awful racket far too loudly and… oh, has he turned it down?”

I wheel myself to the window on my desk chair, pulling myself across the floorboards with my feet. Poking my head out beneath the upper sash, I notice that it’s Marco to whom she’s nattering. Of course – Wednesday and all.

“You know, it’s not nice to talk about people behind their backs!” I shout, startling my mom, who raises a hand to her chest in fright. Watching her flap around, trying to compose herself, brings a wolfish grin to my lips.

“Jean!” she squawks, gesturing wildly up at my second floor window. “Don’t shout like that! You could’ve given me a heart attack!” Marco folds his arms, and chuckles behind his fingers. “Look, can you come down here a sec?”

“I’m studying, mom!” I retort, “Just yell loudly and I’ll hear you!”

My mom opens her mouth to reply, but Marco dutifully interrupts her.

“I just wanted to give you your shirt back, Jean,” he smiles, as my mom pouts her puffy lips exasperatedly. “I can give it back later, when you’re done studying, if that’s better?”

“Oh right!” I exclaim, “No man, that’s cool! Do you mind throwing it up or something? I’m kinda in the middle of doing a paper.”

Marco looks like he’s trying to gauge the distance between the ground and my window, debating the probability of the shirt getting stuck on the gutter on the way up.

“I-I’ll just bring it up, if that’s alright? I don’t trust my throwing arm!”

I shrug, and wheel away from the window, spinning around a bit too vigorously – I clutch the edge of my desk with both hands to stop myself from toppling straight over.

I stare down at some question about hydrolases, but the words don’t really register anywhere within my brain. I try the next question, as I hear tentative footsteps on the landing.

“It’s this one!” I call, without looking away from my question sheet, as the door creaks open.

“H-hey,” Marco says, sliding his way past the door. In his hands, he holds the polo shirt, meticulously folded, as I’d expect from what I know of him. He doesn’t move from the doorway, so I twist around to face him, holding up my hand to receive the shirt.

“Pass it here then,” I grin; Marco looks between the nicely folded shirt and my hand, and hesitates before he throws it to me. Luckily, for my dignity, I don’t drop it.

I roll myself and my chair across to my closet, where I search for an unoccupied hanger (which is a harder feat than expected, because I really do have too many fucking clothes that I don’t ever wear…).

Marco shuffles forward a few more steps, and from the corner of my eye, I see something grab his interest.

“… Do you draw?”

I freeze, shirt half on hanger. Shit. I left my sketch book on my desk.

“Uh… not really,” I say sheepishly. “I… uh… just doodle when I’m bored, you know? I’m not very good…”

“Can I… have a look?” I desperately want to ask him: why, exactly, our pool boy is in my room, wanting to nosy through my private things. Well, I tell myself that. But the way he points curiously at my sketch book, a massive, dorky grin hiding freckles in his dimples, sends my mind reeling.

“Uh… if you like?”

He ducks his head meekly, and reaches to flip the page of my sketch book over, his fingers barely touching the white sheet as he does.

I replace the hanger – plus shirt – in the closet, and retrain my eyes on him, watching from a distance. His smile has been replaced by a look of deep concentration, the skin between his dark eyebrows creased. He passes through the pages of Mikasa, the lose scribbles of my parents, and then falters when he comes across what is unmistakably him (however much I’ve decided that the anatomy is pretty fucking rubbish). He holds the next page suspended, between his thumb and forefinger, and stares down at the messy lines for a long while. I can practically feel myself sweating, the silence is so awkward.

“These are… really good, Jean,” he finally says, his eyes flicking up to meet mine. That’s it. He doesn’t remark on the more-than-slightly-creepy elephant in the room. I run a hand through my hair, turning it up on end, feeling heat rise on the back of my neck.

“…Thanks, man.”

“Do you study it? Art, that is?”

“Oh… uh, no,” I reply, quickly – maybe a little too quickly, because Marco’s eyebrows rise quizzically. I point at the pile of Chemistry textbooks at the other end of my desk. “I didn’t fancy it.”

“Huh. That’s amazing.” I get the impression that he’s not exactly talking to me when he says that. He turns the page in his fingers, finding he’s reached the end of my drawings. He straightens up, and looks unsure at what to do with himself.

I roll my tongue in my cheek, drumming my fingers against the underside of my desk chair. More out of a need to do something before I go insane with this silence, rather than any sort of impatience. Marco opens his mouth to say something, but clamps it shut again immediately; I’ve noticed his embarrassed quirk tends to be to chew on his bottom lip. He tries again to say what’s on his mind.

“Do you think… uh, how should I say this…” His hand reaches up, as per, to scratch the back of his shallow undercut. “These are really cool, Jean. Do you think I could – you know – have that one of… me.”

Oh. Oh, okay. Was not expecting that. This obviously plasters itself across my face.

“Oh! Unless that’s not cool!” Marco quickly back-tracks, taking a step away from my desk, his palms held up defensively in my direction.

I don’t even notice that I’ve leapt out of my chair, until I’m at my desk, slamming my sketch book shut with a wind of force. Marco appears to be pretty much scared shitless that he's done something insanely wrong.

“’S not like that one’s any good,” I mutter, below my breath. I’m flustered. Very, _very_ , fucking flustered. “I can probably – you know – do a better one. If you want.”

I watch the change in his expression from the corner of my eye: from fear, to surprise, to the biggest, most fucking ridiculous grin I’ve ever seen on his face. _My_ face feels excessively warm.

“… Don’t you have a pool to clean or something now?” I try to keep my face as serious as possible, but I just can’t prevent a reluctant smile.

 

* * *

 

I just can’t get back into the Chemistry after that, try as hard as I might (which isn’t really all that hard, I should add). I try some Philosophy, but that hits a mental road block. Same with the Math, same with the European History. I resort to opening up my French textbook, for the simple illusion of productivity. I can do French.

My eyes are skimming through some chapter about the changes in 21st century French literature from the point of view of some irrelevant and extremely boring critic, and I find myself grinning. Like a fucking idiot. Like Marco. I cover my eyes with my palm, and squeeze my temples, but the grinning doesn’t subside. I’m glad I’m alone right now.

_You know what, Jean Kirschtein? I think you may have just achieved the impossible. You may have just gone and made a friend._

 

* * *

 

Maybe someone’s looking down on me from somewhere, because something beyond miraculous happens after my Philosophy seminar that Friday.

I literally stagger out of class, very-fucking-eager to get away from Professor Dok’s excessive rationalisation of some brain-destroying theory of knowledge text that I almost certainly should have already read by this point in the term.

I haul my bag up onto my usual cafeteria table, my text books sounding like a ton of bricks on the linoleum surface. I’d over slept that morning, so all I have in my bag is a rather sorrowful looking bag of chips, and a squished Mars bar. As I pop the packet of chips between my palms, I notice Connie and Sasha walk in, trailing the larger group of Eren, Mikasa, Armin, Historia, and her actually-kinda-scary sophomore girlfriend, Ymir. They’re talking with their heads close together, Connie gesturing wildly, and Sasha pursing his lips in frustration. The general ruckus of the cafeteria prevents me from hearing a word, so I instead busy myself with licking the chip dust from my fingers.

I look up when a short, bald shadow is cast across my table, and a battered looking rucksack is thrown down next to mine.

It’s Connie. And it’s not _yes-I’m-awkwardly-avoiding-you_ Connie. I frown. He sits down opposite me.

“You alright?” he says, and I just about detect a hint of hesitation there. But he’s trying damn hard to supress it. “’S been a while.”

“…Yeah,” I say suspiciously, hand half submerged in my chips again. I have no clue what he’s wanting me to say in response to the fact he’s just sat down in front of me, after twelve months of being blatantly ignored. He obviously senses this awkwardness – he can’t exactly _not_ , even if this is Connie we’re talking about.

“You been playing _Titanfall_ lately?” He’s always been a bit out-there, but this is weird.

I eat a chip, whilst continuing to frown. Maybe if I frown hard enough, I’ll be able to figure out what he actually wants. Or he’ll at least leave me the hell alone.

“What’s this about, Connie?”

He looks mildly taken aback, gold-brown eyes wide. He folds his arms on the table top, and leans forward slightly.

“What? I just wanted to know if you’ve got it. I figured you did.”

He’s not wrong there. But it doesn’t take an intuitive genius to figure that out (which he definitely isn’t, by the way). I was after that game since way before the Eren incident.

“I think Sasha’s pretty fed up with me talking about it all the time,” he continues, barely pausing for breath. “I’m level forty-nine, you know? One to go, then I can do that regen thing. Oh, and I unlocked the Ogre and Stryder classes the other day as well. ‘S well cool.”

“I’m not surprised she is,” I murmur. “Did you really come here to talk _Titanfall_ with me, Connie, or do you just want my Philosophy notes?”

Connie sighs, and scratches the top of his head as he debates what to say. For once in his life, he’s being strangely closed-off.

“I don’t want your Philosophy notes,” he exhales. “I want to talk about _video games_. Like we used to.”

“You know it’s not like that anymore.”

“… Says who?”

I find enough determination to finally look him in the eye. He seems frustrated, fiddling with the tattered cuffs of his jacket. I move my gaze over his shoulder, to the table where the others are sitting: Eren and Ymir are arguing pretty vigorously, his arms flailing, and her face a sneer, whilst Historia clings to her girlfriend’s arm in an attempt to pull her back into her seat. I can’t see Mikasa’s face, but I’m sure it’s one that’s glaring daggers. Sasha sits on Mikasa’s other side, and I watch as her line of sight flits back down into her lap when she sees I’m looking.

“Sasha’s creeping on us,” I remark, giving a nod in her direction.

“I know,” Connie replies, glancing over his shoulder briefly. As he does, his phone vibrates with an irritating jingle. “She misses you, bud. We both do.”

This surprises me beyond measure. I rack my brain for what on earth could be the cause of this sudden declaration, but I come up with nothing. Zilch. I’m left staring blankly at my once-upon-a-time best friend, as he quietly checks his text messages beneath the table. He laughs a breathy laugh.

“She just asked me what we’re talking about,” he grins, showing me the screen of his brick-of-a-Nokia. Sure enough, that’s what it says. Just minus some general literacy, and with a few dozen extra question marks. Very Sasha.  “What should I tell her?”

In my mind, this could go one of two ways. The first way: I could tell him to stop wasting his time. Ask him if he’s really forgiven me for breaking Eren’s nose, collarbone, and two of his ribs. Tell him that Eren sure won’t be fucking happy to see us chatting together. Inform him that I’m a pretty grumpy asshole most of the time, and I’ve been doing just fine without them these last few months.

But I know that’s not entirely true. I’ve been smoking far too many cigarettes on my rooftop for it not to be some serious angsting on my part.

So, the second way it is. Being this lonely all the time fucking sucks. I want to give fixing things a shot.

“Tell her we’re talking about which chassis we’ve unlocked,” I shrug. “And tell her she’s welcome to join us.”

Connie grins – and I realise that it’s been a long fucking time since I’ve seen that look. A long fucking time.

“Sure thing, man.”

 

* * *

 

Sleep and I aren’t on great terms that night. I lie on my bed, staring at the ceiling for what seems hours, assuming the starfish position. I clamp a cigarette between my teeth, but I don’t light it. I chew on it for a while, until it starts to taste gross.

Connie and I had talked _Titanfall_ for the entirety of our lunch break – until Sasha had come over, and informed him that they had to go to their next class. She hadn’t been as chipper as the Sasha I’d once known, and her expression had been guarded as she tugged on Connie’s jacket, whilst he was still animatedly explaining the way he had single-handedly cleared a section I was struggling on. Eventually though, she’d dragged him away, and I was left to the joys of my French class.

But his parting words circle within my head: “I’m gonna bring in this guidebook thing I got at GameStop the other day, okay? I’ll show it to you on Monday!”

I want to feel happy. Completely, one-hundred percent happy. And I’m pretty close to that.

But there’s definitely a little voice in my head telling me: _you know, it can’t just go back to how it was. You really fucked up back then. It’s gonna take a lot of work._

I roll onto my side, drawing my knees up to my chest in the foetal position. My hand grazes across the spiral binding of my sketch book protruding from between my mattress and the wall. I run my fingers across the bumpy metal, deep in thought.

I want the smoking on the hood of Connie’s pickup at the outlook. I want the ridiculous text messages at three in the morning asking me why the all-night convenience store is out of bread. I want the cries of “do it for the Vine!” as Connie debates flinging himself out of his bedroom window and onto the trampoline. I want the gaming marathons, the pebbles thrown at my window (and even the one time Sasha broke the glass), the road trips with no destination in particular.

I really want to make this work. Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this should also be known as the chapter in which I know zero about anything American. You guys' university system really confused the frick out of me, not gonna lie. I hope my Britishism isn't glaringly obvious. 
> 
> Other than that, i hope ya'll enjoyed the chapter. Some more Marco, shirtless as promised. More to come.  
> Jean and Marco's friendship will continue to grow in the next few chapters, and they'll get to know each other some more. It's gonna be fun.
> 
> The chapter title is the name of a Dead Kennedys album, simply for the fact that that's what Jean was listening to in this chapter. I'm sorry (not sorry) for giving him basically my music taste hahahaha
> 
> I'd like to point out some delicious art drawn by Sizzleart on tumblr for this fic: http://sizzlesart.tumblr.com/post/82868404467/rich-kid-jean-and-pool-boy-marco-from-the-fic
> 
> And also the fact that I also have a tumblr: theprophetlemonade.tumblr.com


	4. Old Pine

Going twelve months without talking to anyone other than your mom (and being talked _at_ , by your dad), is tough. I have very much got first-hand experience of that.

So, with Connie’s sudden barrelling back into my life without warning, I’m sitting somewhere on the brink of pretty-fucking-ecstatic, and shit-this-definitely-cannot-be-for-real. I know being a grumpy, pessimistic asshole comes kinda easily to me, but I really can’t help it how my mind keeps inventing scenarios for what will be Monday morning, when I try to talk to Connie, and he just blanks me again.

Things like this revolve around and around in my head, and I find myself completely unable to sit still without fidgeting for more than five minutes at a time.

I try the usual things to keep my mind of the inevitable torrent of _what-ifs_ : I take as long as humanly possible to choose what to wear, poring over exactly which of my near-identical band shirts would be the best for today (I wind up choosing a red and white _London Calling_ shirt which I haven’t worn in a while, to the extent that it’s still folded up in my drawers, and a pair of black skinnies which I practically have to dance my way into). I spend at least half an hour doing my hair, and at least another ten minutes stroking my face, deciding whether it’s time to shave or not (my facial hair growing abilities are not… miraculous, shall we say).

I spritz a decent amount of chocolate Axe on my neck and wrists – if there’s one thing I’m not tempted by, it’s expensive deodorants. If it smells good, I don’t care if it’s hella cheap. I’ve been using the same brand ever since my dad realised that buying me expensive aftershaves probably wasn’t the best way to win my affection (not that Xbox games are either, but hey, I can appreciate them slightly more, okay?).

The next stop on my “avoiding mulling over whether or not the Connie thing was simply a figment of my socially-deprived imagination” mission is to open up my Chemistry text book, and try to come to terms with the epoxide hydrolases that I was struggling over last week. No luck. The words just melt away in front of my eyes.

I drum my fingers against my temples, and grit my teeth in frustration. My mom always tells me off for the habit – tells me that I’m going to grind my teeth down to nothing. Thinking about that just makes me grind them harder.

I stare at my phone for a while – it’s a new Samsung Galaxy S4, which I’ve shoehorned into one of those classic Nintendo Gameboy phone cases – debating whether or not it’s socially acceptable to text Connie. Whether or not it’d be _weird_.

I get to the extent of having the phone in my hand, and thumbing through my pretty sparse list of contacts when I realise that I deleted his number months ago. Way to go, you fucking forgetful loser.

I groan, and throw my phone across the room – it lands with a dull thump on my bed.

I notice that there’s a quiet thrum of music coming from somewhere, and after establishing that no, it’s not my laptop, and no, it’s not my speakers, iPod, or the record player my dad bought me for my nineteenth, I realise that it’s coming from outside.

I wheel myself across to the window, and haul it up – it tends to stick when the weather’s hot like this.

The chorus of MCR’s _Sing_ bounces around inside my ears, and I shield my eyes from the sun as I peer out into the back yard. There’s a set of speakers hooked up to an extension lead on the steps of the pool shed, and Marco’s equipment is piled neatly around them. But no Marco to be seen.

I lean further out the window, trying to get a full view of the yard, but it’s a no-man’s land right now. I briefly wonder if my mom’s just gone and run off with him, to have done with it. Some shit like that wouldn’t actually surprise me, I decide.

It’s a shame, if Marco’s been kidnapped by my mom, I muse, because there’s a guy who’s easy to understand. There’s no doubt that if I say “hi” to him, he’s gonna say “hi” back. Now if only Connie and the rest of them could be so simple.

Marco emerges from the pool shed at that moment, belting out the lines about singing for the ones that’ll hate your guts (or that’s what I reckon he’s saying), and drumming his hands on his thighs as he walks. He glances up at my window, and pauses in his tracks when he sees me leaning out. He smiles self-consciously, and bends down to turn off his iPod.

“I didn’t realise anyone was in,” he calls up to me, hand on the back of his neck out of nervous habit. I guess my mom must’ve gone out to the store, or something.

“ _I_ didn’t realise the MCR was still a thing,” I shoot back sarcastically, watching as his face begins to turn dark red. Obviously he was not counting on me witnessing his little sing-along for a second time.

“I can turn it off if you don’t like it,” he replies, “If you’re trying to study.”

I glance over my shoulder at my open Chemistry text book. Trying to study, yes. Failing to study, also yes.

“Nah,” I call back, folding my arms on the window sill. “’S alright. I’m not really doing anything.” I add as an afterthought: “Feel free to continue to uh… _serenade_ the neighbours with your singing voice. I won’t stop you.”

Marco rolls his eyes – something which I’ve not seen him do before, and turns the speakers back on, just adjusting the volume a little lower. He retrieves the skimmer, and sets it sail in the pool to eat up some of the non-existent _crap_ that mom insists _is_ in there.

I must’ve been watching him potter around for at least a couple of minutes, before he calls back up to me.

“… You’re really _not_ doing anything, are you?”

Shit. Didn’t mean to stare. I bolt upright, and smack my head off the upper sash of the window in true loser fashion.

“Oh, _fuck_!” I grimace loudly, clutching the top of my head. It feels like I’ve split my skull open. Fucking hell!

“Are you okay?” Marco chuckles, trying to feign some sort of compassion, when really he’s finding my _incomparable_ pain amusing. What a jerk.

“Shut up!” I call back, rubbing my hands through my hair, trying to sooth the sharp throbbing. “I’m fine!”

“You should get an ice pack for that,” comes his musical voice, as I screw my eyes shut. “You might have a concussion.”

Well, at least _that_ knocks any and all thoughts of Connie out of my head.                                      

I stagger downstairs, gripping the bannister with all my might, as I feel I’m pretty fucking close to seeing literal stars. There’s a note on the kitchen counter from my mom, which I glance at as I pass – something about popping out to somewhere, and doing something – oh _man_ , my head _kills_.

I grab a handful of ice from the fridge, and am about to press it to my temple, when Marco raps his knuckles far-too-loudly on the window. He says something, but I can’t quite hear him, because of the general buzzing in my ears. I squint at him (as if that would somehow make me be able to hear him better?), and point at the back door. He gets the message.

“Don’t put the ice directly on your scalp,” he says as he opens the door, stepping into the kitchen. “You might damage the skin.” He looks around the kitchen briefly, and spots a washcloth draped over the oven door handle. “Here.” He hands it to me. Practically having to put it in my hand himself, because my hand-eye coordination is a little dodgy. “Wrap the ice in this, and then put it on your head.”

I do as he instructs, and return the ice-pack to where the throbbing has died down a little. The coldness stings a little, and I breathe out a necessary “fuck”. Marco then pulls out one of the bar stools, and steers it across the floor towards me.

“Sit,” he commands.

Again, I do as he says, despite wobbling a bit as I haul myself up onto the high seat.

“ _Fuck_ ,” I curse again, cradling my forehead in the washcloth. “I haven’t fucking done that before. Jesus _Christ_.”

“And I wouldn’t advise doing it again,” Marco adds, causes me to scoff. He sort of drifts behind me, maintaining an odd distance between us. “Do you mind if I have a look?”

“ _Knock yourself out_ ,” I joke, seeing him shake his head at my poor pun from the corner of his eye. “You know how to treat a concussion as well as clean pools?”

“Yeah, I do,” he replies softly. He gently presses his hands onto my scalp, parting my hair carefully. I move the ice pack so that he can cop a better feel. “Where does it hurt?”

A breath leaves my lips as a sharp hiss as his fingers prod at the tender spot.

“ _There_ ,” I growl under my breath. Marco lightens his touch, but continues to inspect the area of my head with cautious fingertips.

“Well, it looks like there’s some swelling,” he states, “But nothing else. Let me just try one more thing.”

He turns the bar stool around, so that I’m facing up at him – his mouth is drawn in a tight line, and his brows are furrowed in concentration. I take a sharp breath in – regretting it when a pain shoots through my temple – and am met with the earthy smell of his obviously camomile-scented laundry detergent, mixed with the distinct whiff of chlorine. I return the ice pack to my head, relishing the coolness this time.

He holds up his finger in front of my face, and I stare at it blankly.

“I need you to touch my finger, and then your nose, and then my finger again, as quickly as you can,” he informs me. “It’s just a normal concussion test.”

I frown, but do as he says, poking his finger with mine, then pressing my nose, and then his finger again. Marco’s mouth forms a smile, and he seems pleased.

“I don’t think you have a concussion,” he says. “Just a bad knock. Keep the ice on it for a while, okay?”

“I suppose you’ll be wanting to be paid for the diagnosis, as well as the pool this week,” I joke, as Marco takes a step back to lean against the counter. I lose the scent of his clothes from my peripheral. “Where’d you learn that trick? Were you a doctor who decided to throw it all in for the pool-cleaning business or something?”

Marco abashedly scratches the hair behind his ear, and shrugs.

“Well, that’s not far off the truth,” he admits, and I quirk my eyebrows in surprise. “You go to Trost U, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” I nod, adjust my hand as the ice begins to slip a little from my grasp. He must’ve noticed the Trost University logo on one of my shirts. “Did you go?”

It’s strange, because he doesn’t look like he could be older than about twenty one or twenty two, yet if he’d finished seven years of med-school, that would make him… what, at least twenty five, or more. He doesn’t look it. Maybe it’s the freckles.

“I did a year,” he admits, “Pre-med.” Well, that explains that. He’s probably only a year older than me. Still doesn’t quite account for the fact pool cleaning kinda doesn’t have a patch on being a doctor. Even if I was _unconscious_ , I’d still be able to tell him that.

“Not up your street or something?”

He bites his lip, and there’s a moment of silence before he chooses to answer. It is a bit weird to be telling the son of your employer your life story, I can get that.

“No,” he says slowly, curling his fingers over the edge of the counter he’s propped up against. “No, I really enjoyed it. But… family issues, you know? It couldn’t be avoided.”

He returns his dark gaze to look at me again, his tone shifting a lot lighter in an instant.

“You didn’t actually think I’d _chosen_ for my life’s ambition to be pool cleaning, did you?” He smiles, but it feels hollow. I’d offer him an affirming laugh, but… it’d feel just as fake.

I recall the assumptions I’d made when mom first informed me of the new pool cleaner.  _Speedo-wearing, college drop-out._ Well, I was partially right. No speedos in sight, thankfully. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel guilty anyway. I wasn’t thinking of college drop-out in this sense.

I aim to try to lighten the mood that has quietly descended over our conversation.

“You must’ve known Bert then,” I muse. “He’s second year pre-med. Bertholdt Hoover?”

Marco’s face instantly lights up in recognition.

“Yeah, I do! I mean, I did, but… yeah, I know him,” he grins. That smile is infectious. “You do too?”

I inform him how I sort of know Reiner Braun, the Trost Titans’ line backer, through Connie, and thus, by association, I know Bert. Marco nods: he knows Reiner too. I recount the tale of the first time I met the two of them at one of Connie and Sasha’s house parties, and how Reiner tends to put people in headlocks when he’s drunk. Including me. Especially me.

“It’s a small world,” Marco laughs, as I finish telling him how I had bruises around my neck for a whole week after that. He glances at his watch, and then outside, and I think I hear the smallest of sighs as he straightens up.

“Right then,” he says, “I’ve got a pool to clean.”

I find myself feeling unusually disappointed that this means the end of the conversation. And that this means I must return to my room and dwell over Chemistry revision for the rest of the afternoon. The thought makes me head hurt more.

“You mind if I sit outside with you?” I venture to ask. “I don’t think I can physically cope with any more revision. It’s making me want to jump out my window, instead of just… hit my head on it.”

“Sure,” Marco chimes, “I don’t mind. Your mom does it all the time anyway.”

“I’d like to hope that me and my mom have _slightly_ different agendas.”

The patio is slightly too far away from the pool to be able to hold a decent enough conversation, so I opt to perch on the steps of the pool shed, which is at least out of the sun. The skimmer is still making its way around the edge of the pool, but has so far missed the small collection of leaves floating in the centre of the water – Marco retrieves his net, and starts about making a long arm to fish the debris out.

“So, a doctor, huh?” I remark casually. “That’s some pretty serious shit. How long have you wanted to do that?”

“… A while, I guess?” Marco replies, smiling to himself, as he empties the content of the net into a bucket. “I’m one of those people who’ve never changed what they’ve wanted to do with their life since they were five.”

“So, what, you’re gonna pick the medicine thing back up, then? When the family problems go away?”

He smile slips a little, and is distinctly sadder. I’m probably nosing around where I shouldn’t be. I’m usually quite good at that. But he continues to oblige me.

“Maybe. I’d like that. I mean, cleaning pools four days a week, and then bar tending on two other nights is not really how I’d like my life to go. But… it’s money.”

I lean forward, resting my elbow on my knees, and then my chin in my palm. The ice pack in my other hand is beginning to lose its coolness.

“I’m jealous,” I admit, with a wolfish grin. “You know what you wanna do with your life. I wish I had that, man.”

“But what are you majoring in?” he asks, hands crossed over the base of the net’s handle, now looking directly at me. His gaze doesn’t make me squirm though – not like when _relatives_ ask the same question.

“Dunno,” I tell him honestly, with a shrug. “Nothing I really wanna pick. I’m taking Chemistry, Philosophy, Math, European History, and French at the moment, but… well, I’m not _amazing_ at anything, ya’ know? I think my dad wants me to major in something like business or finance, or some other boring BS. Only reason I even went to uni this year was because he says I need a degree to take over his shitty company.”

“Your art though,” he hums, barely waiting for breath as I finish speaking. Heat creeps up the back of my neck. I avert my gaze, pressing my toes into the grass. “You’ve definitely got a talent in that, Jean. You should major in that.”

I’m not sure how to respond. Maybe I’m not used to genuine praise like that. Usually it’s just: _oh, you got an A in French, but what about your Chemistry grade? Your Math grade?_

“I dunno, man,” I murmur. The pool boy is not the person I expected to be telling _my_ life story to. I never really planned on telling _anyone_ this stuff, if I’m honest. But Marco’s got a countenance unlike anyone I’ve ever met.  The sorta person whom it feels as natural as breathing opening up to. The words will just tumble out, however hard I held onto them in the past. “The parents don’t know about that. Don’t think they’d take well to it, somehow.”

I’m not gonna deny that the thought of an art major, or even art school, ever crossed my mind. But, when it did, it was a very much unreachable daydream. So I never really bothered to even try to reach it. I just accepted.

I’m not brave enough to try and do otherwise.

“Plus, I doubt I’m good enough,” I add, exhaling through my nose. “It’s only a hobby. ‘S not like anyone really wants those shitty little scribbles.”

I hear Marco sigh, and look up. He’s staring down into the pool water, forehead creased in, what… frustration?

“You strike me as more of a …well, not a _follower_ , Jean,” he says quietly. “You gotta believe that you’re good enough to do what _you_ want to do.”

Well, that was creepily… profound.

“How can you know that,” I scoff, bringing the now-melting ice pack away from my head, setting it on the steps beside me. “You barely know me, Freckles.”

He shrugs. “Just do.”

The moment is short lived, however, as the back door clammers against the side of the house, and my mom totters out into the yard, her shrill voice making my head pound. I wince at Marco, and he smiles sympathetically back, before returning to scooping leaves out of the pool, to the sound of My Chemical Romance’s _Danger Days_ album.

 

* * *

 

On Sunday, my mom makes sure that I take plenty of bed rest, despite the fact that _Dr. Marco assured me I didn’t have a concussion, okay!_

I think maybe she secretly enjoys having someone who she can forcibly make dependant on her. And I suppose it’s not _too_ bad a position to be in, when I can just text her, and she brings me up a massive chicken and bacon sandwich.

The only downer is that now, I’m not just thinking about what Connie’s going to be like on Monday. I’m also dwelling on what Marco said about choosing something mental, like art, as my major. Even fucking better position to be in, thanks very much.

I try to distract myself by drawing – but half way through a quick scribble of Mikasa, I realise I’ve given her freckles.

I roll my eyes, and flip the page without even bothering to erase the mistake, starting a fresh on an actual drawing of my pool boy-turned-accident-confidant. Short, shallow undercut. Freckles like Ymir’s. Smile like Historia’s. It looks alright.

 

* * *

 

So, Monday. Math. One of my classes with Connie.

I’m there earlier than usual, primarily due to the fact that my Sunday spent in bed meant that I woke up before my alarm, feeling refreshed, but also like I’d wasted a weekend of precious revision time. I use the half hour before the class is due to start to quell some of the guilt, by running through some Math questions by myself.

Connie’s last to arrive. He rushes in out of breath, his eyes darting around the room to see if Pixis has made it before him. He’s safe.

Whilst Armin occupies the seat to my left, the seat to my right is still free, so Connie automatically makes a bee-line for it, swinging his battered rucksack onto the desk with a loud _thunk_. That’ll be the back-breaker that is taking both Philosophy and European History for you.

“You wouldn’t believe the parking lot this morning,” he gushes, all his words spilling out in one garbled, wheezing breath. “Twenty minutes to find a spot. Twenty minutes!”

Well, that answers my main question.

“You have the same problem every day,” Armin says, leaning around me. “Why don’t you leave earlier in the morning?”

“I _do_ leave early,” Connie complains loudly, earning some glares from the rows in front of us. “If I left any _earlier_ it’d basically still be _yesterday_. It’s because Sasha’s pooling with me now. She takes so _long_ in the mornings to leave her house, oh my God!”

It crosses my mind why, exactly, Connie would take such a detour to pick up Sasha every morning, who lives the other side of the freeway to him, but I’m interrupted by Pixis’ arrival in the lecture theatre.

The lecture is dull. I blank out for most of it, doodling on the corner of my note pad, whilst Connie’s snores next to me get progressively louder. I don’t know how he gets away with it so often. Armin, of course, is astutely taking notes. I’m glad someone is. I’ll need those later.

When Pixis finally calls it a day, and leaves, I debate whether or not I’m supposed to wait for Connie before heading to the cafeteria to grab a snack. But, he doesn’t leave me time to think, because as soon as Pixis leaves the room, he’s awake again.

“Hey, I brought in that _Titanfall_ book I was talking about on Friday!” he grins, unzipping his bag, “You wanna see?”

“Uh, I’m kinda …hungry – you wanna head to the cafeteria and look at it there?” I offer, scratching the back of my neck in a Marco-esque sorta awkwardness. This is all a bit surreal. It’s like Connie’s forgotten the last twelve months even happened.

“Sure!” he agrees, and we leave the Math department together, Connie rapidly spouting all the things he got up to this weekend in my ear, whilst I’m just focusing hard on not being dazed enough to walk headlong into a door. I just about manage that.

The cafeteria is not too busy, and my usual table is vacant, so we throw our bags down, and I offer to go get us both coffees and something to eat. (I guess Connie definitely hasn’t missed my wallet, because he doesn’t even try to politely protest. I don’t really care though. It’s dad’s money at the end of the day.)

In the queue to pay, I notice that out table has been surrounded by a small group of people; I spot Mikasa’s black hair in the midst immediately, and then Eren on her flank, talking to Connie. He’s shaking his head at something Eren’s saying, and then Eren’s shrugging, and then they’re on their way, leaving Connie alone once more. I guess they’re asking him why he’s suddenly hanging out with a deadbeat. I would also like to ask that, not gonna lie.

“I literally don’t understand how you can like your coffee this fucking sugary,” I say as I approach, handing him the steaming, polystyrene cup. “Fucking grim, man.” I take the seat opposite him, and test my coffee. Still approximately the same temperature as a volcano.

“Sasha’s fault,” he shrugs casually. “I didn’t even like coffee before starting here. But now if I go without it for a day I’m like… a zombie or something. All bleeeeggggh.” He makes a twisted face to illustrate his point. I snort loudly.

His voice then takes on a softer tone.

“I’m glad you’re talking to me again, man,” he says, between sips of coffee. His eyes are focused on nothing in particular, save maybe the questionable brown stains on the table. “I was real worried that you might just blank me again this morning. I was worrying about it all weekend.”

I run my finger around and around the rim of my cup, screwing up my mouth in thought. He thought _I_ was going to blank _him_. I feel a wave of relief wash over me.

“Nah man… I wouldn’t do that.” It doesn’t strike me straight away that the distance over the last twelve months may not have been just a one way thing. I feel like I’ve gained a few necessary, Connie-shaped pieces to fix the hole that I probably had a hand in causing.

Not just probably. Definitely. King of the colossal fuck-ups. That’s me.

 

* * *

 

Connie and I sit next to each other in all three of the classes we share together, and I become increasingly aware of the serious side-eye I’m receiving from a lot of the others when we pass them in the hallways, or Connie passes up the seat Eren saved for him in European History.

This continues into Tuesday, to the extent that I can’t shake off the thought that every single group of people we pass are whispering about the fact that _would you look at that, someone’s talking to Jean again_. Despite the fact that I don’t know most of them. Of course it’s just a dose of crazy-ass paranoia. But still.

By the time it gets to lunch break, I’m literally bristling because I’m _that_ on edge.

“Dude, are you constipated or something?” Connie remarks through a mouthful of burger. He looks a bit like a hamster, stuffing his face like that. “You look like you’re constipated.”

“I’m not constipated,” I spit – but Connie doesn’t seem to care, continuing to chow down on his lunch. “It’s just… is it me or everyone staring at us? Doesn’t it… freak you out?”

Connie shrugs.

“No, not really.”

“They’re probably talking about us too.”

“Not my problem.” He eyes my untouched plate of fries, and waggles his eyebrows. “Are you gonna eat those?”

I sigh, and push my plate towards him. He grabs are more-than-generous handful, shoving them into his face.

“Whaaar arsiff wreed bow’?” he mumbles. Translation: _what are you so worried about?_ He gulps down the half-chewed food, and continues: “It’s their problem if they’re concerned about the fact I’m talking to you again.”

I take a fry, and inspect it for a prolonged moment, before nibbling off the end. Needs ketchup.

“Do Eren and that lot still… you know… talk about what happened?” It wouldn’t surprise me. Eren’s nose is still as wonky as the French fry I’m currently messing with. Knowing his ego, he’s probably never gonna be over _that_.

“No-one really brings it up anymore. ‘S in the past now.”

“I doubt that,” I mutter.

The only person who has even bothered to come within a foot of us, since Connie decided to fuck the social rules re: avoiding me, has been Armin. But it’s not like he didn’t before hand – he just doesn’t have it in him to physically dislike someone that bad.

So it surprises me to see Sasha sidling up to our table, the same look of reluctance on her face as I spotted her wearing on Friday, when I caught her spying on us from across the cafeteria.

“Connie, we gotta get to Theatre,” is all she says, trying her hardest to keep herself from looking too much in my direction. I don’t blame her. I instinctively hunch inward on myself, resting my head in my hand.  Connie begins to gather his stuff, being sure to grab another fistful of fries from my plate as he stands.

“Want one?” he says, gesturing to the plate. Sasha shakes her head. First time in living memory I’ve ever seen her refuse potato based snacks. This obviously concerns Connie too, because a frown appears on his face. “Your loss, Sash.”

He slings his rucksack over his shoulder, and turns back to me.

“You don’t have class on a Wednesday, do you?” I glance up at him – Sasha has already started walking away, although she looks over her shoulder, to see what’s holding Connie. I think she hesitates, debating whether or not to turn back. “You wanna go to the outlook tomorrow, or something?”

“Don’t you have lectures tomorrow?”

“I can skip ‘em,” he replies nonchalantly. “I can swing by around lunch, if you want?”

I find myself nodding. He smiles warmly.

“Great.”

 

* * *

 

On Wednesday, I’m woken up by the incessant buzzing of my phone on my night stand. I scrabble for it, but with my eyes still pretty much glued closed by sleep gunk, I knock it onto the floor. A low _ugh_ leaves my mouth, and I haul myself onto the floor particularly ungracefully, curling my hand around the case of my cell.

“Y’ello?” I mumble into the receiver, rubbing my eyes with my fingers dopily. “What time ‘s it?”

“Like midday,” comes Connie’s voice loudly – far too fucking loudly – down the line. “Get your ass out of bed already! I’m parked out back.” He hangs up abruptly, and I sit holding the phone to my ear for a couple dazed minutes, my mind still half asleep.

I literally crawl over to my closet, extracting a shirt and a pair of jeans, which I don’t really check to see if they’re socially acceptable. It takes some further confusion, when I eventually upright myself and look in the mirror, to realise that I’ve put on the shirt backwards.

I manage to look vaguely presentable after ten minutes of running a hand through my bed hair; I’m not too fussed, because if you’ve ever seen the state of Connie’s pickup, you’ll know that no-one’s gonna judge you on what _you’re_ wearing. It looks like it’s been dropped out of a plane, and then run over by a tank. And then had someone attempt to repair it with paint that doesn’t quite match the original dirty-green colour.

I grab my half-finished pack of Marlboro’s from my desk drawer, and shove them in my back pocket, along with my lighter. I should really have picked some more up at the store last night, but all I could think about was burying myself in my pillow. I guess I should be cutting back on the smokes anyway.

My mom’s in the kitchen, talking amicably on the phone as I slink to the back door – I force her a smile which hopefully says: _going out, I’ll come back sometime, don’t try to ring me_. I don’t think she really notices.

Wednesday, of course, is Marco day. Sure enough, there he is on the pool side, in his usual blue polo shirt and khaki-shorts combo, net in hand. He’s got a pair of knock-off Ray-Ban’s resting on the top of his head, this time.

“Hey,” he smiles, as I pass him, “How’s the head?”

“’S fine, actually,” I reply, as my phone vibrates loudly in my hand. I glance down at the screen, and see the first few lines of a text from Connie rolling across the top:

**From: 614-XXX-XXXX  
stop prissying ur ugly face up and get ur butt out here already !!!**

“Are you going out somewhere?” Marco asks, as I shove my cell into my jeans’ pocket, without replying. His tone seems mildly wary – but then I realise I’m still scowling. I try to soften my expression up.

“Yeah, going up to the outlook,” I reply. Marco nods his head in acknowledgement, his smile replaced by a firm line across his mouth. “You been?”

He opens his mouth to reply, but we’re both rudely interrupted by Connie flinging himself wildly against the gate.

“Jeeeeaaaaaaaaan, hurry up!” he shouts. I wince. Marco looks alarmed, to say the least. “I’ve been waiting for ages!”

“I’m coming, you idiot!” I shoot right back, to which Connie makes a face. I reach into my back pocket and wriggle out a cigarette, which I slip between my teeth. It bobs up and down as I talk. “Sorry Marco, man. I gotta go.”

Marco smiles pleasantly – that typical freckled Jesus sorta smile, and that makes me feel a little guilty.

“Jeeeeaaaaaaaan,” comes Connie’s whine again. _Alright, alright, I’m fucking coming._

 

* * *

 

If the roof of my house has good views, the outlook has _spectacular_ views.

When I say outlook, it’s not really an actual outlook. Maybe it used to be, because there’s an old dirt track that wiggles along the hill top, and sort of just… stops at the edge, but there’s more than enough space to park a couple cars.

At this time of day, we’re the only ones there.

I’m already slipping out of the passenger seat as Connie pulls up the hand break, and spins the dial on his shitty stereo up to full blast, enjoying the feeling of a cool wind in my face amidst this fucking ridiculous weather. Trost seems to shimmer below us, the skyscrapers of midtown wobbling against the blue sky on the horizon. I breathe it in.

Connie hops up onto the hood of his pickup, and makes himself comfortable against the windshield. He begins to roll out a spliff on his lap.

“You want one?” he offers, but I shake my head as I clamber up to join him. I’m fine with just my regular cigarettes. Plus, I can vividly imagine how my mom wouldn’t hesitate to cut off my balls if I came home smelling even vaguely like grass.

“Nah, I’m alright,” I say, lighting the cigarette between my lips. I inhale the smoke into my lungs, and then breathe out slowly. The white, nicotinous clouds rise lazily up into the sky.

The DJ introduces a song I don’t recognise on the radio. It’s mellow, and suits the moment. I lean my head back against the glass, and close my eyes, the wistful lyrics seeping into my ears.

_The summer shone beat down on bony backs |So far from home where the ocean stood |Down dust and pine cone tracks…_

“Been a while since we’ve done this,” Connie murmurs. I open one eye to look at him lazily. “Was never the same without you, man. Sasha doesn’t smoke anymore.”

“I haven’t been up here since then,” I admit. “Kinda missed it.” My roof top’s got nothing on it, that’s for sure.

We fall into silence again, until the songs finishes. The haze is broken by a string of obnoxiously loud commercials.

“Sasha and I started going out, you know.”

My cigarette falls from my mouth, and burns my thigh through my jeans. I bat it off with a sharp _fuck_ under my breath. Connie doesn’t budge, but continues to watch me, not drawing on his cigarette.

“Are you pulling my leg?” I exclaim, eyes wide.

“Nope. It’s for real.”

I stare at him for a long time. The problem is not that it’s a surprise. No, it’s far from a fucking surprise. Connie’s been head over heels in love with Sasha since we were approximately nine years old and she beat him in a mud wrestle in my back yard. I remember him whispering in my ear, when her mom came to pick her up (entirely distressed by her dirt-caked state), that he was going to marry her one day. I had told him that was gross.

The surprise is the fact that he’d actually acted upon that. I remember coming back to junior high after one summer when Sasha hadn’t been around (her parents had taken her upstate to visit relatives for a couple weeks), and suddenly, it wasn’t muddy Sasha anymore. It was hey-when-did-you-suddenly-become-not-nine anymore, Sasha. Connie had been more of a spluttering mess than I was.

I spent most of junior high trying to persuade him to ask her out, but he would always vehemently deny that he liked her in that way, because we’d all grown up together, and she was more like his sister. _Yeah right_ , is what I said to that every time.

When Connie had first got his hair cut in the first term of high school – to the way he wears it now – Sasha had avoiding saying two words to him for the entire week. Every time we’d pass her in the hallways, she’d duck her head and go bright red – and then Connie would moan to me for the rest of the day about how Sasha was hiding something from us. _Not from us_ , I remember thinking. _From you, you absolutely gigantic loser._ Because the fact had been that Sasha had confided in me that she really liked Connie’s new hairstyle. _Really, really liked._

Eventually, I had decided that if they were both too dense to see the fact that they were head over heels for each other, it wasn’t worth my tireless effort to try to make them understand, and left them to it.

“Shit,” I murmur. “Since when?”

“Three weeks or so, I guess?” he says, puffing on his cigarette. “She asked me out on my birthday.”

I can’t help but laugh. Typical Sasha.

“Right on,” I smirk, running my tongue across my teeth. I honestly never thought I’d live to see the day. I light another cigarette to replace the one I’d dropped prematurely.

“… We haven’t told anyone yet,” Connie then adds, taking me even more by surprise. This time, he takes his cigarette away from his mouth, and holds it over the side of the car as embers and ash fall away. “I haven’t even told my parents yet. I told you _before my mom_ , man.”

“I feel honoured,” I say, and I really fucking do. We’ve been doing this friend thing a grand total of four days. “Doesn’t mean I won’t tease you about it though.”

Connie smirks, and punches me on the arm playfully, causing me to cough on the smoke at the back of my throat.

“What?” I splutter through a grin, “It’s my job. It’s been my life’s mission since we were nine years old, and here I am discovering you went and did that shit without me? Hell man, you owe me.”

We both laugh together – I feel both literally and figuratively on top of the world.

“What about you then?” he beams, “What’s new with you?”

“If you’re asking whether or not Mikasa’s finally fallen head over heels in love with me--” I pause dramatically, and Connie sniggers. “Well, that’d be a surprising no!”

“It’s okay, man! We’ve still got our bromance… even if I have a girlfriend now, nothing will come between us!” he vigorously slings and arm around my shoulders, and pulls me into a headlock. I question how much of what he’s smoking has gone to his head, and how much of what he’s saying is genuine Connie nonsense that I’m still not accustomed to. It doesn’t matter either way, as I burst out laughing again.

“I can’t breathe… can’t breathe!” I laugh, slapping him on the forearm that he has looped around my neck as he inflicts an aggressive noogie. “Let me go, let me go!”

He complies, but not before I knock him upside of the head with my palm.

“So no beautiful, sexy stranger walked into your life lately?” Connie winces, rubbing the spot where I’d hit him; I snort loudly, blowing out a long cloud of smoke from my mouth. Alas, no. No beautiful strangers.

Tall, dark, and very, _very_ buff strangers, on the other hand…

I genuinely choke on my cigarette.

“Jesus Christ!” Connie exclaims, pounding me on the back as I spit a wad of saliva onto the sandy ground beside me. “ _How_ long have you been smoking, Jean?!”

I wave him away feebly, rubbing the base of my neck with my hand to try and ease my suffering. _Ever talk about a rogue thought…_

Connie changes the subject, and delves into some stories about what’s been going on with the people I once called my friends. He tells me about how Eren can’t stop going on about the older guy who lives in the flat above him and Mikasa in their apartment block. He recounts woefully the tale of how he went to hang out with Bert and Reiner the other day, who ditched him in the living room with their completely unsociable neighbour, Annie (who apparently gives Ymir a run for her money in the scary factor), whilst they made out _loudly_ upstairs. He mutters about how his Biology professor, Hanji, gave him detention, when all he was doing was trying to reply to Sasha’s snap chat in class.

I absorb all the information like a god damn sponge, staring up at the empty sky as he continues to talk at me, jumping from story to story.

“Your turn to tell a story,” he demands. Looking at him, his eyes are so red now, that I think he might just pass out before I even reply. He has slightly more will power than I give him credit for.

“Nothing interesting to say,” I shrug. Well, nothing that won’t be a serious downer on the conversation, that’s for sure. Connie obviously notices my shoulders droop, despite how high he probably is (and definitely looks).

“Well, you’re sure thinking of something,” he prompts, leaning closer to me. His breath fucking reeks of weed. “So spill.”

I roll my eyes. It’s not just one thing; it’s a big-ass combination, and we’d be here all night if I were to tell him everything that’s on my chest. So I settle for the big one.

“I discovered my dad’s having an affair,” I say. Connie doesn’t seem to react, and I wonder if he’s literally passed out with his eyes open. “Fucking one of his secretaries. Or maybe all of them. Who knows.”

A disgruntled mumble comes from Connie’s lips, and he slumps lower against the windshield. He presses the stump of his spliff out against the shitty paint job on the hood.

“Well that’s a bit shit,” he mutters. _Tell me about it, man_ , I think. “Does Mrs K. know?”

I shake my head. “Don’t think so. I doubt she’s stupid enough that it hasn’t crossed her mind though.” It hurts me a little to say those words. There’s a part of me – and quite a significant part of me – that doesn’t want her to know. Ever. Because what would happen after that? Would they get a divorce? What would happen to the house? Who would I end up living with? Or even worse, would mom just overlook it and take him back out of saving face?

I screw my eyes as tightly shut as possible.

“The worst part is that I’m kinda… helping my dad to hide it from her,” I groan. Here comes the unavoidable wave of shame. “Intercepting phone calls and stuff. But like… I wanna _protect_ my mom, you know? Because my dad’s a dick.”

“That… sucks,” is the extent of the eloquence that Connie offers to the table. “I sure wouldn’t know what to do.”

We laze around at the outlook for a few hours, enjoying the thrum of the pickup’s radio, and the views of the city of Trost. I don’t enjoy the way my legs feel like they might have melted onto the car’s hood though, and that’s the eventual cause of calling it a day.

As we slide back into the cabin, Connie gets a phone call from Sasha. His ring tone is _Boss Ass Bitch_ , by Nicki Minaj. Oh God. Please let that be a prank.

“Hey, Sash,” he answers, leaning over the steering wheel. I put out my final cigarette, and toss it out the window carelessly. “No, I can still pick you up. Yeah… yeah, I’m just leaving the outlook. Yeah... with Jean. Uh-huh. Okay, no prob. Save some for me, alright? See you in fifteen.” As an afterthought, he adds a tentative, “… love you.” I smirk as he hangs up the phone.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

 

* * *

 

By the time Connie drops me back at my house, I’ve missed my chance to apologise to Marco for what an obnoxiously loud friend I have, because he’s long gone, the pool sparklingly clean (not that it ever… isn’t?).

“Hey, mom,” I greet, as I wonder into the kitchen, straight for the fridge (I’m absolutely fucking starving… probably some degree of second-hand munchies).

“Hi darling,” she smiles, looking up from where she’s got a glossy magazine spread across the counter-top. She’s got that serene sort of momsy expression on her face. “Was that Connie’s car that I saw out there?”

“Yeah,” I say casually, but the feeling she’s radiating tugs a little smile of my own onto my own mouth. “We went to the outlook.”

I pull up the bar stool next to her, and take a bite out of slice of cold pizza that I’d stolen from the fridge. She spins herself around to look at me, seemingly confused.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” I dismiss quickly. I take another bite of the pizza, and nod towards the magazine, in an attempt to make small talk. “What ya’ reading?”

Her eyebrows quirk as much as they can on her Botox-infused forehead. She knows I’m beating around the bush, and informs me as much with her expression.

“What is it?” she repeats, a little softer this time. I exhale gently, and give in, reaching across the space between us, and wrapping my arms around her shoulders. She stiffens for a moment, but then relaxes, bringing her hands up to my back, rubbing up and down my shoulder blades in a soothing motion. She doesn’t say anything, and I’m glad of that.

I pin this moment to memory.

_Sorry, mom. This is the best I can do for you right now._

 

* * *

 

The rest of the week passes by with nothing explicitly out of the ordinary. I don’t notice the glances and whispering as much as I did before – and I don’t really have time, because teasing Connie about his top-secret relationship is a lot higher on my evil agenda.

I do, on the other hand, notice the way my mom develops a habit of touching me gently on the shoulder whenever she passes me in the house. I don’t know if she realises she does it, but it fills me with a mixture of contentness at our closeness, but also horrific fucking misery. Because obviously she knows something’s the matter. But I’m not gonna tell her. I can’t.

When Saturday comes around, I find myself looking forward to having another person around, who’s not shooting me sorrowful glances every time we’re in the same room. Love you, mom. But I might just be going insane with this right now.

With exactly four weeks to go until my finals start, I reach the stage of realising: _gotta start revising properly, or face genuine failure_. And however much I don’t really give a shit about any of my subjects, I don’t really like failing. I guess I’m a try hard by nature.

My mom suggests that I try revising outside (because apparently I’m so pale that I look like the undead – thanks, mom), and even offers to run through some flash cards with me – but only as long as I let her ogle Marco without complaining. I find myself agreeing to this proposition with a roll of my eyes.

Marco is as cheery and sunny as ever when he arrives, and my mom bats her eyelashes so fast that I reckon she might take off.

“ _Mom_ ,” I stress, “Eyes. On. The. French.”

“Yes, yes, I am looking,” she says – but she is definitely not doing anything like looking at my French notes that she’s meant to be testing me on.  “ _Quelle partie veux-tu que je lise_?” She doesn’t even turn to face me, let alone glance at the cards in her hands. God, I hate the fact that she’s fluent in French.

“Read the bit about… _Tu peux lire la question sur Alexandre Dumas_?” I reply. My mom frowns.

“I thought you were studying 21st century literature on your course?” she says. “ _Et ton accent est épouvantable. Ta mamie aurait honte_.”

“There’s a reason I don’t talk to _mamie_ in French,” I mutter below my breath, as my mom sets about pouring three glasses of lemonade. I snatch one away from her as soon as I can, slurping loudly as I gulp down a few mouthfuls. She pulls a face, before calling over to Marco to come and have something to drink.

He jogs over gladly, and my mom hands him one of the tumblers.

“Do you speak any other languages, Marco?” she clucks, her eyes… not on his face. Marco takes a small slip, before lowering the glass from his lips.

“No, I don’t,” he replies, with a bashful smile. “Languages were never my forte at school, I have to admit.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” she coos, dragging her eyes away from Marco’s chest to look at me sulking over my notes. “You would agree with me that Jean’s accent is appalling, though.”

I purse my lips, and silently thank my mom for making me looks _so_ good.

“It sounded pretty good to me,” Marco then divulges. He takes another sip of the lemonade, but his eyes lock with mine over the rim of the glass for the briefest moment. “French is such a beautiful sounding language.”

“The language of _romance_ ,” my mom hums, running her teeth over her lower lip, suggestively. I pinch the bridge of my nose, and try my best to blatantly ignore her behaviour. “Jean just doesn’t appreciate that.”

“As long as I get an A in this exam, I don’t actually give a _fuck_ what it’s the language of,” I retort. My mom leans across the table to slap me on the wrist for my language.

Marco excuses himself to finish the pool, and I eventually manage to persuade my mom into asking some of the questions on my flash cards, although not without sporadic glances in the direction of our freckled friend.

 

* * *

 

It seems to me that Mondays have become days of change lately. This Monday is no exception.

I’m sitting at what Connie and I have now christened “our table” in the cafeteria, flicking through some of my Philosophy revision notes, whilst waiting for my coffee to cool, chomping through a plate of ketchup-drenched fries, and hoping for Connie to hurry his ass up and get out of Biology.

I’m surprised to see him stalk in, without the company of Sasha or any of the others, and head straight for where I’m sitting, a frown set concretely on his face.

“What’s up?” I ask, as he slides into one of the uncomfortable, plastic chairs, tossing his bag to the side.

“Just had a run in with Eren,” he sighs. I raise my eyebrow, holding the page in my Philosophy notes aloft between my fingers. I thought we had decided not to pay attention to what the others thought. “Finally bit the bullet.”

“Wants to know why you’re suddenly hanging out with me again, does he?”

“Something like that. I told him that I’d had enough ignoring you. Told him that we’re not five anymore. You know what Eren’s like.” I can imagine that Connie’s frankness probably didn’t sit well with Eren’s temper. No wonder Connie’s kinda bristling here.

“Are you sorry you did it, Jean?” he asks abruptly. I drop the page of my notes, and meet his gaze. “Did the… beating the shit out of him.”

“… No.” I speak slowly and carefully, not lowering my line of sight. Where is this going exactly?

“And you had a reason for it, right? A good one?”

“… Yeah.”

Connie breathes deeply, and I watch him physically deflate in his chair as he sinks into the plastic back. He crosses his arms across his stomach, but I don’t think he’s cross.

“Well, that’s good enough for me.”

The commotion around us in the cafeteria grows as more people arrive from their lectures; I continue to leaf through some of my theory of knowledge notes, whilst Connie seems to just glare at the door. Soon enough, Eren and company enter, and head towards a table a few rows behind us, where Ymir and Historia are already seated. I try to take no notice of it, but it’s difficult when Connie’s glower is practically red hot. I’m about to speak to him, when his phone vibrates on the table top. As he reaches for it, it vibrates again; I notice the sender: Eren.

Connie’s eyes scan the few lines, and his scowl deepens. He hands me the phone without a word.

**From: Eren  
how long are you goin to keep humouring him**

**From: Eren  
so are u ignoring us now or what**

I breathe out through my nose, and both Connie and I twist around in our seats to look at their table; sure enough, Eren is glaring right back at us.

What happens next catches us both off guard.

A chair screeches ear-splittingly across the linoleum floor like nails down a chalkboard. The entire cafeteria practically jumps in their seats, eyes whipping ‘round to look at Sasha as she rises to her feet and _slams_ her hands down on the table loudly. The sound bounces around the room.

She doesn’t seem to say a word; I don’t see her lips move as my eyes are fixed on her. She slings her satchel over her shoulder, turns heel, and marches straight over to our table. Eren’s mouth is a gape, and from what I can see of Armin and Historia’s faces, their eyes are wide. I can only imagine what the others must look like.

Sasha pulls out the chair next to Connie with as much ferocity as she did before, and sits down, resting her palms on the table top. Connie and I must look like complete idiots.

Connie manages to recover quicker than I do.

“… H-hey Sash,” he manages weakly, watching her cautiously as if he’s tiptoeing around something that might eat him.

Without raising her voice, Sasha simply states: “They were being idiots.”

It takes me even longer to understand what’s going on, as I begin to process what I think this means. Warily – very fucking warily – I remark quietly: “what’s new?”

Sasha brings her eyes up to meet mine, and we stare at each other for a while. I’m not sure what I’m looking at, but she must obviously find what _she’s_ looking for in my expression. Her gaze flits down to my half eaten piles of fries, and she licks her lips.

“… You gonna finish those?”

I imagine I look a bit like a fish – my mouth hanging open and all. She doesn’t wait for an answer – she grabs the edge of the plate and shimmies it away from the reach of my hands. I watch my fries depart in bewilderment.

I say the most eloquent thing that comes to mind.

“You are so lame.”

Sasha pops a fry in her mouth, her yellow-brown eyes still intensely locked on me. She flips her ponytail over her shoulder dramatically with her free hand.

“The lamest,” she agrees.

 

* * *

 

**From: Sasha  
jean**

**From: Sasha  
jean**

**From: Sasha  
jean**

**From: Sasha  
jeaaaaaan**

**From: Sasha  
jean**

**From: Sasha  
have u seen my snapchat**

**From: Sasha  
reply to my snapchat**

**From: Sasha  
jean**

This is what I wake up to on Wednesday morning that week. I lie on my back on my bed, holding my phone up above my head, scrolling through the barrage of unread text messages that I’ve slept through. Another one arrives, my cell vibrating in my palm.

**From: the coolest guy youll ever know  
sasha says have u seen her snapchat yet ?????**

Why did I ever let Connie put his own number back in my contact list?

I lower my arm, and rest the phone on my forehead, closing my eyes again. The air is really hot today – gross and humid – and I kick off my sheets grumbling to myself. My calves feel real sticky, and there’s an uncomfortably hot sweat on the back of my neck.

I drop my phone onto my pillow, with approximately zero intention of replying right now, and stagger across to my window. I heave the glass up – it sticks in this heat, doesn’t want to budge. I swear at it a couple times, in the hope that a couple _fuck you, you fucking window_ will persuade it to open. I put my shoulder into it, and it gives.

It’s not like the air outside is any better – maybe it’s a little less stuffy, but it’s still just as goddamn hot. I wonder how socially acceptable it would be to wonder around in my boxers all day. Probably not very. Mom would definitely have something to say about that.

I yawn loudly, and stretch my arms up above my head – basically every bone from my shoulder to my wrist clicks. I sleepily rub a hand through my bedhead, staring out into the back yard through squinted eyes.

Summer weather makes me feel perpetually tired. Even if it’s still only the middle of May. Or maybe this is just the results of one and half days of hauling my ass around after _double trouble_. Fuck, I had almost forgotten how much energy just being with Sasha and Connie together requires. Apparently I’d forgotten all that whilst focusing my attentions more on angsting after them these last twelve months.

Yesterday had been a little different than I’d initially expected. Initially, I’d thought it would just ten thousand times more awkward than when it was just me and Connie tailing around together. But apparently not. I had found it kinda funny to see the distance Eren was trying to keep from the three of us in the cafeteria, the hallways, and even in European History – which is only a small ass room as it is. I don’t think he could’ve sat further away from me and Connie without literally leaving the classroom as it was.

I feel strangely happy. Strangely – because it’s the sort of contentness than you can feel right down in the pit of your stomach and all through your chest, and – hell, I just never thought that’d ever be a thing again. I’m not a naturally happy person. But I feel pretty good right now.

The sun is high in the sky, shielded a little by wisps of white cloud. The trail of an aeroplane splits the blueness directly over the house. I decide to be boring, and reply to Sasha’s snapchat with a picture of the view from my bedroom window (slightly more tasteful than the picture she’s sent me with a record number of double-chins going on, and Connie giving her rabbit ears from behind).

She replies back within thirty seconds, her snap a photo of her sticking out her bottom lip and looking theatrically sad, overlaid with the words: _you suck_. In the background, I recognise the outside of the arts’ department on campus.

This time, I reply with a picture of my smug grin, giving a thumbs up to the camera.  
  
_well im not the one stuck at campus all day so f u_ , I caption it.

Our snap chat battle continues for most of the morning, as I proceed to send Sasha photos of all the luxuries of my house, whilst she send me a torrent of increasingly sad faces. A dozen or so into our war, and she’s obviously started bullying Connie to join her side, because he starts appearing in her replies.

I shortly realise that I’m alone in the house – eventually finding a post-it that my mom’s pinned to the cupboard, when I wander into the kitchen to take a snap of the contents of our fridge for the potato-lover.

 _I’ll be out for dinner, so heat up some leftovers or get a takeaway_ , it reads, little, pretentious hearts dotting all of her letter “i”s. _The money for Marco is in the normal place, so don’t forget!_ She’s signed it with “mom” – because I _totally_ had no clue who this note was from, sure – and a whole line of kisses.

I rip the post-it off the white-washed lacquer of the cabinet, and screw it up in my fist, before throwing it in the trash. I score a hole-in-one.

I set up my laptop and textbooks on the patio table, and after struggling to get the parasol up – for way longer than is worth the effort – I settle into a nice spot of shade.

I hear the engine of something heavy – a van probably – pull up to the curb on the other side of the hedge, and listen to a familiar hum waft through the still air as someone unlocks the truck. Moments later, and freckled Jesus is at the gate. He looks genuinely pleased to see me, judging by the way his eyebrows shoot up and his dark brown eyes join his smile.

He’s a handsome sort of guy, if I can admit that in a not-gay way. Perfect for one of those mega-glam doctors you see on TV soaps; I can see him striding purposefully around a hospital ward, clad in a long white coat, stethoscope looped around his neck.

“Hi Jean,” he beams; I’m reminded of a softer, kinder version of Connie’s grin. Genuine. But I’ve used that word already.

“You alright,” I offer back, with a rare non-smirk sort of smile. Might as well make the most of this good mood and try to prove that I don’t _just_ scowl 24/7.

He displays a good-natured sort of puzzlement, tilting his head to the side ever so slightly as he appraises me.

“You look happier,” he then says honestly. I bring my arms around to the back of my head, and lean back into the wooden recliner. Happier? Than what, last time he saw me? Than last week? Than in general?

“Yeah,” I admit, staring up at the sky; the thin clouds are starting to dissipate, leaving a great, vast blueness overhead. “Guess I am.” Usually I’m not one for corniness, but it feels okay in the moment.

“Good,” comes Marco’s soft tenor. And then tentatively: “… It suits you.”

I feel a surge of warmness spill through me at those words, starting from my chest and spreading out all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes. I quirk an amused eyebrow at him.

“Are you hitting on me, Freckles?” I tease sarcastically; he scoffs lightly and looks away, busying himself with sorting his equipment. “You gotta be careful, man. Saying stuff like that is what makes housewives fall head over heels for you.”

“Don’t say that,” he chuckles, assembling the pool net. “It’s not even true. Well… mainly not true. I think your mom is the exception.”

I grin wolfishly at him.

“… Plus, I’m not going to deny that it kind of freaks me out.”

“’S what you get for being too nice,” I shoot back. “Even just smiling at my mom cements the idea more and more in her head that she wants to run away with you or something!”

“I don’t smile that much!” he exclaims, faking distress. “Do I?”

“Oh yeah. You bet.”

“I guess I’m rubbing off on you, then.” Wow, Marco. Again with the lameness. I chuckle under my breath to myself. “I thought maybe your face was stuck in a frown, you know.” I feign horror, and look back at him a gape; a surprising flash of wickedness crosses his eyes.

“Rude much,” I proclaim. “Are you actually super sly and you’re just pulling my mom and me along for a ride with your charming pool-boy persona thing? Who knew!”

The banter only affirms the general feeling of, I guess, glee in my chest right now.

“Yep, you got me,” Marco sighs, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. “I am only pretending to be your friend so that I can elope with your mom. My plan has been foiled.”

“Damn,” I say, feeling my grin literally stretching so far across my face that it’s painful. (I guess I haven’t used those muscles much lately, I briefly muse.) And then I pick up on the other thing he said. “I didn’t even realise we _were_ friends.”

I don’t mean it in a malicious or like… accusatory way – I just what comes into my head without really thinking. But Marco takes it light-heartedly nonetheless.

“I’ve borrowed your clothes, and treated your concussion,” he smiles – fucking angelically, I’m gonna admit here. “I think that counts?”

It seems that people wanting to be friends are leaping out from all sorts of cracks lately. I’m not gonna lie to myself – Marco’s the sort of person who makes you feel instantly at ease when you talk to him. Makes you feel calm, I guess. And I suppose that’s as close as I can get to the therapy I’m probably gonna need from hanging around Connie and Sasha’s general _mayhem_.

“Yeah,” I say, first to myself, and then louder, so he can hear me. “Yeah, it does.” I pause briefly. “But as long as you _promise_ you won’t run off with my mom. That wouldn’t be cool.”

His laugh is musical.

He returns his attention to servicing the pool after that; running some chlorine tests, wandering in and out of the pool shed as he checks some of the chemical instruments that are apparently in there (well, it’s called a _pool_ shed for a reason, I remark to myself. _Shouldn’t surprise you that it’s not just a storage shed for crap no-one throws out_.)

I’m scrolling through some online problem sets for Chemistry when my phone buzzes on the table once more. It’s Sasha’s reply to the fridge-photo. (She’s obviously been in a class and hasn’t had chance to sneakily reply until now.)

She and Connie have donned sunglasses for this one, and both have their noses turned up in the air. The caption reads: _oh yeah??? well consider urself friend-dumped jean kirschtein !!!_

I snicker to myself. Her comment doesn’t even resonate badly with me, like I might have expected (given we were only abruptly reunited two days ago and all). I twist around in my chair, to take a selfie, making sure I catch Marco in the background, and raise my middle finger to the camera.

The caption I send the photo with is: _don’t need u losers anymore so suuuuuck it_

Moments later, I receive a text response.

**From: Sasha  
uhm who is that **

And then another. And another.

**From: Sasha  
are u cheating on us jean**

**From: Sasha  
what about our vows jean**

**From: Sasha  
my constant friend, my faithful partner in sickness and in health**

**From: Sasha  
i can’t believe u jean**

**From: Sasha  
i thought what we had was real**

I really do wonder how she even has credit to text anyone if this is how she responds to everything she’s sent. Let’s hope she runs out very soon. The last text in the chain is from Connie.  
  
**From: the coolest guy youll ever meet  
help me** **!!!!!**

I throw my head back and laugh. And boy, it feels good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's quite a long chapter this time... over 11k words! I hope you enjoy it~
> 
> I changed the chapter one and two titles to the names of the songs that feature in those parts; that's going to be the theme for those now. Unfortunately, there are multiple songs mentioned in this chapter (should I have gone for Boss Ass Bitch as the title for this one?). 
> 
> The title is reference to the song that Connie and Jean listen to at the outlook: Old Pine, by Ben Howard. I love his music. It's very nostalgic and reminds me of the summer - and of course, this story is taking place in the summer, and deals with Jean looking back over a lot of things. This music will also serve as inspiration for later chapters, so I really recommend giving it a listen.
> 
> Other than that... things are progressing, if slowly. I'm glad Jean's happy, if it's only gonna be for a little while. But Connie and Sasha are my faves, always.
> 
> And Shingeki No Snapchat is my fave of fave AUs.
> 
> Please drop me some more comments with what you're liking (and also disliking!) about the story so far, and what you hope will happen. I read and respond to them all!


	5. Who Are You?

It’s probably to be expected that I become pretty sick of my ringtone come the third day of being victim to Sasha’s constant barrage of attention seeking. I can’t remember the last time I kept my phone on silent for this long, but I do know one thing: it’s not coming _off_ silent for a long fucking time.

It’s Saturday morning, twenty-three days before finals week starts. (Okay, so, I only know that because I’m keeping a countdown to the first day of summer. Promise.)

I’m woken up by the sun slipping through a crack on my blinds – I obviously didn’t close them properly last night when I finally gave up on the revision post-midnight. I squint, and bringing a limp wrist up to cover my eyes, I groan, and roll onto my back. On my bedside table, my cell vibrates against the wood, the sound drilling into my ears. I clamber for it blindly, knocking over both my clock, and the empty coffee mug from yesterday in the process.

When my fingers clasp around the rubbery case of my phone, it takes two attempts to unlock the home screen, because I miss type the code in my general state of it’s-before-midday-therefore-I’m-still-basically-asleep.

**Unread Messages: 9**

Oh, fucking hell. Scrolling through my inbox, I notice that _seven_ are from Sasha, one is from Connie, and the last is some junk mail from my network provider. I delete that one without opening it. I read the most recent one from Sasha; it takes a while for my brain to process the text.

**From: Sasha  
so we are still good for today right? **

I scowl. I try to recall if we’d made plans. I come up blank.

I begin to type out a response along the lines of: _what the fuck are you talking about?_ , when I hear the sound of commotion from downstairs, the front door slamming shut, and excited voices. I just about manage to haul myself up into a sitting position on my bed when mom’s voice echoes up the stairs and beneath my door.

“Jeeeeeaaaaan! Are you up yet? Connie and Sasha are here!”

I have approximately ten seconds of dopey bewilderment before footsteps rattle up the stairs, my door is flung open with all the force of a hurricane, and I’m being tackled into my mattress by a flying bald guy.

“Whaaaa—!”

“Don’t tell me you forgot about our revision session, Jean!” Sasha proclaims, standing at the end of my bed, wide stance, hands on hips. I heave Connie’s arm out of my face as he continues to bounce up and down with far too much freaking energy than necessary at this point in the day. “Didn’t Connie tell you we were coming ‘round?”  
  
I glare at the bouncing, bald one. Thanks, Connie. Thanks _so_ much.

“No,” I hiss, “He didn’t.”

“I totally did!” he exclaims wildly, flopping back onto my legs. “I told you about it in Philosophy yesterday!” I’m more than one-hundred percent certain that this was a conversation we had in his mind, and not in real life. But what does it matter. _They’re here now_. Goodbye peaceful day.

Goodbye peaceful day _chatting to Marco_.

I wriggle my hands under my sheets and try to lever Connie off of me, so that I can swing myself out of bed. I’m still in my boxers. Sasha wolf-whistles loudly.

“Oh, shut up and go downstairs,” I exhale, grabbing a pair of beige chinos and my white _Jack Daniel’s_ shirt which are strewn across my floor from the course of the last week. I wriggle into the pants, patting down my thighs to smooth out the creases, as Connie rolls off my bed, informing Sasha that they should _totally_ _go check out what’s in the refrigerator_.

After mentally praying for the strength not to throttle the _dastardly duo_ , I trudge downstairs to find them both seated in the kitchen with my mom. I’m very much still grumpy-morning-Jean, and all I do it raise my eyebrows to my mom, as if to say: _so it was you who let these two lunatics into our house_.

“Good morning, darling,” my mom carols, “You didn’t tell me that Connie and Sasha were coming over today?”

 _Funny that_ , I muse.

“Sorry, mom. ‘S not a problem, is it?” Please let it be a problem.

“We’ll keep out of your way, Mrs K,” Connie butts in, stupid-ass grin spread across his face. “You won’t even notice we’re here!”

_The whole fucking neighbourhood is gonna know you’re here._

I stride straight for the coffee machine as my mom takes the pot from its stand, and pours herself a mug. I grab a second from the rack, and hand it to her forcefully. Sweet, delicious caffeine, get in my body already.

“You should revise outside,” my mom offers, handing me my coffee, before blowing the steam from the top of hers. “Jean’s dad has covered the dining room table in his paperwork, so if you want to spread out your books, use the patio table.”

I watch Sasha’s head whip around to look out the kitchen window; she seems to bristle with excitement.

“Can we use the pool too?” she gleams, clasping her hands together in front of her chest. I roll my eyes. Actual revising is probably the last on these guys’ short list of priorities. First: clean out all the food in the house. Second: make the most of the pool. Third: be sure to jump on poor, old Jean when he’s just barely woken up. Fourth: just _maybe_ think about studying for these blessed finals we’ve got in like, three weeks’ time.

“Sure you can, sweetheart,” my mom smiles. She always had a soft spot for Sasha. My eyes narrow as I take a passive-aggressive sip of coffee. “Do you need to borrow a swimsuit?”

“Don’t worry, we brought our own!” Sasha grins. She pings the strap of her blue-and-white, striped bikini that’s just visible beneath the neckline of her shirt. Connie slaps his thighs in agreement, and I notice that his shorts are, indeed, actually swim trunks.

“Did you guys actually bring any work over, or are you just here to play hooky and mooch?” I say pointedly. They both offer me shit-eating grins.

 

* * *

 

I dump my pile of textbooks onto the patio table with a loud, _tired_ thump. Connie’s unpacking his rucksack of his Biology and European History stuff, whilst Sasha is … stripping. And then running across the lawn. And then cannonballing into the pool.

I wince as the water sloshes up and over the sides, and Sasha surfaces, her bangs plastered to her face. She sweeps them back as she treads water.

“Come on, the water is a~ma~zing!” she calls across the yard. I can see the cogs in Connie’s mind whirring as to whether he wants to run over there and join her, or actually try and not feel guilty for completely abandoning his work all together.

I sigh through my nose, and gesture to the pool.

“Go on then,” I allowed, before adding, a little snarkily, “I’ll just be sitting here. You know. Trying to pass these exams.”

“I’ll swim for like, _five_ minutes,” he promises, “And then the consequences of World War Two. For sure.”

He darts off across the grass, throwing his t shirt over his head and howling madly, before diving (re: belly flopping) into the water. The sound his stomach makes on the surface is a painful _slap_. Sasha just roars with laughter.

I pull up one of the chairs at the table, and settle into it, choosing to roll up my chinos to my knees for once – because it really _is_ fucking hot, but I for sure _won’t_ be seen jumping into that pool with them. The parasol through the centre of the table offers some degree of shade, so I don’t think I’m quite at risk of boiling alive on the concrete, but I still find myself fanning my face with an old exam paper as I open up the first textbook on the pile.

I work my way through some sample kinetics questions from my Chemistry notes, all the while listening to Connie and Sasha splashing around like drowning animals, and chewing absent-mindedly on the end of my pen.

 _Five minutes_ was definitely always going to be a gross understatement. Connie and Sasha aren’t even tempted out of the water until my mom presents a jug of her lemonade to the table. Suddenly, they’re crowding around me again, all dripping wet and stinking of chlorine. I scoot my chair a little further away as I reach for a glass.

Sasha pulls her large sunglasses down over her face as she slips into the chair opposite me, with Connie next to her.

“So what are we leaning today, mister grumpy-pants?” she asks innocently. I quirk an eyebrow, and stare at her incredulously.

“I don’t know what _you’re_ learning, since we don’t actually do any of the same classes, Sash,” I reply curtly. “Connie and I are gonna do some European History.” I glance at Connie, and he nods, deciding it obviously safer to side with me in this case (the alternative being I throttle him). We’re going to revise those post-war treaties, even if I have to _tie_ him to that chair. I reckon he recognises that fact in my expression.

“Oh, well then I could test you!” Sasha chirps gleefully. “I kinda left all my books at home.”

So she really did only come ‘round to swim.

I exhale slowly, and admit defeat, pushing my notes across the table to her. She picks them up, leaving damp fingerprints all over the pages, as she scans the text. She better not smudge the ink.

By some hefty miracle, we actually manage a good little cramming session, despite the interruption that my mom poses with a tray of triangle-cut sandwiches, which distracts Sasha for the few minutes it takes for her to shove them all into her mouth at once.

“Oh my god, these are the best,” she mumbles over a full mouthful, trying to wash it all down with an inelegant gulp of lemonade. “I forgot how much I like coming over to your house.”

“I’m glad you appreciate my company _so_ much,” I remark back, tapping my pencil on the table top and I run my eyes over the words I’ve just written. At the edge of my field of view, I notice movement in the far corner of the yard; the back gate swings open, and is caught by the hedge as someone walks in.

My first thought is, of course: _oh, it’s Marco_! My second thought is: _oh God, he’s going to have to meet the little devils_.

Sasha notices how my line of sight disappears over her shoulder, and so twists around in her chair as Marco dumps his equipment pool-side. She lowers her sunglasses from the bridge of her nose.

“ _Who_ is that?” she whistles, teasingly.

“Uhm, _not_ the guy who happens to be your boyfriend,” I shoot back; Sasha turns back around, and laughs at the expression which has appeared on Connie’s face. She pets him affectionately on the arm, and he rolls his eyes.

“But check out his _arms_ ,” she adds cheekily. _Looks like you’ve got competition, mom._ “What? Just because I’m not ordering doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what’s on the menu now and again!”

I cup my forehead in my palm and glare down at the wooden grain of the table, reflecting on the cringe-value of what she just said, as well as awkwardly avoiding having to watch the sickening little kisses that Sasha’s currently peppering Connie’s face with in apology.

I tilt my head slightly, so that I can see Marco. _Please, you don’t want to come over here. Just don’t. For your own good. For_ my _own good._

Yeah, so we don’t quite have the whole telepathy thing down yet. Once he’s set down his equipment, and kicked off his shoes, he strides over to the table, a brilliant smile spread across his freckled face.

“Good afternoon!” he greets with usual cheer, as I slink down further into my seat. I really wish I had sunglass to hide my face right about now. He instantly picks up on my discomfort. “Jean?”

“… Hey,” I mumble; Marco tilts his head in concern. I sure hope he’s ready.

“Oh!” Sasha then exclaims, and I feel a shudder of fear ripple down my spine. Please, please, _please_ don’t say something weird, Sash. I actually don’t want to scare this guy away forever, okay? “You’re the guy who was in Jean’s snap chat the other day!”

Oh God. Of all the things you could’ve said, Sasha. Way to make me seem like a creep taking photos of the guy when he wasn’t looking. Which is, I guess, _technically_ what happened, but that’s not the point! It wasn’t creepy!

“Jean’s snap chat?” Marco repeats to himself questioningly, glancing down at me again. I deliberately _don’t_ meet his eyes. “What’s this?”

Please don’t be smiling, _please don’t be smiling._ I take a peek. He’s smiling. Idiot.

“Oh yeah,” Sasha continues, moving her sunglass to rest on the top of her head. She leans back in the chair, and draws one leg up to her chest, resting her palms on her knee. Connie is watching the scene in a mix of earnestness and I-better-make-sure-there’s-no-flirting-going-down-here. “Jean was being laaaame.”

“I was not being lame!” I retort, “You were being lame…”

I straighten up a bit in my seat (because I probably would’ve fallen off the chair if I’d sunk any lower, let’s be real here), and become aware of Marco’s hand curled over the top of my recliner. I don’t lean back.

“Marco,” I offer begrudgingly, “This is Sasha. And that’s Connie. My _lame_ -ass friends.”

Sasha opens her mouth to rebuke my choice of words, but Marco politely interrupts.

“Nice to meet you guys,” he smiles pleasantly. “Jean talks about you a lot.”

_Liar! I do not!_

Sasha begins squawking to Connie about… well, I don’t exactly listen, because I finally look Marco in the eyes; if I could describe someone as literally sparkling, that’d be him. I elbow him gruffly in the waist – he is literally _solid_ beneath his blue polo shirt.

“Look what you’ve done,” I mutter under my breath, but I reckon he hears me – he laughs. He leans a little closer to my chair. There’s the smell of his laundry detergent again. Camomile. I add sarcastically, “God, they might even think I _like_ them, instead of just _tolerate_ them.”

“I heard that,” Sasha says, folding her arms over her chest, putting on a ridiculous looking pout. I roll my eyes dramatically.

Thankfully, Marco dismisses himself to start cleaning the pool; I watch him retreat over to the water’s edge, my eyes scanning his broad shoulders, before burying my head in my revision notes. I release a pent-up sigh between my lips.

I scan the words on the page – a few lines at least – before I realise that Connie and Sasha are staring at me, and haven’t moved.

“What was that?” Sasha asks, plainly. She leans forward in interest, resting her cheek in her palm. Her smirk is pure evil.

“What was what?” I reply suspiciously.

“ _That_.”

“What’s _that_?”

My face resorts to its usual scowl, completely at a loss of what she’s trying to say. Sasha exchanges a look with Connie – they’re obviously on a wavelength which I’m not on, because Connie nods affirmingly.

We sit in silence for a few moments, and just when I think they’ve dropped the subject, and am about to return to the books, Sasha pipes up again. And I really wish she hadn’t.

“Well, _he’s_ kinda cute,” she says.

I can’t help the splutter that literally falls out of my mouth. I’m sorry? _What_ was that exactly?

My eyes pass to Connie in that instant, but he doesn’t even seem fazed. He just shrugs in agreement with his girlfriend. What the fuck am I missing here?

“Why haven’t you introduced us to him before, Jean?” she smiles. Oh God – it’s that Sasha smile, the smile that just screams: _I’m about to cause trouble for you, Jean_. “Keeping him all to yourself, were you?”

I am literally at a loss for words, opening and closing my mouth like a fish.

“He’s… he’s the _pool boy_ ,” is the extent of what I eventually come up with. _And also my friend, and actually I’ve known him for only like… four weeks, and also yes, I guess he’s got a great smile and stuff, but… that’s not the point!_

What are these two losers trying to get at? I let out a low, feeble groan. 

“Please can you not,” I say weakly. “He’s my friend. I’d like it if, _you know_ , you guys aren’t so annoying that he never comes back again, alright?”

Connie reaches across the table and pats me on the forearm, reassuringly. He seems sincere. Sort of.

“It’s alright, man. We’re not jealous. Well, I’m not. Sasha might be.” He looks over at Sasha, and grins cheesily. “I understand if you want to ditch us for your man-toy.”

_What. The. Fuck._

It’s about now that I wish for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. That would be great right about now.

Connie and Sasha both burst out laughing at my evident queasiness.

“We’re only messing with you, man!” Connie bellows, rocking back in the chair. “Your face is a picture!”

I grumble a few very, _very_ strong lines of swear words under my breath, trying to block out all sounds of their chuckling, and focus solely on my notes. _Paris peace treaties_ , right. Focus.

Eventually, Connie and Sasha return to the books themselves, with Sasha rattling through some Biology flashcards and quick-fire questions. With them distracted, I seize a glance in Marco’s direction – he’s at the deep end, sifting through the crystal-clear water with his net, seemingly whistling to himself. He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m looking.

So maybe I steal a few more glances in his direction after that – kinda thankful that he’s not paying the two troublemakers any more heed than they deserve. I applaud myself on my subtlety of not being noticed.

But I also find myself being mildly annoyed that I shouldn’t have to _not be noticed_. Because Saturdays are Marco days, and I guess I can admit that I actually like having the chance to talk to the guy, without the constant nuisance that comes in the form of two idiots. Of course they had to pick today to drop in unannounced.

Connie slams his revision cards down on the table with a jolt that makes me jump in my seat.

“I’ve had enough!” he proclaims, “Race you to the pool, Sash!”

I raise one hand to stop them – because, _hey, hang on you two numbskulls, Marco’s actually trying to clean—_

They’re already tearing across the grass before I even have chance to say one word. Well, shit.

There’s a loud holler of “cannonball!”, accompanied by two, massive _splooshes_. I hear Marco’s quiet cry of surprise, and then a whole lot of laughter and splashing about. I squeeze my eyes shut briefly, pinching the bridge of my nose, before getting to my feet.

With my hands deep in my pockets, I slink across to as close-as-I-dare-to-be to the pool side. I scuff my bare feet in the grass, as Sasha calls up to me.

“Come on, grumpy pants! Jump in!”

“I’m still wearing my clothes, moron,” I reply, and then add, “Can’t you guys see that Marco’s trying to, you know, _work_ here. Kinda like we should be doing!”

“It’s alright, Jean,” Marco smiles, leaning on his net, on the other side of the water to me. His eyes flit between the mayhem in the water, and me, awkwardly standing on the bank. Ultimately, his gaze fixes on me. “I was basically done.”

“See!” Sasha cries, attempting to splash me with pool water. I take a step back just in time, and it only gets my feet. “Spoil sport!”

I fold my arms and watch on – kinda disdainfully – as Connie attempts to perform a handstand, just without much success, and Sasha tries to emulate it. All the legs wildly flailing in the air makes Marco chuckle. Our eyes meet. I mentally ask him why on earth he’s humouring them. The telepathy thing is still not working.

A couple, spaced-out moments later, and I realise that Marco is no longer standing opposite me anymore – he’s deconstructing his net, and hauling his equipment up into his arms. It’s already that time, huh?

“Lemme help you with that,” I offer, gesturing to the two buckets of some chemical or another he’s trying to hold in one hand. He smiles gratefully; it lights up in his dark eyes.

I don’t think Connie and Sasha even notice as we slip (re: stagger – because this pool stuff is actually fucking heavy) out of the back gate, and onto the street that runs behind my house. Marco’s van is a typical Vauxhall Combo that’s probably seen better days; it’s white, although the tires are covered in a film of dust. Along the side of it, it reads: _Trost Pool Servicing & Repair_ in a dynamic, blue, water-motif.

Balancing his equipment on his knee, he clicks the _unlock_ button on his key ring, and heaves the sliding door open.

“Just throw all this in there?” I ask, as he steps aside to allow me to get rid of my heavy armful first. Marco nods, and I do as I’m told, trying not to let the two buckets in my grasp tip over. As we switch places, to allow Marco to organise the inside of his van, I find myself rubbing the back of my neck awkwardly.

“I’m sorry, by the way,” I offer apologetically. Marco pauses, and looks back over his shoulder at me, the skin between his eyebrows creased.

“What for?” he asks innocently, using the side of the van to pull himself upright. He slides the door shut, trying the handle to make sure the latch has caught. And then he faces me, looking pretty perplexed.

“Uh, for them?” I shrug, gesturing with my thumb back into the yard, where splashing and laughing can still be heard. “They’re… kinda intense. I’m sorry if they, you know, were a pain. I didn’t even know they were gonna be here today…”

“They’re your friends, aren’t they?” he laughs brightly, to my surprise. His hands rest on his hips, almost as if he’s about to scold me or something. “You shouldn’t need to apologise for them, Jean.”

“Yeah, but—” I start, but then quickly clamp my mouth shut under Marco’s gaze. _Yeah but, I bet you haven’t met people like Connie or Sasha before_ , is what I was going to say.

“No ‘buts’,” Marco corrects, “They look like they’re a lot of fun.” He opens the driver’s door, and climbs in behind the steering wheel. I move to lean my forearm against the roof of the cabin, looking down on him as he straps himself in.

“ _Fun_ ,” I repeat with an extended sigh, “Or an intense rollercoaster of chaos. Either works.”

Marco chuckles lightly, and looks up at me. His smile tugs out a reluctant one of my own onto my lips. It feels foreign after having been in a bit of a grump since my rude awakening this morning. But we really are smiling at each other like dorks here.

“Go have fun, Jean,” he breathes. I smirk, and take a few steps back, as he closes the van’s door. As the exhaust revs, he winds down the window, and pokes his head out, to offer one last word. “I’ll see you Wednesday, alright?”

“Yeah. Wednesday.”

 

* * *

 

Connie and Sasha manage to stick around until after dinner, no thanks to my mom taking pity on them, and Sasha being as appreciative of any form of cooking as ever. When they eventually leave, gone eight, all I can do is sink down into the cushions of the couch with a deflated huff.

“What’s wrong, darling?” my mom asks, as she floats into the living room, clutching a glass of wine in her manicured fingers, and perches next to me. “Are you feeling okay?” She reaches out a hand to press to my forehead, but I feebly bat it away.

“Just tired,” I say. Understatement. Fucking _exhausted_. “Could probably sleep for at least five years right about now.”

She smiles kindly (or, she smiles as much as her plastic surgery allows, and I _reckon_ that it’s kindness), and sips her wine.

“It’s lovely to see Sasha and Connie again,” she hums. I let my eyes fall closed, and don’t attempt to try to open them. “I’ve always liked them.”

“Maybe that’s because you’ve always wanted to set me up with Sasha,” I mumble sarcastically. Mom scoffs, and playfully hits me on the bicep.

“I never,” she says, feigning shock in her voice. I smirk, but keep my eyes closed. “… But I wouldn’t have minded. You know. You dating Sasha.”

“Too bad, mom. She’s seeing Connie now.” As an afterthought, and more as a memo to self, I add a gentle: “ _Finally_.”

“Oh, well then,” she says, and I crack open one eye to note her expression. “That is too bad.” She takes another mouthful of wine, and looks like she’s pondering something. “I guess I’ll have to find someone else to set you up with then, Jean.” I snort loudly at her jibe, and lean my head back into the cushions.

“Gee, thanks, mom.”

 

* * *

 

The talk about my non-existent love life seems to be prime conversation for the rest of that weekend.

At dinner on Sunday (aka the one dinner a week that my dad attempts to attend), my mom raises the topic of Connie and Sasha’s relationship.

“Huh? I thought Jean was dating the Braus’ daughter?” my dad inquires, a forkful of potato and salad raised halfway to his gob.

“Nooo,” my mom croons, “I _wanted_ him to date her, but it turns out she only ever had eyes for Connie, bless him. Or at least, so Jean tells me.”

I listen to all this whilst poking my food around my plate in frustration. They talk about it like I’m not even in the room. And let’s not even get started on how much my dad _actually_ knows about me when it’s not school or work related.

“Shame that,” my dad says – he gestures crudely at me with his cutlery. “Good family, the Braus’. They’ve got a lot of money. And good social standing. I was thinking about going into business with Mr. Braus – whatever his name is – the stocks in industrialised agriculture are looking promising this quarter.”

I’m sure I’ve heard this all before. Multiple times.

I think my mom senses my displeasure at this lecture. She attempts to steer the conversation elsewhere, but doesn’t really take it very far.

“Didn’t you mention you had some new interns at the office, dear?” she asks my dad. “Any young ladies that you might be able to introduce Jean to?”

I almost choke on a mouthful of my dinner, and have to hastily flush it down with a couple generous gulps of water.

“Hmm, sure, there are couple new girls,” my dad agrees. I stare at him intently, hoping to see a slip up in his façade. I wonder how many of those “new girls” he’s already had bent over his office desk.

“No thanks,” I say curtly, pushing my plate away from me in the same instant. “Mom, I’m not hungry anymore. Mind if I go study?”

I don’t really wait for an answer, and leave the table as quickly as I physically can, feeling my dad’s scorn on my back all the while. Fuck that.

 

* * *

 

To name just one thing that I really don’t like about Professor Dok’s lectures would probably be a difficult thing to do. To start with, it’s six hours a week of pretentious, philosophical bullshit that I really shoulda seen coming when I first picked it as my last elective back in the fall.

Second of all, they’ve still got those chairs from like, the nineteen-sixties; the ones made of grey plastic so fucking hard that you lose all feeling in your butt after the first ten minutes, and that’s only if the chair hasn’t just snapped shut on you the moment you sat down. I’ve seen that happen a couple times, okay.

Third thing is that Professor Dok doesn’t seem to actually care when the bell rings. If he’s still talking, you ain’t moving an inch from your seat, not until he’s finished. He has zero empathy for the fact that some of us have places to be, cafeteria tables to hog, scolding hot coffee to choke on.

On a Tuesday, I have Philosophy right before lunch, so this is a thing that tends to happen quite a lot. This Tuesday is no exception – I’m not out until five minutes _after_ the bell.

Connie’s out of there like a lightning bolt; he and Sasha have finally realised that yes, those finals are actually real close, and they’ve got to finish putting their final piece together for Theatre – so they’ve been running off to practice at every available opportunity.

I trudge down the main corridor of the humanities building craving a cigarette, if only for something to do with my hands or my mouth. I’m already so used to Connie and Sasha just being there, on either side of me, spewing nonsense twenty-four-seven. Keeps me on my toes.

I check my phone; for once, no new messages. When I look up, I frown, and then drop my gaze back down immediately.

Eren and co. up ahead.

They’re talking in a tight group, but I don’t dawdle to look at their faces. The floor is real interesting. Yep. What lovely scuffed tiles these are.

It’s when I’m about five or six paces past them, that Eren suddenly raises his voice – not shouting, but in a way that suggests that he wants someone to hear what he’s saying. Me.

“… but isn’t it so weird for someone to freak out like that? Like, who is even scared of something so stupid?”

I twist my neck to look over my shoulder ‘cause I just can’t help it. I meet Eren’s blue-green stare through the gap between Ymir and Historia, who are also looking back at me too. Armin’s got his mouth pursed, Ymir’s shooting me a typical scowl, and Mikasa... well, she’s the only one not looking this way. From her posture, I just guess she’s kind of irked.  Historia looks… troubled? What with the way her eyebrows are pulled up in the middle, and her mouth very round, and very small.

Is that supposed to be pity? Please. I don’t need that shit.

I’m perfectly happy with my four friends, thank you very much. ( _Three, Jean. Your mom doesn’t count_.)

Isn’t this better than it was? I don’t want to go back to the way it was before. I’d rather suffer through the looks and the remarks than go back to just how fucking lonely it was before Connie decided to buck the trend. Right? _Right._ There’s a weight in my chest that’s pulling me right down, twisting itself into every conceivable gap between my ribs. _Hurts_.

I don’t think Eren does this stuff to be malicious. He’s just got a one-track mind, and likes doing things for the sake of it. For a reaction, I guess.

I swallow the tight lump in my throat, and steel my glare on the floor once more. No reaction. _No reaction_.

… I think this counts as a reaction. Time to find a quiet place to have that cigarette.

 

* * *

 

“Can I see what you’re drawing?”

“No. Top secret.”

It’s Wednesday. I’m perched on the steps of the pool shed, sketchbook in hand, pencil in the other, trying to shield my scribbles from prying eyes and a freckled face.

Marco tries to peer over the barricade of my arms and sneak a peek, but I curl in on myself more, hastily hatching rough lines onto the paper.

“Not even a little preview?” he begs through a laugh. He rocks back on his heels, leaning on the pool net; I quirk an eyebrow, unamused.

“Not even a little preview,” I repeat back at him, pursing my lips and shaking my head.

It’s not like what I’m even doing is even remotely good. It’s messy, and I just can’t seem to get the anatomy right. But I just couldn’t draw it from memory. Marco, that is, of course. I could get the freckles down, sure – that little band of four that stretches across his nose – and I’m pretty good at getting his hair right, with the way the black strands hang loosely over his forehead, and his eyes too, but beyond that, I’m a bit lost.

I try to keep my glances in his direction as secretive as possible, so as to not give away the fact that _yes, I’m drawing you from life, and I promise that’s not at all creepy, okay?_ I furrow my brow, and try to correct the way I’ve drawn his feet – I’m pretty crap at feet, not going to lie.

“You know you stick your tongue out when you concentrate?” Marco chuckles; I glare up at him in horror.

“I do not!”

“You definitely do!”

I feel my face going red with embarrassment, and chew on the already teeth-marked end of my pencil.

“S-shut up,” I mutter, “Don’t you have a pool to clean or something?” I’ve started to notice that when Marco smirks, rather than smile, he has a tendency to look positively wicked. Like, on a Sasha or Connie level of mischievousness.

He swings the pool net around in my direction, and moves to jab me with it – I recoil backwards, clumsily falling onto my back to escape the drips of water from landing on me or my sketch book.

“Watch where you’re swinging that thing, man!” I exclaim, tossing my sketchbook to the side, out of harm’s way. I grab the end of the net and give it a sharp tug, to prove my point.

Apparently, _too_ sharp a tug.

Marco, having been on the edge of the pool as it was, loses his balance. And falls in.

It takes a moment to process what just happened.

…

“Shit!”

I stumble forward on my hands and knees, fingers clamped over the edge of the pool as Marco surfaces with a great deal of spluttering. The water is not too deep, barely coming up past his armpits as he stands. His polo shirt, soaked, clings to every muscle in his shoulders and upper arms, as he sweeps a hand through his hair, slicking it back against his head. Waves lap against the shallow end, and against my fingers – I withdraw my grasp when I see that yes, _he’s not dead_ , and sit back on my calves.

“Wow,” he coughs amidst a grin, spitting out a mouthful of chlorinated water. “I guess I was asking for that!”

“Shit, I’m sorry!” I exclaim, although I can feel a smug grin appearing on my face. I try my best to continue to feign concern, but… yeah, it doesn’t really work. “You okay?”

“Just a little damp,” he laughs, pinging his shirt against his chest. Drenched. And there’s that glimpse of wickedness across his eyes again. “You not fancy a dip, Jean?”

“Uh, that’ll be a no!” I snort, but shuffle away from the pool side on my butt none the less. Marco begins wading towards the shallow end, his movements heavy and slow with the weight of the water in his clothes. It’s not quite a _Honey Ryder_ type exit, I’ll be honest. He climbs the steps, and stands on the bank leaking enough water to probably fill a couple bathtubs.

He raises his eyebrows, as he rings out his shirt in his fists, the once-cornflower-blue fabric squelching in his grasp. I shuffle away a little more.

“You don’t think you could, uh… fetch my towel from my van, could you?” He looks down at his shorts, equally _not_ the colour they once were when dry. The water runs down his freckled legs in a whole bunch of little rivers. He sweeps back his hair bashfully, as it’s fallen back over his face again.

“Sure,” I chuckle to myself, hauling myself to my feet, and making sure to give him a hell of a wide birth so that I don’t end up pushed in the pool myself.

He’s left his van unlocked, and sure enough, as I peer into the cab, there’s a fluffy, white towel slung over the head rest of the passenger’s seat. It’s embroidered with his name in the way that your mom would do to label your stuff back in elementary school.

With the towel flopped over my arm, I let myself back in through the gate, but freeze mid step. Here’s what I’m greeted with:

Short-less.

Very, _very_ wet, _Superman_ boxers.

I swallow the massive lump that’s formed in my throat. And, _oh God_. My jeans feel unusually tight. There it is. The _most_ awkward of awkward boners.

No, no, _no_ , this is not happening. Not happening. Not here. Not now. Think of the old bat you had for seventh grade English. In her underwear. Do it.

 _Ohbutlookatthewayhisfreckleskindapoolinthesmallofhisback._ I hear that in Sasha’s voice in my mind.

Nope. Do not. I mean, he’s attractive, right? I’m not going to lie. There’s a reason my mom is so obsessed with him. But I like girls. _I like Mikasa_.

I do most certainly not like freckled backs, and rock solid abs, and…

_Situational boner, Jean. These things happen. Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out._

I pull my shirt as far down over my hips as it’ll go, and silently thank the fact that I chose to put on a pretty restricting pair of jeans as it was this morning.

I cough excessively loudly – Marco whips ‘round to face me, his cheeks a little flushed. I lob the towel at him with all my might.

“Put some clothes on!” I say sharply, averting my gaze to my feet as he wraps the towel around his hips; it hangs low on the bones of his pelvis.

“S-sorry!” he replies back, sounding just as flustered. “Y-you said your mom wasn’t in, right?”

Oh God. Mom would have a field day if she saw this.

“No, she’s not,” I mumble, watching the relief flood Marco’s face from the corner of my eye. “Look, man, we’ve got a… uh, we’ve got a dryer in the house, if you know, you want to…?”

_Smooth, Jean. So smooth. You’re all over the fucking place._

“Please!”

I walk-run into the house, making sure to keep my shirt pulled down in front of my crotch to hide the entirely unnecessary stiff one in my pants. Marco does his best to keep up, clutching the towel around his waist with one hand, and his soaking wet clothes in the other.

I lead him into the utility room that leads off the kitchen, and point at the tumble dryer with a rigid arm. Marco ducks his head, and probably noticing how intense my laser-stare is right now, flings his clothes into the barrel without a word. I choose a quick cycle, spinning the dial ‘round to the first marker.

“Are you alright, Jean?” he then goes and fucking says. I blanch. “Y-you look a bit pale?”

“Just peachy,” I say through gritted teeth. I look for an exit of some sort. “Uh, just excuse me for a sec, I’ll be right back.”

I make a hasty get away to the safety of the bathroom, without looking back at Marco. Once I’ve triple checked that I’ve locked the door, I inhale as deeply as I can, and breathe out slowly. He was right, I think, checking myself out in the mirror. I look hella pale.

I grip the sides of the sink with both hands, and stare down at the plughole. The thought crosses my mind that I should just palm myself off, and be done with it. I’ve masturbated to the thought of some of my friend’s moms before. Even a teacher or two. This is just like that.  A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, after all.

 _But, Jean, that most definitely does not mean jacking off to your pool boy in his tighty-whities whilst he’s basically on the other side of the door_. That is not cool.

I run my thumb over the cool, metal button of my jeans, none the less.

I bite down on my lower lip, and try to imagine my wrinkly seventh grade teacher again. That does the trick. There’s no way in hell I can stay hard with that picture in my head. 

I run the faucet as cold as it’ll go, and splash water over my face.

It’s at least ten minutes before I emerge from the bathroom, sure of the fact that my hard-on is long gone, and this is never, _ever_ going to be an experience I wish to repeat again. Not going to ruin this friendship thing _that way_.

Marco’s propped up on a bar stool in the kitchen, his hair still dripping onto his shoulders and back. He perks up when I trudge in, my gaze steeled.

“I’m fine,” I say, before he can ask me anything about how I feel. “Are you clothes dry yet?”

“Uh, I haven’t checked…?”

I lead the way back into the utility room, just as the light on the dryer flashes green, indicating the end of the cycle. I pull the round door open, and reach into grab his clothes – warm and dry.

“Here,” I say, chucking the bundle in his direction. He catches them awkwardly, fumbling as to not drop his towel.

I turn my back as he shrugs on his shirt and shorts, staring pointedly at the tiles on the floor, counting how many are in the room, before he says, in a small voice:

“I hope you realise I am definitely going to get you back for this.”

I roll my tongue in my cheek, and peer back over my shoulder with a smirk I just can’t help.

“Try me.”

 

* * *

 

Once I’ve schooled myself about not having any more awkward boners ever again in Marco’s presence, I spend the rest of the day avoiding being too close to the pool (in fear that, despite his good nature, Marco might actually just act upon that revenge he threatened), and neglecting my sketchbook. I don’t think I’m up to objectively looking at his body in order to draw. I can admit that much to myself.

I’m not sure if Marco recognises the change in atmosphere or not, but he tries to keep conversation light hearted as he goes about his routine.

He tells me about the dog he had when he was younger; about the time, when he was around ten, that said dog decided it wanted to pull them both into the river. He explains dutifully how it wasn’t really a river, more of a very muddy swamp, and that his mom definitely wasn’t happy when he got back from _that_ walk.

He asks me if I’ve had any pets – I mention that my mom has a fear of anything bigger than approximately a guinea pig, and that she doesn’t want anything that might scratch up the furniture. I also add in the fact that I have just about enough of the Jack Russell who lives next door, which has a tendency to wake me up at sunrise more often that I’d like. And I’d like that to be never.

I begin to pick up on some of his quirks that aren’t his nervous ones (like the neck scratching thing, or the lip biting) – when he laughs, and by that I mean, really laughs, and not just some lame polite chuckle, he throws his head right back into it. When he talks about things from his past, he likes to rub one strand of his hair between his thumb and forefinger. When he’s listening to my nonsense, his eyebrows tend to quirk up in the middle. How he toys with the hem of his shirt absent-mindedly. How he has a tendency to use my name in conversation, even when it’s just the two of us talking.

It’s nice to be able to talk like this, boners and pushing people in the pool aside, because it’s a pretty crazy feeling to have someone actually laugh at what you’re saying, and not because you’re making a fool of yourself. Marco’s like that. I think he genuinely finds me funny.

“… and all that was because he went and stuffed a jelly bean up his nose,” I say, finishing the dramatic retelling of the time Connie and I took a memorable trip to A&E, following an unfortunate, candy related episode of “do it for the Vine”. It’s not something I’m ever willing to let Connie live down, that’s for sure.

“Oh my God, that is… that’s unbelievable,” Marco snickers, eating up my words. “And how old were you?”

“Seventeen,” I grin, running my tongue over my teeth. “And tell me about it. It was a day to go down in history, believe me.”

 

* * *

 

That Saturday continues much the same; I take my revision outside, and chat to Marco amidst Chemistry problems, about stupid things. He apparently enjoys the tales of my lame-ass friends, because he’s always posing questions, and asking “and then what?” to everything I say. So I indulge him. But it’s not like I wouldn’t have anyway. There’s like… an earnestness in his face that just doesn’t let me shut up.

The thing about Marco is he’s not like Connie. He’s the sort of person you kinda want to work hard for, to be their best friend. Not really someone you’d just get lumbered with after far too many mud-fights when you were five (not that I resent my friendship with Connie in any way… just, it sits on the side of mentally exhausting most of the time). I suppose you could say I’m not… averse to the feeling of impressing the guy. Makes me feel good when he acknowledges something I confide in him, with one of those freckled-Jesus smiles.

Marco doesn’t really talk about any of _his_ friends; I mean, I know he’s in with Bert, and that lot, or at least was, back when he still did uni. And he mentions some guys at his work – especially one with a serious cleaning fetish that really goes beyond just sweeping up leaves – from time to time. But no-one like Connie and Sasha are to me.

“What do you do for fun?” I ask him – the forwardness of my question causes him to do the eyebrow thing, and blink slowly. “Like, your free time and stuff?”

“What, are you suggesting that I don’t live and breathe pool cleaning?” he chuckles, but I press my gaze. He then shrugs. “I don’t really have much time to spare right now. I guess… I spend most of what I have with my family.”

I pull a face that hopefully expresses how lame I think that is (despite the fact that yes, I did just spend the last twelve months up until three weeks ago hanging out primarily with my mom. But ssh.).

“I play games and stuff with my sister, I suppose? Does that count?”

I scoff at the thought of Marco playing board games as a pastime. Could you even get any more domestic? Probably not. This _is_ Marco after all. 

“Sister, huh?” I grin. First time he’s really mentioned his family, and not just in passing. “Is she hot?”

“She’s _nine_ , Jean.”

I exhale sharply through my nose, and sheepishly run a hand through my mop of hair.

“Aaaalrighty then. That’ll be a no.”

At that moment, a snap chat arrives on my phone. The jingle it lights up my screen with is the opening _whoooooo are you?_ from The Who song of the same name.

It’s from Connie, and the pic is of his Philosophy notes, covered in a spread of different coloured jelly beans. The caption reads: _how many of these do u think i can shove in my mouth at once ????_

“Who’s it from?” Marco queries, picking up on my amused smirk. He takes a step closer to me, and tries to lean over me to see the screen.

“Idiot number-one,” I tell him, holding up the screen cap I took of the photo before its five-second time limit was up. Marco cocks an eyebrow.

“Are you sure that’s going to go well for him, after what you said happened _the last time_?” he observes. I shake my head, snap a selfie of myself scowling, and type out a reply: _i can see ur revision is going well lmao_

“Nope,” I say, “Just you wait, man. Give it half an hour, and he’ll be telling me he’s eaten too many and’s gonna puke.”

I get a reply back pretty quickly. This time, it’s of Connie himself, his mouth stuffed full of the multi-coloured candies. The text says: _nope 2 weeks to go and im givin up im gonna become a stripper !!!!_

“He says he’s decided to become a stripper,” I murmur, “Sounds like not too bad an idea. I might just join him on that.” I stare down at the textbook in my lap – specifically the page I haven’t moved from for some while.

“Your parents would appreciate that career choice, I’m sure,” Marco hums, hauling the skimmer out of the pool, and propping it beside the steps of the shed where I’m sitting.

“Probably’d appreciate it more than some of the things I’m considering.”

Marco looks up at me at that, and cocks his head to the side. That’s another habit of his that I add to my mental list.

“So you _are_ considering an art major?” he assumes, and I give a noncommittal nod. His tone becomes a bit more serious. “Maybe you should give your parents a chance, Jean. You could show them what you can do.”

It’s not like I haven’t considered showing my parents my sketchbooks before. I’m even about seventy-percent sure that my mom would actually like some of my drawings. But…

“Pfft, you haven’t met my dad, man. He’s a stickler for… well, I’d say the rules, but that for sure isn’t fucking true. Maybe: a stickler for me being the way he wants me to be. He’d go ballistic if I ever mentioned not wanting to go to work for him at his company.”

Plus who’d really accept me onto an art course based on some kinda stalkerish line-drawings of the one same girl and the pool boy? And that’s if I’d even make it that far into the application, without being throttled by one, or both of my parents for “throwing my future away” or some shit like that. I shake my head, and Marco appears mildly frustrated at that.

“It’s not their future to decide,” he murmurs quietly, focused on the water lapping against the blue-mosaic edge of the pool. “You do this, you do. Take a part the things that I can see you really like. Jean, you’re good at art. _So_ good. Please talk to them about it.”

I snort through my nose, and lean back on the steps, lacing my fingers on top of my head.

“Woah there Socrates,” I say, causing Marco to roll his eyes, his cheeks flushing. His words do resonate a little deeper than my sarcastic response lets on, though. It’s that same feeling as when he praised the drawings he saw in my room that one time. Pride, maybe? Recognition for a good job? The thought that, you know, someone actually cares about me in a way other than what grade I got in my last exam, or whether or not I’m wearing brand clothing.

“I’m serious, Jean,” Marco stresses, drawing me out of my thoughts. “You need to do what _you_ really want to. I have first-hand experience that it sucks having to settle for something you… have no passion for.” His voice becomes a lot quieter with those last few words, and his expression is gloomy, mixed with a little something else, which I can’t really place.

My normal reaction for situations like this is to make a funny comment. So I do. I’m not great at feelings-shit any other way.

“Ah, but you wouldn’t have met _me_ if you didn’t take up pool cleaning,” I grin, “Your life wouldn’t be the same, man. Just think how depressed you would be without the amazing, charming, _witty_ Jean Kirschtein in your life.”

“Just think how depressed I would be _without_ your mom hitting on me, you mean?” he shoots right back, cheekily. But I’m not too blind to realise that he’s forcing the smile on his lips, or notice the way his jaw seems to clench. His eyes still seem pretty dark (and I’m not just talking about their colour).

Marco just doesn’t quite seem the same after that – he only half-laughs at my shitty jokes, and stares off into the middle distance a lot, as if he’s contemplating something pretty serious in his head. I try to retrace back over my words, to see if anything I said was particularly offensive, but I draw a blank.

I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for him to have to give up on his dream for the future – especially if, like he said, it was because of some “family issues”. Not that I have the slightest clue what that entails. I guess you could even call what I have “family issues”. But Marco doesn’t bring it up. So I don’t try to go there.

When it’s time for him to leave, I pay him, and help him to his van with his stuff again, informing him that’ll I’ll see him Wednesday. That tugs a little more of a genuine smile onto his freckled face, and he even waves at me through his open window as he pulls away from the curb.

 

* * *

 

On Sunday morning, I fully expect to be granted my much-deserved lie-in ‘till at least midday. Of course, that doesn’t happen. Sometimes I really wonder what sort of hand I must’ve been given from the pot of luck.

It’s around nine when, somewhere between dosing and comatose, I become vaguely aware of barking. It’s that sort of thing when whatever’s going on around you just becomes part of your dream – a part of your dream that nibbles away at you because you know it’s not _quite_ right – but you keep on sleeping anyway.

I’m not entirely sure what I’m dreaming of, but I know it involves Connie, and Sasha, and Eren’s there too – and then when he opens his mouth, instead of words, he just barks? That sort of shit is apparently normal in the Jean dream world; I don’t stir.

It’s when the barking stops and is replaced by loud splashing and whining that I’m actually drawn out of sleep. My eyes flicker open hazily, and I stare up at my white-washed ceiling under heavy eyelids for some time, the sploshing sound of water in my ears, but not really registering.

I flip over onto my side, facing the wall, and draw my sheets up around my waist a bit more (I have a habit of kicking them away when unconscious) – and then the barking starts up again.

 _Oh for fuck’s sake_ , I groan inwardly, grabbing my pillow, and smothering the side of head with it. _Why the fuck does that fucking cat need to terrorise that dumb dog so often?_

But the barking is still really loud. Too loud. Too loud to be coming from next door. It’s almost as if…

… Fuck.

I fling myself out of bed, and clamour towards the window that overlooks the back yard. _The little shit is in the pool._

I bang loudly on the window pane with my fist, and yell something pretty obscene at the Jack Russell – but all it does it briefly glance up at me, and then continue paddling around in the shallows, its tail bobbing along above the water line.

I hurtle down the stairs still in my boxers, firmly in the mind that I’m going to fucking _skin_ that dog when I catch it.

The rest of the house is deserted – typical.

Throwing open the back door, I stop in my tracks as the scrawny little mutt climbs the pool steps, and begins to shake its wet coat, splattering the side with a minor tornado of droplets. It seems to look over its shoulder at me, and I swear it’s telling me: _well what’ya gonna do about this then? Come at me bro!_

I roll up my imaginary sleeves, and take another few fuming strides forward on my war path, when it does the unspeakable. It cocks its leg.

I glare razor-sharp daggers at it with all my might, and it stares right back.

“Don’t you _fucking dare_ whizz in that pool, you little fuck,” I growl through clenched teeth.

So of course it fucking whizzes.

I rush at the little shit then, intending the fucking throttle it, and it bolts back through the hedge between our yard and the neighbour’s, howling with glee. (It _is_ glee, I tell you! It’s fucking proud of itself!)

I scramble in the hedge row nonetheless, practically growling like a dog myself, but my hands come up with no scrawny mutt in their grasp. I exhale sharply, and right myself, turning half towards the pool where the cloud of piss is dissipating into the water.

So. _Gross_.

Yeah, I know I’m a Chemistry student. And yeah, I _know_ chlorine has disinfectant properties and is used in swimming pools for _exactly_ this reason. But still.

I stride purposefully back into the kitchen, still breathing furiously through my nose, and start rattling around in the drawers on the island counter, searching for what I hope my mom had sense enough to leave there. No luck. With my hands on my hips, I glare around the kitchen, my eyes coming to rest on the door of the refrigerator.

_Aha!_

Pinned below the photo of Connie, Sasha and I from our road trip two summers ago, is a white rectangle of paper, accompanied by the splash of blue of a logo I recognise. The number for a downtown phone line is printed in black text below some corny slogan along the lines of: _stay cool… let us clean your pool!_

I tug the business card from out under the magnet that holds it there, and stalk over to the phone. I dial the number, and rest the handset between my shoulder and ear, as I turn the card over in my hands. I try to imagine what Marco’s reaction will be when I tell him about the way that little shit was winding me up deliberately. Will he laugh? Or will he tell me to _fuck off_ because it’s a Sunday.

Shit, right. It’s a Sunday. Will they even be open on a Sunday?

My question is answered when the dial tone clicks through after the fifth ring or so. A low tenor answers the call in a practiced speech.

“Hello, you’ve reached _Trost Pool Servicing & Repair_. You’re talking to Erwin. How can I help you?”

My mind wasn’t expecting anyone other than Marco to pick up and automatically know it was me – so I stammer a bit when faced with the deep voice of some stranger.

“Uh, hi? I’m… er, I’m looking for—” I quickly realise I don’t even know Marco’s _surname_. “I’m looking for one of your guys called Marco? I kinda need… that is, the pool kinda needs… well. Is Marco there?”

“Can I take you name, please?” Erwin asks. I oblige. “Kirschtein… Kirschtein. Right! Oh yeah, you _are_ one of Marco’s.”

I purse my lips into a taught line, squeezing the handset a little tighter between my shoulder and cheek. There’s rustling on the other end, as I imagine he’s holding something over the receiver as he converses with another colleague. I can just about make it out.

“Hey Levi, does Marco work on Sundays?”

“No, you dumb-ass, it’s meant to be his day off. How many times?” comes the reply, just as low, and sounding pretty abrasive.

The phone line rustles again, and Erwin comes back on.

“Sorry, Marco doesn’t work on Sundays, I’m afraid. I can put you down on his schedule for tomorrow, if you like? That’s the earliest he’ll be able to make it.”

I let slip a low hum, my eyes focussing on the pool outside.

“It’s kinda… an emergency?” I say, _maybe_ playing up on the dramatics a bit. “You got a number I can reach him on or anything?”

I hear Erwin turn back to his co-worker:  
  
“Levi, do we have Marco’s home number anywhere? Would it be on his file?”  
  
“You idiot, don’t just go giving out people’s phone numbers to shitty-ass strangers.” Wow. That guy really has a stick up his ass. “Just tell him to fuck off and call back on Monday. Christ.”

“I’m Marco’s friend,” I add, in an attempt to persuade the obviously more inclined Erwin to my cause. “He’ll be cool with it. Honest.”

There’s a moment or two of silence, and I briefly wonder if the guy called Levi has come over and abruptly hung up the phone on me. Fortunately, that’s not the case.

“…Levi, could you grab me Marco’s file?”

“Holy shit Erwin, leave the kid alone! He’s probably at home and doesn’t want to be bothered by your pasty ass right now! _Remember_?”

“Would it help if I asked nicely?” Erwin retorts. “What’s with that face?” There’s some more general commotion on the other end of the line, before I’m spoken to again. “I’ve just got to go and find Marco’s file, but I’ll be right back. Just hold on for two seconds.”

I hear him prop down his handset on whatever desk he must’ve been sitting at, and then a muffled string of curses from Levi, as I imagine Erwin passes by him. I start to feel a little pang of guilt in the pit of my stomach when I realise it might be a _mildly_ shitty thing to disturb Marco at home on his day off. Especially over something that _yeah_ , is kinda silly.

“Oookay, here we go,” comes Erwin’s voice once more. “You got a pen and paper?”

He recites the number to me, and I tap it into a memo on my cell. The dial code is for the other side of the city, I muse. I finally hang up, though not without hearing one last frustrated grumble from Erwin’s co-worker.

Immediately, I begin stabbing the numbers of Marco’s home phone into the receiver, and press it back to my ear. This time I keep a firm grip on the hard plastic.

It rings at least eleven times (not that I’m counting or anything…), before someone eventually answers. I realise I’ve been holding a bated breath.

“Hello?” The voice belongs to an older woman.

I open and close my mouth multiple times, trying to form words. What exactly do I say? _Hi, I’m Jean, could you grab Marco for me, because a dog pissed in my swimming pool and I don’t want to clean it up by myself._ I’m a capital D for douche, right now.

“Hello?” she repeats. “Is anyone there?”

“S-sorry, yes! Uh, does Marco live there?” My voice comes out pretty much like a squeak. I cringe.

“… Who’s calling?” I can hear suspicion in her voice, as well as something more. She sounds tired. Really tired.

“Jean,” I say, trying to steady the way I sound. “Jean Kirschtein. I –uh – I’m Marco’s… friend?”

I listen closer. There’s noise in the background: the gentle thrum of a TV, and low conversation, I think, but I can’t make out the words.

“Marco,” the woman says, softly, before I realise she’s not talking to me. “There’s someone on the phone for you. He says his name is Jean.”

That’s when Marco’s voice seems to separate from the general background noise.

“Jean?” he says, sounding surprised. Well, of course he would. “Did he say why he was calling?”

“No,” she replies, and her voice becomes somewhat quieter. She probably doesn’t want me to overhear. “Do you want me to say that you’re busy?”  
  
Well, that’s slightly rude.

“No, mom, it’s okay!” I hear Marco exclaim. His voice becomes louder as he nears the phone. “It’s fine, let me talk to him. You go sit with dad.”

There’s a muffled murmur of acknowledgement or something, and then there’s Marco’s voice, crisp and clear. But he only says one word.

“Jean.” It sounds like it leaves his lips as some sort of exasperated sigh. That takes me a back.

“H-hey man,” I say, running a hand through my bed hair. “Sorry about calling you on a Sunday – uh, the guys at your office gave me the number by the way, so like, I’m not creeping or anythi—”

“Jean,” he repeats, more forcefully. “What’s up?” I notice there’s that same degree of tiredness in his voice, as with his mom’s. Kinda weary. Kind drawn-out. I’m not a fan.

“Well, uh, you’re gonna laugh okay?” I admit sheepishly. Ugh, maybe this was a mistake. “So, uh, there was this _dog_ …”

I take him not replying as a sign to keep going.

“And I, uh… well, I tried to stop it, the little shit. But it totally was doing it to spite me – and yeah, I know that a dog shouldn’t be able to feel things like spite, but seriously, this one’s a real sh– listen, to lay it straight for you, the neighbour’s dog pissed in the pool.”

A moment or two of silence. But then his chuckle lights up the line. I breathe a sigh of relief.

“You’re _ridiculous_ ,” he muses, but still his laugh sounds weak. “I hope you didn’t _hurt_ it, Jean.”

“Oh, you bet I fucking thought about it,” I shoot back, leaning over the kitchen counter as I talk. “Little fucker got away before I could catch it. It was so fucking gross, man.”

“So you called to inform me that you were bested by a dog then?”

“… Not exactly,” I reply. “I… uh, you don’t think you could come over here and uh, you know? Do what you do.”

“ _Jean_ ,” he repeats again. My name is long, the vowels drawn-out. I immediately back-track.

“I mean, only if you’ve got nothing better to do and don’t mind, man! I know it’s pretty shitty of me to call on a Sunday, and like, I’ll make it up to you, I promise! I’ll pay you double your normal rate? Triple? It’s just… oh man, it’s just gross, alright?”

“You know the chlorine will kill any bacteria in the water, right?” Marco adds quietly, avoiding answering any of what I said directly. “I don’t exactly know what you want me to do, Jean.”

I breathe out through my nose – the sound probably travels across the line.

“Please?”

The way he sighs makes it sound like he’s torn, and I reckon I really have overstepped the mark of idiocy here. But he surprises me.

“Alright. Alright Jean. I’ll be over in half an hour. I was meaning to check your chlorine levels when I was over yesterday as it was.”

“O-oh okay!”

“I’ll see you in a bit then.”

 

* * *

 

I spend the thirty minutes it takes for Marco to arrive pacing around the kitchen, after sourcing a pair of sweatpants and an old t shirt I used to use as pyjamas, from the clean laundry in the utility room.

I’m literally half way across the back yard when I hear the drone of his van’s engine pull up on the other side of the hedge. I meet him at the gate.

“Jean!” he exclaims in surprise, practically turning around from his van and straight into my face. He looks me up and down, and I watch his pupils blow a little. “Did you literally just roll out of bed? Your hair!”

I reach up to smooth down the bird’s nest of bed hair that I’m sure I’m rocking. Probably should sorted that. It’s cowlicks galore.

“Not the issue here!” I retort, pulling the gate open so that he can come in. I quickly pass a glance over him, noticing the way his polo shirt is caught up in the waistband of his shorts, probably having been thrown on in a hurry. The freckles on his face seem to stand out more than usual – is he paler? He sure looks it. That, and the dark circles strung beneath his eyes. He looks like he hasn’t slept a wink.

“I _am_ sorry about this, man,” I apologise, kicking my foot into the grass as he dumps one of his buckets at the pool side. “You really didn’t have to come if you were busy. I just—”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” he smiles – feebly. “It’s fine, Jean. I wasn’t doing much.”

 _Liar_. I’m not an idiot. Well, sometimes I am. But I know full well the look of someone retreating into themselves. I rocked it for twelve months solid.

I try to raise conversation multiple times as he goes about measuring the chlorine balance in the pool – but each time he replies with a polite line that prevents me from really asking anything else. It’s all very distant. And very un-Marco.

When he announces that he’s finished, I try to broach the subject.

“I’ll see you Wednesday then, right?” I say first. “I hope whatever shit’s troubling you clears up by then.”

He tries – and fails – to feign puzzlement as he raises an eyebrow. I fold my arms purposely across my chest, in a gesture of _I’m not taking shit from you, okay?_

He smiles a sad, small smile.

“Thank you, Jean. I’ll see you.”

 

* * *

 

I sit in the kitchen for most of the day, having dragged my laptop and its charger down from my room shortly after Marco left. I attempt a couple questions on the university portal, but that pretty much falls through, and I resort to scrolling through my news feed on Facebook for a couple, tedious hours.

Around six, I get a text from my mom.

**From: Mom  
Hey darling, I’m going out with the girls tonight, so don’t wait up. Your dad said he would be back late too, so just buy yourself a takeout. Love you xxx**

Alrighty then. I never pass up an excuse for a pizza.

I order a large with all the meat toppings I can legitimately cram on there without posing the risk of having a heart attack from just one bite. Twenty minutes later, and I’m tucking in to some cheesy goodness.

On my Facebook, a status update from Reiner pops up – something about football which I couldn’t really care less about – but thinking about Reiner makes me think about Bert, which in turn makes me think about Marco. I wonder how well they know him? Specifically, I wonder if they know him well enough that they’d know what’s up?

I shake my head. Marco never brings any of his friends up, and the only time we’ve actually spoken about macho-man and his sweaty prince is when I’ve recalled a few of my vast collection of embarrassing stories.

It can’t be coincidence when I get a text from Connie when I’m three slices in to my pizza.

**From: the coolest guy you’ll ever meet  
hey man do u wanna go round to berts on tuesday to study ???? he said hed help me with some bio so maybe u could ask about some chemistry too ????**

With it being only two weeks away from the dreaded first exam, I’ve got no lectures this week coming – just the odd revision class. As such, I do have Tuesday off.

**To: the coolest guy you’ll ever meet  
sure thing man i’m up for that**

Connie and I swap a few more texts over the course of the evening – mostly regarding the fact that apparently Reiner’s got a PS4, and Connie really wants to have a shot at it, seeing as we’re both mainly Xbox guys.

By the time it hits one in the morning, I’m still slumped in the kitchen, and still rocking the semi-pyjamas get-up from this morning. The back yard is bathed in the perpetual twilight that comes from living in a suburban neighbourhood like this – a dark, hazy yellow, which seems heavy. I yawn loudly, stretching my arms up above my head until my shoulders crack.

At that moment, I hear the fumbling of a key in the front door, and then the crass stumbling of feet. Prolonged seconds later, and my dad blunders into the kitchen.

He’s drunk. I can smell the sickly-sweet stench of beer breath from here.

“H-hey son,” he hiccups, gripping onto the counter for balance. I close the lid of my laptop, and stare at him judgmentally. There’s a smattering of pink lipsticks stains all over his shirt collar. “You… you doin’ alright there?”

I narrow my eyes, tucking my laptop beneath my arm, and gathering its cable up in my hands.

“Pig.”

He’s too drunk to even hear me. I shoulder my way past him, grimacing. I don’t want to look.

 

* * *

 

I guess it’s not too late for a self-depreciating cigarette.

I wriggle onto the roof with as much grace as an out-of-water fish, and take up my usual position straddling the gable of my window. The skyscrapers of central Trost glimmer in the distance, all lit up like a fucking Christmas tree or something. I feel angry just looking at them.

I take a few, therapeutic puffs, waiting for the nicotine rush to arrive. It’s not as great as I woulda liked. Smoke billows out of my nostrils as I exhale.

I wonder if this is how it is for everyone my age – just no-one talks about it. This point in my life is meant to be stressful because of picking majors, or common app errors, or trying to sort the taxes on my savings account.

I shouldn’t be spending my time Googling why men cheat on their wives of twenty-odd years.

I cough on the smoke in my throat as it goes down the wrong way.

Most of the studies I’ve read point out that men begin to cheat after they’ve had children. I wonder how long this has been going on for, how long before I was old enough to realise the weird looking websites I’d sometimes catch on his desktop browser, that he started this.

I feel my heart drop into a bottomless pit. I try to pin a date on the day I said goodbye to my dad. I can’t.

I kinda feel like I might puke. My stomach churns itself in all sorts of ways, and that jolting feeling of being about to wretch makes me shudder.

Glowing embers disintegrate from the end of my cigarette, and flutter down over the slate tiles. They light up like glow worms or some shit in this semi-darkness. My hand brushes over my thigh, the pocket where my cell phone is.

The Jean of last year was okay with the whole suffering in silence thing. I could’ve sat through one thousand phone calls from each one of dad’s secretaries. But not now. I have a nagging urge to just _talk_. To someone. Anyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little more Marco in this chapter, as we're building up the friendship and laying the foundations for the major plot points to come.
> 
> I hope this chapter reads okay; I was mildly worried writing the awkward boner scene because, well... it was so cringy. I want to go back in time and ask fifteen-year-old me how on earth I wrote anything vaguely sexual with a straight face. Because nineteen-your-old me is like an awkward schoolgirl, let me tell you.
> 
> This chapter had to be cut in half (and the rest will make up chapter 6), because it was getting so damn long... it's 12.5k words.
> 
> The feedback everyone left after chapter 4 was really helpful! I would super appreciate any more comments regarding what you like and dislike, how the pace feels, how natural Jean's POV comes across etc. Constructive criticism is welcomed!
> 
> To come next time: Bert, Reiner, Annie... and Marco's CD collection. Make what you will of that.


	6. Accidentally In Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

I close my eyes and all I can see behind my eyelids are the pink smears of lipstick all over my dad’s shirt collar. I want it to stop. I don’t want every other thought to retreat to who’s he’s fucking, who’s he’s talking to on the phone in hushed tones, _what my mom’s doing whilst all this is going on_.

I just hate that god-damn shade of pink.

There’s a pain in my chest, in my limbs, in my head – that has never felt so real until now. People say that, don’t they, the way that the pain just seems to radiate out of you, bolts your feet to the floor, twists your gut into all sorts of impossible shapes. You’re supposed to drown in it all.

I curl up on my bed, pulling the sheets up around my neck, despite the sheen of sweat forming across my forehead, on my palms, and behind my knees. I assume the foetal position, and wrap my arms around my stomach, in the hope that it might help me hold myself together.

I’m angry. I feel like crying pretty shamefully. I also feel like marching down into the kitchen right now, grabbing my dad by the back of his fucking lipstick-stained collar and throwing him out into the street.

I see the face of my mom as I squeeze my eyes shut tighter still. What did she do to deserve this? Watch her weight for twenty years and inject her face full of chemicals to keep her young for him? Victim. _Victim_. We’re both victims in this.

_No, Jean. You’re an accomplice. You know that._

I’m trembling now, properly fucking shaking, and I can’t stop it. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. I’m just as bad as him.

 

* * *

 

On Monday morning, I stagger into college, feeling, I guess, hung over, even though I haven’t had anything to drink in a long while. That’s really the best way to describe it. The horrible hotness swallowing everything in my head, the way it takes all my strength just to drag one foot forward, step after step. Everything just seems to echo a bit too loudly, but is indistinguishable all the same.

It’s unbelievably hard to control my thoughts; someone else is running with them, and I’m just being dragged along for the ride. Concentration is hard, but then, at the same time, not hard enough. I pick up on my breathing – heavy; the knot in my stomach, the buzzing in my head. I can concentrate on all that very well indeed.

I sit through two hours of revision workshops wishing for matchsticks to literally hold my eyes open. Connie doesn’t seem to notice – he’s babbling away to Sasha about summer plans, or something. I only hear the odd word, and even those have a tendency to sort of float in one ear and out the other, coated in the sticky haze of _fuck my life_.

We’re sitting at our table in the cafeteria, and I’m nursing a glass of water, when Ymir approaches us, her thin, lanky arm slung around Historia’s shoulders. I squint at them, wondering if maybe I’m just seeing things.

Thoughts of my dad, of his _whores_ , thoughts of my mom – they become mingled with the memory of last week, the looks of Ymir’s scowl, of Historia’s pity, of Eren. Eren. _Fuck you_ , Eren. I can’t deal with anything more on top of this already.

“Yo, Springer!” Ymir addresses casually, causing Connie to look up from where he and Sasha are scrolling through a playlist on her phone. “Armin says you were sorting out the playlist for this year’s summer party! I thought I’d come and offer my services to make sure you don’t put any of that _Korean pop shit_ that was on there last time.”

“How do you even remember that?” Sasha rebukes, “You were so drunk you couldn’t even stand up straight without Historia!”

“I was not,” Ymir scoffs, pulling out the chair next to me, and dragging Historia into her lap with a mildly alarmed squeak. I continue to stare at them like I’m, I don’t know, _slow in the head_ , or something. I feel like I’m thinking in slow motion, my brain stuffed full of cotton balls.

“I’m pretty sure I remember me, Eren _and_ Mikasa having to haul your skinny butt up the stairs and put you to bed before we even did the fireworks, actually,” Connie smirks, causing Ymir to scowl.

Fireworks. Right. I begin to put it together, what they’re talking about.

Connie’s always hosted a summer party post-end of exams, for as long as I can remember. Well, more like, since getting drunk off your face became appealing, when we were all about fifteen-ish. I find myself craving the burn of something strong down the back of my throat, and the comforting, warm buzz that would follow in my forehead.

_No, you’re supposed to drink it slowly, so you drown in your pain._

“Are you going to come this year, Jean?” Historia says – I just stare dumbly into her beautiful, baby blue eyes. Dang son, a guy could get lost in those. (Mildly sucks that she definitely bats for the other team.) “Jean?” Oh right, she’s talking to me.

_Wait a minute._

“He’s been out of it all day,” Sasha butts in then, nudging me from across the table. “All his studying has finally melted his brain. If you look closely, you can actually see it coming out of his ears.”

“No, I’m—” I begin suddenly, almost knocking my half-empty glass of water over as I sit up straight. Ymir and Historia both stare at me questioningly. “I mean, uh…” I turn to look at Connie. “Yeah, I’m coming?”

“Who else can pay for all the booze,” Connie states sincerely, giving me a curt nod. I want to make a snarky remark about them only being friends with me for my materialistic value, but all I can process is the fact that this is actually a conversation that we’re having. Me. Connie and Sasha. Ymir. Historia.

Who are… not ignoring me? Right. Talk about a rollercoaster of five minutes.

“Good,” Ymir smirks – though it really looks more like a snarl. “I’ve heard stories about drunk Jean. I want to see it in person.” (I should probably note that Historia and Ymir only started dating at the beginning of last summer, and well, we all know where I’ve been the last twelve months. Though then again, apparently Ymir’s an _angry_ drunk, so maybe it was better for my safety…)

Historia gently elbows her girlfriend in the ribs – Ymir only tightens her grip around the cute blonde’s thin waist, and nuzzles her face into the base of her neck.

Connie and Sasha launch into a full run down of their plans for the famed party – to which Ymir throws in her two cents liberally, Historia trying to counter anything she says that’s _too_ rude. I literally just sit there, dumbfounded.

Mondays. It’s always Mondays.

The fuzzy haze from before that swamped my head is… well, it’s still a fuzzy haze, but not one that makes me feel all queasy and the like. It’s just one of: _just like that? Is that all it took? Does it just go back to normal like that?_

But in a good way. I take a glance over at Eren across the room. He’s looking this way, a firm scowl set across his dark features. His blue-green eyes are piercing.

Somewhere amidst the general self-loathing of today, I guess I feel just a little bit smug.

 

* * *

 

Once I remember how to speak again, I find myself hesitantly joining in with Connie and the others about the party plans. Ymir explains that she can probably score a few crates of beer from where she works, and to that, Sasha adds that she’s been keeping a vodka fund for the last few months in preparation for what she’s suddenly started calling: _the social event of the year_.

Any and all thoughts of my dad’s infidelity are pushed to the back of my mind when Sasha slides her phone across the table to me, to show me the playlist they’ve already started putting together. I find myself staring dumbly at the screen for probably a little too long – I guess when you’ve had enough knives stuck into you, when someone hands you something good, you just can’t make it out. It takes a while.

“Earth to Jean?” Sasha asks; she waves a hand in front of my face. I think I recognise a breath of concern flash across her features. She knows something’s up. The dark circles beneath my eyes probably don’t help the matter. “What do you think?”

I scroll through it quickly – not too bad, but not great either. I dutifully offer my record collection to the cause, which Ymir thanks me for. Turns out we have a surprisingly similar music taste.

Things, however, don’t stay so peachy for long. Because it doesn’t take long for me to realise that yes, I’m probably gonna be making an appearance at this thing, but also Eren’s going to be going. Eren, who’s still definitely glaring in this direction right now because I can still feel that shit burning into my back. Problem.

“I can’t go,” I sigh, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyeballs. All four pairs of eyes turn to look at me. “Eren’ll be there. It’ll just cause drama if we’re both there,” I explain. I don’t think I can cope with any _more_ drama.

“Oh fuck him,” Ymir groans; I’m just more than a little taken a back. “He’s just acting like a dickwad. Especially lately.”

“Needs to grow up,” Sasha agrees.

“Don’t let him spoil it for you, Jean,” Historia smiles.

“As long as you don’t deck him one again,” Connie adds. I roll my eyes, but the feeling of doubt doesn’t seem to leave my chest. It just seems to constrict in on itself, like a vice. “I refuse to get blood in my car if I have to drive him to hospital again, okay?”

“I think Jean’s calmed down since then,” Historia says quietly, reaching out to rest a delicate hand on my forearm, comfortingly, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to her. The touch surprises me. I feel warmth seep into the (metaphorical) cracks in my skin. “I’m sure it’ll be all alright.”

 

* * *

 

I’m not sure how I make it through the rest of the day – I sort of just… drift. Once or twice, I feel Sasha’s hand on my shoulder, but I shrug it off, after informing her quietly that I’m fine. The first time, she smiles softly when I say this. The second time, I see her frown. But she doesn’t raise the topic again.

I decide to skip the last revision workshop of the day – mainly because it’s French, I‘m feeling semi-confident in that, and I don’t know how I’ll cope in a class where I’m friend-less. (How on earth I did it before is anyone’s guess.) Connie’s chatter really does something to relieve the general grey cloud that’s hanging over me today.

The drive home is quick – I barely notice it, stuck on autopilot as I navigate the afternoon traffic of central Trost. I only come to my senses, really, when I’m sitting at my laptop, scrolling through today’s news on Facebook.

I notice I have a new friend request, the little red blip in the top corner of my screen. I hover over it: Ymir. And then the magnitude of today’s events just comes crashing back in.

I groan, and curl over my desk, holding my head between my temples, elbows resting either side of my keyboard.

It feels like that, whenever things happen, they always have to happen all at once. I’m the sort of guy who likes to keep things nice and simple. _And_ I’m a cynical bastard, I know that.

I want to be happy – because the last time Historia actually spoke to me was a day in twelfth grade, the day after the Eren incident, when she informed me she’d be wanting the textbooks I’d borrowed from her back. I want to be happy because, would you look at that, two _more_ people who are talking to loser-Jean. Happy. Lucky.

_Confused. All this started just because of my stupid, pathetic –_

Yeah, just not feeling it today.

I click to accept the friend request none the less, and find myself continuing to scroll. And then I notice something else.

It’s just a status update, from Reiner. I don’t even read it (he tends to update his status far too often anyway…). But I read the comments. Well, the third comment, because how can I ignore the way my eyes are instantly drawn the little freckled display picture.

Marco. Marco _Bodt_.

My finger moves so quickly to my mouse pad that I almost end up clicking on an ad, instead of his name. The page changes to Marco’s profile then: his Timeline picture is obviously old, because it’s of him and a few others in their high school graduation robes. Marco’s tightly clutching his diploma in his right hand, his other arm slung over the guy next to him, and his face is lit up in a brilliant smile.

I bite my lip, and scroll down a little further on his profile.

There’s not much – I’d peg him for a guy who doesn’t use the internet much anyway – his feed is mainly made up of notifications from dumb-looking apps: horoscopes, Farmville (oh dear), and then also a handful of messages from family relations wishing him well. Not many status updates, basically. I’m kinda disappointed. (And not because I wanted to stalk him… not at all.)

_Hi Marco, I hope everything is ok at home. I heard about what happened, and our thoughts and prayers are with you all. Give me a ring when you have the time, sweetheart._

As I’m browsing, that comment appears at the top of the page, from someone I assume is a relative of some sort (judging by the freckles in their display pic as well). I read it a couple times, frowning as I do.

A reply then pops up from Marco himself:  
  
 _Thank you for your message. I’ll be sure to give you a ring when I get off work._

Short, simple. But not sweet. Well, not that I think. I want to write a reply, but, not being friends with the guy on Facebook, there’s no comment box for me. I consider it – hitting the request button, or sending him a PM, but decide against it. What exactly would I say? _Hey Marco, it’s me. Saw something’s up, and you’re probably feeling shit judging from what you were like yesterday, and well, so am I._ Fucking peachy, right?

Still, though. I find myself wishing for that friendly smile, and someone to confide in. I get the feeling that just admitting to someone else that I’m feeling a bit more fucked up in the head than usual might do me some good. Getting of the chest and all, right? Right. Not going to happen. I’m _ever_ so good with feelings, after all.

I close the lid of my laptop without minimising the browser, and push it to the side of my desk, replacing it instead with some revision notes.

 

* * *

 

Connie and I take his manky, old pickup to Bert and Reiner’s place the next day (to hold them up on Bert’s offer of a study session) – it’s easier, because Connie has to pass by my neighbourhood on his way across town anyway. (Plus, my car may or may not be out of gas…)

“Are you still worrying about the party, man?” Connie asks, stopping his fingers from drumming along to the radio on the steering wheel, as he glances over at me as we’re coasting along the freeway. I must look like I’m angsting again, leant against the pickup’s dirty window, despite the mild concussion I’m getting from having my temple pressed up against the vibrating glass. “Sasha said you were looking pretty beat up at college yesterday, and thought something might be up.”

“Kinda,” I shrug. “More thinking about yesterday in general though. You know, with Ymir and Historia.”

Mild lie. Not just Ymir and Historia. But also my dad. But also the way my mom had smiled so proudly at me when I told her I was going out today to study with friends, plural. Didn’t _quite_ feel like I deserved a smile like that.

“What d’ya mean?”

I shoot him a look that asks: _do you really not know what I’m trying to get at here_? I’ll take a bet that you can probably see it all over my face.

“You know,” I press, “The fact that they just sauntered over and started up idle chat like nothing ever happened?” Like I never beat the living daylights out of Eren in front of _everyone_.

Connie just shrugs indifferently.

“I told you before, man. No-one talks about that anymore. No-one really cares. Well, besides Eren,” he says. Noting my unconvinced expression, he adds, “They’ve seen you talking to people again. Of course they’re going to approach you. I wasn’t the only one who’d had enough of you avoiding us at every possible opportunity.”

 _Seen me talking to people again_. But I wasn’t the one who—

No, you know what, _I was_. I said this before, and I’ll say it again. Equal parts my fault. The walls I build up after the Eren incident were pretty fucking tall. The sort you’d need the aid of grappling hooks or _giants_ to knock down.

I get the feeling that I may or not have fucked up a lot. And the only person I really have to blame is sitting right here in this car. (And he’s not bald.)

“Sorry man,” I say quietly. “I guess I… shouldn’t have shut myself away like that…”

“Damn straight.” The pickup slows, and Connie rattles it into park behind a muscle-bound Dodge Challenger; I hadn’t even noticed us leave the freeway. “This is their place, right? I can never remember which number it is, because I think I’m usually drunk whenever I come over…”

I’m pretty sure I’ve already mentioned the fact that Reiner plays for the Trost Titans full time – and boy does that pay well. Him and Bert live in a massive, white house (or at least, massive on student terms… it’s still a little ways off the size of my own house) on the outskirts of the city, halfway up the hill-side; Connie says that they only moved in two years ago, when Bert started university, and he and Reiner started dating.

That’s cool and all. But I’m definitely more interested in this much-talked about PS4 set up that has Connie basically frothing at the mouth in excitement.

No. Here to study. Fourteen days to go, remember.

Reiner answers the door when we ring the bell – I baulk at the size of him, and how I’m pretty sure that shirt is going to rip any moment because _oh my god have you seen his pecks_? I always seem to forget the extent to which he really does look like he’s just swallowed a bucket of steroids.

“Hey guys!” he grins; Connie and I attempt to slither around him, between his rippling mass of muscle and the door frame. If I feel small right now, I bet Connie feels like he could be stepped on at any moment. “Bert’s in the living room, so come on in.”

Their hallway is decorated with a lot of photos of the Titans; a framed football shirt sits on the wall at the base of the stairs, whilst the only piece of furniture immediately visible is a large, wooden display cabinet, crammed full of a whole bunch of trophies and placards. Well, Reiner’s not usually one to shy away from the spotlight.

Sure enough, Bert is in the living room, leaning back against the sofa, with an array of textbooks surrounding him on the floor, like some sort of satanic ritual to summon good grades. Or not. He just seems to be watching TV peacefully when we walk in. A small blond girl with a what-can-only-be-described-as murderous expression on her face is curled on the sofa, munching her way through a packet of crackers, her blue stare intent on the television screen too.

Ah, that must be the infamous Annie whom Connie had the _pleasure_ of meeting last time. I make a mental note that half the reason I was probably invited along was prevent _that_ situation happening again. Can’t blame him. This chick is scary. I can practically feel him cowering away beside me.

Connie and I spread out our books alongside Bert’s on the carpet, after the customary ‘hellos’, and some studying is actually done, despite the incessant munching from Annie’s corner of the couch, and Reiner’s unhelpful comments about “what the fuck do all those squiggling little symbols mean?” when he looks over my shoulder at my Chemistry problems.

I find that Reiner has a _very_ odd taste in TV, even amongst the general rubbish that is daytime trash. He flicks between some horrific trailer-trash show about storage auctions (which he hums along to the theme tune of), and then becomes particularly embroiled in a rerun of Jeremy Kyle (I’m so glad that shit got cancelled when it did…).

Just as I’m leaning back on my haunches after tackling a particularly tricky organic mechanism, the house phone rings, some tasteless custom ringtone that automatically just makes me assume it was Reiner’s choosing too.

“I’ll get it,” Bert announces – neither Reiner nor Annie seem to budge as it is. The sweaty prince heaves himself to his feet, and skitters into the hallway. I flip the page of my textbook over to the next set of questions, partially aware of the conversation Bert’s having.

“Oh, hello,” I hear him greet the person on the other end, who I guess he knows. “No, I’m good. How’re you? Oh… oh no, of course. W-would you like to? I definitely don’t mind, really.” Reiner looks up at the same point I do, when we both recognise a slight tremor in Bert’s voice. “R-really, it’s okay. Just whenever you can is okay. Honestly.”

Bert places the handset back into its cradle, and Reiner collapses back into the couch cushions with a grunt, shifting his legs to try and get them comfortable around the back of Annie. He leans his head back over the armrest, watching Bert from upside down as he re-enters the living room.

“Again, babe?” he asks, cryptically. Bert just nods, a quiet sigh escaping his lips as he rings his hands. I don’t have much time to dwell on it though, as Connie flops back onto the carpet with a strangled groan of complete defeat. I think he’s just about ready to offer up his soul to the Biology gods.

“I don’t get thiiiiiiiis,” he moans, laying a hand over his face. “Bert, you gotta help me, man!”

Connie’s complaining over some Biology bullshit continues for a good twenty minutes or so, despite Bert’s best methods to explain the problems. His whining makes it difficult to concentrate (that, and there’s only so much studying you can do without going insane once in a while), so I throw down my pen, and sit back against the sofa skirting, zoning in on whatever crap Reiner’s tuned in on.

I don’t have to suffer it for very long, because my attention is diverted with the rumble of an engine outside. Bert instantly looks up from Connie’s text book, and gets to his feet, heading for the front door. I watch him leave, and then crane my neck to peer out the window from my position on the floor.

My eyes dart straight to the watery logo of _Trost Pool Service & Repair_ plastered across the side of a white Vauxhall Combo that has pulled up to the curb behind Connie’s pickup.  

“Wait a sec,” I start, glancing back over my shoulder at Reiner. “Do you guys have a pool here?”

Reiner doesn’t miss a beat as he replies, “What, Kirschtein, you _that_ desperate to see me in my mankini?”

I feel all the blood rush to my face in the same moment, as Reiner and Connie both roar with laughter and Annie even offers a snigger.

“You’d have to provide the bleach for me to wash my eyes out with after,” I mutter, “Thank you for that lovely mental picture.”

“You look like a tomato,” Annie deadpans.

“ _Thank you_ for that.”

Reiner pulls himself up into a sitting position on the couch, pulling his feet out from underneath Annie – she glares at him as he shifts. Taking a look out of the window himself, a look of recognition appears on his features.

“Oh, right,” he says, “The van. I get ya’ now. It’s just Marco, one of Bert’s friends. He comes ‘round from time to time.”

_Marco?_

My heart seems to thump pretty loudly as I watch said once-pool-boy, now-also-friend emerge from his van, and stride briskly up the path to the front door. I can’t see his face so well from my limited position, but the way his shoulders droop doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Marco?” Connie perks up, shuffling on his knees over to the window sill, “As in your pool guy, Jean?”

“I-it looks that way,” I reply, but my mind is one hundred fucking miles away. Well, no, that’s a lie. My mind is about ten meters away, actually, as I hear Bert open the front door.

“H-hey, Marco,” I hear Bert’s gentle voice. “How are you?”

“… I’m okay,” comes Marco’s voice; it’s that same tone that I heard on the phone on Sunday – tired. Very, very tired. Not the usually melody that I’m used to. Not the chime that comes with the smile. “I’m managing. Thank you for this, Bert. I think I just need the peace of mind.”

“O-oh, no, no it’s fine. Don’t worry about it! I’m glad to help out.” I hear both their sets of footsteps on the tiles of the hallway, and realise I’m holding my breath. I let it out quietly, hoping that none of the others notice. “Do you want to come into the kitchen to talk? We’ve got some guests over…”

“You do? I’m really sorry, Bert, I didn’t mean to—”

They appear in the open doorway at that moment, and it’s all I can do not to stare. Actually, no, fuck that, I don’t even try _not_ to stare. Because there’s Marco, staring straight back at me, mouth a gape.

It strikes me that this is the first time we’ve come across each other beyond the cleaning of my pool – and actually, this is the first time I’ve seen him not in his uniform (minus the varying degrees of semi-nakedness that may or may not have occurred in the past few weeks…). He’s wearing a pair of light weight slacks, and a soft grey button-down, his sleeves rolled up around his elbows, and the top button undone. He looks _good_.

Well, I say that. But he looks so pale, gaunt, not like the healthy, smiley Marco I’m used to seeing twice a week in my back yard. His shoulders look so tense.

“ _Jean_!” he all but squeaks. I could laugh, if it weren’t for the weirdness of the situation. Boy do I have a lot of question right about now.

“H-hey,” I reply awkwardly, scratching the back of my neck as I try to look anywhere but his eyes. Ever the smooth one. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he breathes, and it surprises me to see the gentle smile that seems to glide onto his lips. The back of my neck feels a little bit warm. My ears do too. “I’m okay.”

“Do you know each other?” Bert then asks, disrupting the moment.

“Oh! Yeah, we do,” Marco smiles – but it’s not the same sort of smile. He doesn’t look as sincere, I don’t think. “I… uh, I clean Jean’s pool actually.”

“We’re _friends_ ,” I find myself correcting Marco, the words spilling out before I have time to change how forceful they sound. Marco’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. “I… I mean, like… we’re friends, and he also… cleans my pool… sometimes…”

“Is cleaning the pool a euphemism for something?” Reiner interjects slyly. I can hear Connie’s evil chuckling too. I can only imagine what my face must look like – well, I guess something like Marco’s, actually. He’s bright red, his freckles disappearing into a violent blush.

“You can shut the fuck up right there,” I exclaim, using the closest Chemistry textbook I have to smack Reiner on the arm with. I aim for his head, but he overpowers me without even sitting up, and steals my weapon away from me. “Hey, give that back!”

“I think the lady doth protest too much,” Reiner cackles, holding me back with one ginormous arm as I try to grapple for my book. _Oh my God, please shut the fuck up right now, this is so fucking embarr—_

Amidst my war on Reiner, I glance up at Marco – his face is still red, sure, but he’s no longer looking at me, instead whispering to Bert, who’s nodding solemnly. Whilst I’m not looking, Reiner brings my own textbook down on my head – hard.

_Fucking hell!_

I’m literally about to shout at him something the long the lines of: _what the fuck was that for, I’m gonna need those fucking brain cells!_ , when Marco’s voice stops me. He’s pretty good at that.

“B-Bert and I just have some stuff to discuss,” he says. He’s addressing everyone, but he’s looking at me. _Only me_. “I’m sorry about interrupting your study session, guys.”

I watch them both turn and leave, my eyes following the way Marco’s shoulder hunch beneath his shirt. My usual scowl sits on my face, and I chew the inside of my cheek in thought.

“Poor guy,” Reiner then says, once we hear the kitchen door be pushed to. “But if I was in the same position, I’d probably do the same.”

 _What position is that_ , I find myself wanting to ask. But I don’t. I keep my mouth clamped shut in a tight line, and trace the patterns in the carpet with my eyes. I feel it wouldn’t be fair to Marco to go asking others about his personal problems, especially if he hasn’t told anyone else about them. Hasn’t told me.

With Bert out of the room, Connie decides to completely give up on the revision front of things, and sidles over to the PS4 set up next to the TV, practically stroking the console for all its worth. Reiner laughs loudly, and challenges him to a game on _Call of Duty: Ghosts_.

“You wanna play, Jean?” Connie grins, handing a controller to Reiner, and another to Annie. (Why do I get the impression that she’s about to kick both their asses?) I stare dumbly down at the controller I’m being offered, and shake my head.

“Nah, I’ll skip this one. I’m not great at _COD_ ,” I lie. I’m very good at _COD_. But that’s not the point. “Where’s the bathroom, Reiner?”

He gives some vague directions about which door it is, and I haul myself to my feet with some distinct cracking of my joints. That was another lie, actually. I don’t really want to go to the bathroom.

I saunter out into the hallway as casually as I can, trying not to like my Converse tap on the wooden floor as I approach definitely-not-the-door that Reiner pointed me to.

Marco and Bert’s voices are just about audible from the other side of the kitchen door – and I guess I do feel an ounce of shame from pressing my ear up against the wood.

“So what do you think?” That’s Marco’s voice.

“Marco… I’m only second year pre-med, you know I don’t know what half of these prescriptions even are…” There’s the sound of paper rustling. “The doctors know what they’re doing; they’ll be choosing the most effective drugs out there, you know that.”

“Humour me, Bert…”

I don’t exactly know how you’re supposed to react when you hear this kind of thing – is someone ill? Is Marco ill? He doesn’t look ill, just… well, just kinda sad.

The tone in his voice resonates with me; it tickles the dark thoughts that I’ve been stewing myself in for the last few days. I know for sure that I wouldn’t wish _those_ feelings on anyone else. Before I know it, I’m wrapping my knuckles on the door, and announcing my presence.

“Hello?” I call, twisting the door handle and pushing on the wood. The kitchen is bright and sunny, lit up by the large windows that overlook the hill side behind the house. “Can I come in? No-one’s naked, are they?”

Marco and Bert both look up from where they’re leant over some paperwork on the table; Marco’s face seems to relax as I meet his eyes.

“Sorry,” I say sheepishly. “Uh… just wanted to grab a drink?”

“Oh, sure!” Bert says, “What would you like, Jean?”

“Nah man, it’s okay, I got it,” I say, waving him away as he turns towards the fridge. “I think Connie’s looking for a player four for _COD_ though… I think they turned to the dark side and gave up on the revision… you fancy it?”

 _Wow, Jean, so subtle_.

I steer myself around the kitchen table, passing Marco as I do. His back tenses up as I pass him – and I find myself repressing the sudden urge to reach out and place a hand on his shoulder, or something like that. I open the fridge just as a loud groan echoes through the house.

“Sounds like Annie’s whipping ass in there,” I add. This time, I shoot Bert as pointed a look as I can manage. I watch as the sweat beads literally appear on his forehead.

“O-oh, yeah,” he says, “I better check to make sure they’re not… breaking anything…”

Good. Thank you, Bert.

With Bert successfully cleared out of the way, it’s just Marco and I, standing opposite sides of the kitchen table from one other. He doesn’t look up, his dark gaze focussed on the small wad of paper in front of him – but he’s not reading it.

“I thought you wanted a drink, Jean.”

“Not thirsty anymore,” I shrug, trying to keep my voice as casual as possible. I’m probably not the most successful at that, because even I can hear the tremble in my tone. Marco sighs breathily, and his entire chest deflates.

I decide to bite the bullet.

“You’re not okay,” I say. Way to state the obvious. I watch Marco’s face contort into a frown which really doesn’t suit him. “And don’t say you are, because even an idiot can see you’re lying. And I’m not an idiot. Well, sometimes I am, but…”

It’s clear that I’m rambling, but I’d keep rambling for a hell of a long time more if it promised to bring more of the smile that’s appearing again on Marco’s lips. It almost looks like he’s fighting it, the way his lower lip seems to quiver, but he just can’t help it.

“Jean,” he breathes; composes himself. “Don’t worry about it, okay? It’s no big deal.”

 _Oh yeah, you keep telling yourself that, Marco_ , I think, folding my arms across my chest defiantly.  I know that look perfectly well.

“Give me your van keys,” I say abruptly. Marco’s face shoots up, and he’s looking at me in complete bewilderment. I try to steel my own expression as best I can, and hold out an open palm. “Gimme your keys, man.”

I’ve been informed plenty a time by Connie and Sasha that my glares are perfectly capable of scaring people into doing stuff for me, so I hope this is one of those times.

“If you don’t give them up willingly, I’ll wrestle them off you,” I add. Apparently that’s a mental image enough for Marco to spring into action, pull his keys from the pocket of his slacks, and chuck them at me. I just about manage to catch them without dropping them and ruining the cool factor I have going on right now.

“Great,” I announce, curling my fingers around the cool metal and plastic of his key rings. “You and me are gonna go on a drive.”

“Jean,” he says again – I wonder if that’s just about the only thing he can say right now. Not that I’m complaining. I like the way he says my name, even when it’s like this.

“Don’t say a word. You don’t get a say in this,” I remark. My strides around the table are strong and purposeful, and I feel like I’m vibrating with energy. Marco, on the other hand, just follows me meekly out of the door.

“Connie!” I call, peering around the door into the living room, where the four of them are crammed on the sofa, focused intently on the TV screen.

“What is it Jean?” he calls back, not even looking at me, tapping frantically at the buttons on the controller. “Kinda busy right now!”

“Marco and I are going,” I announce, causing Bert to twist around to look at us in surprise. He shoots a questioning gaze at Marco – I reply by slinging my arm over the freckled pool boy’s shoulders, and squeeze his arm lightly. I feel him jump a mile under the touch, and he stiffens almost instantly. “Did you hear me, Connie? You don’t have’ta take me home, alright?”

“Alright, alright, I got it!” Connie shoots back, still concentrating intently on getting his ass handed to him by Annie, who seems as stoic as ever. I roll my eyes, and give Marco a little tug. He follows me, not unwillingly.

To be honest, this plan all seemed pretty suave in my head. And it was going alright until I slip into the driver’s seat of Marco’s van, him beside me, looking like someone’s just gone and run a cat over in front of him or something.

“Where are we going, Jean?” he asks, as I turn the key in the ignition. The van splutters a bit, but then the rough thrum of the engine takes over.

“It’s a surprise,” I reply. I reverse us out of park, and then swing onto the road a little too violently. Marco’s hand flits to the handle on the door, his fingers curling around it. I promise my driving isn’t _that_ bad. Come on now.

I decide then and there where we’re going – Reiner and Bert’s house is already halfway up the hill as it is, so the outlook isn’t far; maybe a ten minute drive at most. The silence doesn’t last for long – it’s crazy awkward after just thirty seconds of speeding along.

“Jean, I—”

“Hey, do you have—”

We both stop when the other tries to speak. Marco chuckles awkwardly, and rubs the back of his neck, whilst I harden my gaze back on the road ahead.

“You first, Jean.”

 _Alright, then_.

“Uh… you don’t have any music, do you?”

Marco smiles, but it’s the forced smile that I’ve decided I really do not like. He points to my door.

“There’s a few CDs in the pocket down there,” he says softly. “Take your pick.”

I reach down with one hand, and fumble around for a bit, managing to grab a stack of, sure enough, four or five CDs. I pass them across to Marco, trying not to take my eyes off the road as I don’t want to miss the turning.

“Read them out for me,” I instruct, dropping them into his waiting hands. I can feel his eyes move from the CDs, to me, and back to the CDs again, wordlessly.

“Uhm, okay,” he starts quietly. “But you can’t… laugh at my music taste.”

“I cross my heart,” I retort.

“Well, this one’s… My Chemical Romance. B-but we’re not going there again.”

“Quite right.”

“And then, uh… the Killers, Fall Out Boy, Snow Patrol, more My Chemical Romance, and uh… the _Shrek 2_ soundtrack…”

“The _Shrek_ _2_ soundtrack?” I laugh. “Why the hell do you have that?!”

“I-it’s a good album,” Marco replies with a stutter, though I can hear the evidence of a smile pushing its way through. “You just can’t help sing along to those sort of songs.”

“Fine, fine, put it in then,” I smirk. He struggles with opening the case – I realise his fingers are shaking just slightly – but successfully manages to get the disc in the stereo. _Accidently In Love_ by Counting Crows blasts out of the speakers, and Marco frantically turns the volume dial down. It’s a pretty infectious tune, I’ll give it to him, and I can’t help but beat the rhythm against the steering wheel as I take the turning that winds up onto the hilltop.

 

* * *

 

 

The tires of the van kick up a lot of brown dust when I pull onto the dirt track that veers off the main road, towards the outlook. We’re four tracks into the _Shrek 2_ soundtrack (which I may or may not be enjoying more than I would’ve first cared to admit), and Marco seems to have settled down a bit, leaning back into his seat, and not steeling glances at me every ten seconds. The sprawling mass of the city comes into view as we approach the edge, rooftops glinting in the bright sun below us.

Marco sits up then, straining his neck to look a little further into the distance.

“What is this place?” he says – do I detect some sort of appreciation in his tone? That makes me feel secretly smug. I drop the handbrake, and reach to unbuckle my seatbelt, unclipping Marco’s at the same time.

“It’s cool, right?” I reply. “It used to be a viewpoint or something, I reckon, but all the signs and shit got taken away years ago. Now it’s just a good place to come if you… you know… wanna get away from it all.” I offer him a rare, non-smirking smile, which causes him to bite his lip. “Come on then, you should check out the view properly.”

We both sort of stumble out of the van, shielding our eyes against the sun overhead. I gesture to Marco to follow me, and lead him to where the orange dirt and rocks tumble away over the slope of the cliff edge, into a thorny mess of brambles and shrubs.

“Wow,” he breathes, “I didn’t think Trost could ever look like this.”

I kick a small pebble over the edge, scuffing the white toe-cap of my Converse with an orange-brown smear.

“Yeah, it’s not bad,” I reply. I sneak a glance at Marco’s face: the openness I’m more used to seeing is resting in his eyes. I decide to make the most of the moment. “It’s a good place to get stuff off your chest, you know. No-one’s gonna hear you.”

He looks at me with what I guess is suspicion, clearly picking up on my agenda for bringing him here. I stuff my hands into my pockets, and shrug my shoulders.

“I-I do it all the time,” I continue. “Or, well, I used to. Connie, Sash and I used to come up here all the time. Not so much recently, but I’m getting back into it, you know? Sit on the hood of the car, have a couple smokes, complain about your life…” I trail off, still looking at him. His eyes are now fixed on the horizon.

I don’t want to make this about me. But I also want him to look at me, properly. And smile. I’ve grown pretty attached to that smile.

“… I can go first if you like. Show you how it’s done.”

Marco peeks at me from the corner of his eyes, curiously. Well, there’s no going back. Gotta do this now. I mean, he’s gonna find out what an idiot I am sooner or later.

I suck in a deep breath, throw my arms in the air, and _yell_ at the top of my lungs.

“Fuck you finals! Fuck you and all your fucking stress! I don’t want to have a fucking heart attack before I’m twenty, okay!”

Marco jumps a mile in the air beside me, hand clutching the fabric of his button-down against his chest. His eyes are wide.

“Jesus Christ, Jean!” he exclaims, and I lower my hands for just a moment. “Can you warn me next time before you do that!”

I feel my face explode into a grin, and I run my tongue across my teeth in triumph.

“Oh, I’m not done yet!” I laugh, then raising my voice once more: “Fuck you college! I don’t want to pick a fucking major, you hear me! I hate Philosophy! Fucking waste of my fucking time! And I hate you too, Bertrand Russell! Go get a fucking real job instead of spewing bullshit that I have to fucking learn!”

Marco just watches on, in a mix of horror, and perhaps, awe.

“And fuck you Eren fucking Jaeger! You made my life fucking miserable for twelve months you giant piece of shit! Fuck you! And fuck you, dad! I hate your guts! Fucking own up to your piece of shit existence and get out my life!”

I blow a sharp breath, and it feels like some of the pent up anger flies away into the hot air with it. I lace my hands together, and rest them on top of my hair, inhaling, exhaling. Marco’s taken a few steps back – probably for his own safety, because I must look absolutely fucking mental right now.

“Jean…” he begins, and I sense the tremble in his voice. I peer back over my shoulder at him, chewing the inside of my cheek again. From the look on his face, I can tell what he’s thinking. That’s a lot of information I’ve just gone and mouthed off that I haven’t told many people. And I haven’t told him even once about the Eren thing, or the dad thing.

But I didn’t come up here to make this about me. I don’t know exactly why I’m doing this this way… I don’t know him all that well, and he doesn’t know much about me in return.  
  
No, scratch that, I do. _I do_ know why I’m doing this. Somewhere along the line I started caring about him. If I was to pinpoint a date on it… yeah, that time he returned my shirt and complimented by drawings for the first time. That was the time I decided I wanted to be this guy’s friend. I wanted to get to know him better.

And if someone coulda done the same thing for me… well, let’s not go there.

“Your turn, Freckles,” I grin – and I hope my smile doesn’t seem as forced as the one he’s been sporting lately. I gesture widely to the vast expanse of open space before us. Marco blanches, and I think he shakes his head ever so slightly. Maybe I’m pushing this a bit too much. Especially with the possibly insane shouting.

“I can back off a bit, if you like?” I ask. “And if you don’t want to, you know… shout like a maniac, I kinda get that. But… it sure feels good.”

“… You’re crazy, you know that?”

“You only just noticed?” I snort, rolling my tongue inside my mouth out of habit. Marco’s arms are folding tightly across his chest again, and he’s pinching the skin at his elbows nervously. I decide to give him some breathing room, and turn heel back towards the van. I’m just about to scoot myself up onto the hood, when Marco speaks again.

“But really brave too.”

I literally feel my heart crash into the roof of my mouth, and I whip around to look at him again. He’s bright red, and not looking at me, but there’s that dazzling smile again, and…. _Oh boy_.

“Brave?” I dare to question.

He turns his back to me, looking out on the view again – maybe it’s easier to talk when there’s no eye contact.

“Yeah, brave. All of what you just said. That was brave, Jean.”

I wriggle up onto the hood, and rest my back against the windscreen, like I’m accustomed to doing whenever I come here. The white paint means the metal doesn’t scorch my legs, just radiates a gentle heat that doesn’t quite boil me alive.

“Well, it’s your turn now, alright,” I say back, my eyes still intent on his back. “Take as long as you like. Just make sure you think about whatever it is really hard, if you’re not gonna shout. I won’t judge.”

Marco nudges a couple of stones and a cloud of dirt over the edge, and his shoulders seem to drop as he does. I try to imagine the look of concentration that must be on his face as I stare up at the cloudless blue sky. I need a cigarette. It feels like it would fit the moment. Shame I left my last packet on my desk at home.

Marco doesn’t budge from that spot for a good half an hour, but I’m okay just watching his shoulders rise and fall with each breath, imagining the taste of smoke in my lungs, and enjoying the hum of the CD still playing in the van’s stereo. I can’t really make out the words, but the melody is enough to make me feel peaceful.

Like many other times, I add this moment to the Jean list of things-worth-remembering. Maybe because I know that when I get home, I probably won’t feel this quiet for a long while. I know I’m gonna have to deal with dad. And with my own frustration at my passiveness. But maybe I’m pinning this moment to mind for other reasons.

“Marco,” I call, gently at first. “You done yet, man?”

He looks back over his shoulder at me, and for some reason, I feel like I shouldn’t be looking at him. Like he’s still involved in something private that I don’t really deserve to be part of. But he smiles, and it’s that fucking smile that makes all the worries in the world go away at once.

“Sorry Jean,” he says, “I guess I got a bit lost in the view.” He takes one last look at sun-drenched Trost, and then makes his way over towards me. I scoot over on the hood to make room for him, and pat the patch beside me.  When he pulls himself up next to me, I breathe in the smell of camomile, delicate and earthy – would it be super creepy to say it’s like an aphrodisiac? Probably. I don’t care at this moment.

I’m the first to break the silence.

“I’m really sorry about Sunday, by the way,” I say. Marco turns his head to look at me questioningly. “I was a real douche. I shoulda realised something was up. I kinda did, as well. I could hear it in your voice on the phone. But I still called you over to sort out that thing with the damn dog. That was a real dick move.”

Marco sighs, and sinks down the windshield. The way he slumps looks unusual on him – not so Mr. Perfect, I guess.

“You don’t need to apologise, Jean.” I feel he wants to say more, and _I_ want him to say more, but he just leaves it at that.

“Fuck the world, huh?” I whisper. What comes from Marco is a tired, but amused snort of laughter.

“Fuck the world,” he repeats. I can’t help but grin at that, and lean back too, my shoulder resting against his as we both gaze up at the great big blue.

I’m not sure how long we sit there like that – that’s the thing about this place, it has a tendency to just absorb time like a sponge. The sun gets lower in the sky, but it’s still a ways off clipping the tops of any of the skyscrapers in the far distance. At some point, I feel the weight of Marco’s head tip onto my shoulder, and I look down at his mess of black hair, his eyes closed. I briefly wonder if he’s fallen asleep.

I find myself not minding either way, as it is.

“It’s… been a tough couple of days,” he then says quietly, and that does surprise me. I try not to let myself jump out of my skin too much.

“Are you still feeling sad?”

“… No. No, I don’t think so. Not sad. A whole bunch of other things, sure. But not sad.”

I murmur in agreement, in empathy, in I-don’t-really-know-what, and settle into the feeling of his weight resting on my arm. A tune vibrates in my mouth, and maybe a word or two of the lyrics slip out.

 _Hey now you're an All Star get your game on, go play_  
Hey now you're a Rock Star get the show on get paid  
And all that glitters is gold  
Only shooting stars break the mold

“... I told you the _Shrek_ soundtrack was great,” he mumbles, but I think he’s smiling.

“Oh shut up.”

 

* * *

 

We leave the outlook around five, when I eventually admit that I do need to get home for dinner at some point. I decide against the _Shrek_ soundtrack on the way back, finding, this time, the silence much more companionable. Talk about an emotional moment to bring two people together – or whatever it is that the saying is.

We’re winding back through the suburbs, Marco’s driving a lot better than mine was, I have to confess, when he speaks up.

“Does it make you scared?”

I glance at him, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the road. I notice how his grip tightens a little on the wheel, but then instantly loosens.

“Does what?”

This time he turns slightly to look at me. His eyes are friendly, understanding.

“Coming to terms with all that stuff you said up there. Does that scare you?”

I purse my lips and mull his words over. I wouldn’t say scared, no. A little frustrated, angry, yeah. I think I’d say relieved, too, in a way. Finally just _admitting_ all the shit I have to deal with, and how much is absolutely fucking sucks. Yeah, I think relieved _is_ the right word.

I’m not given the chance to reply though.

“ _You_ scare me.”

I splutter a bit, sitting up a bit straighter in my seat.

“W-why?” I ask, before steeling my surprise, and resorting to humour, as per. “Is it because of the shouting? Yeah, I guess I probably looking in-fucking-sane. I’ll give you that.”

“No,” Marco laughs, and it’s genuine. That calms me down. “No, no it’s not that.” The turning for my road comes up on the right, and Marco glides into the right-hand lane, the indicator flashing on the dash board. The grey-slate roof of my house shortly comes into view as we pull onto the street, and Marco tucks the van in behind another car, a few feet away from the back-gate.

He turns in his seat to look at me, and I find myself unable to look anywhere but his eyes.

“I think I’m scared because I want to tell you things that I can’t even tell myself.” He pauses to examine my expression – which can’t be much use, if I’m honest. “… How weird a thing is that to say?”

I narrow my eyes at him, but not in a frown, pursing my lips in a ridiculous fashion.

“… As weird as most of the stuff that tends to come out of your mouth, man.”

I get the feeling he wants to tell me what’s been going on his life – he’s real close, and I can sense the fact that the words are there, on the tip of his tongue. I reckon I’m not the only one who knows what it’s like being lonely and keeping stuff bottled up to yourself.

I make a decision then and there.

“Wait here,” I instruct. “I’ll be right back.”

I unbuckle my seatbelt, and leap out of the van, vaulting over the back gate in the least-clumsy fashion I can manage (which is, of course, still pretty fucking clumsy, because this is me we’re talking about). The back door is open, and my mom’s reclining on one of the patio chairs, sipping a drink as I thunder across the lawn.

“Jean!” she exclaims, as I zip past her, into the house without stopping.

“Sorry mom!” I call back, halfway through the kitchen as it is. I bound up the stairs two at a time, and into my room, alarmingly out of breath.

_Right. Where is it?_

 

* * *

 

I tap on the window of the van, and mouth to Marco through the glass to wind it down so that I can pass him the large, A4 envelope in my hands. He does as commanded, and receives the package with a curious look passed between me and it.

“Don’t open it here,” I instruct him firmly – I am definitely blushing like an idiot here. Not even I can deny that. “You gotta wait till you get home, you got it?”

I wonder if Marco even has the slightest idea what I’ve just handed him, but he nods, and props the envelope on the empty passenger seat.

There’s a moment of awkwardness, as I’m not sure what to say next, but I’m still leaning on the roof of the cabin, leaning in, with Marco looking up expectantly. I guess it shows on my face, because he goes and says something that just makes the whole situation ten times worse.

“I’m really glad you’re my friend, Jean.”

_Oh sweet merciful heavens._

“You’re such a dork.”

“I’ll see you… tomorrow?”

“Right. Sure you will.” I take a step away from the van, and press my hands deep into my pockets once more. “… I’ll be waiting.”

Nope, okay, _that_ was a dorky thing to say.

I don’t stick around much after that, peeling back through the gate, with Marco’s pleasant laugh resonating in my ears. Fuck, that makes me smile.

“Honey?” my mom asks as I near her again. I make a bee-line for the recliner next to her, and sink down into it gratefully. “What’s up? Is something the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

“Oh, but you’re _smiling_ , Jean.”

“ _Mom_.”

She chuckles to herself behind a sip of whatever she’s drinking, and seems to settle down in her chair too, matching our positions. I roll my eyes, but the grin on my face doesn’t even dare subside.

Well, it does. With the arrival of a text message.

**From: 815-XXX-XXX  
Jean! These drawings are amazing! I thought you’d have forgotten about that? I really don’t know what to say :))))**

I literally feel myself blanch at the message on my screen, my stomach screwing itself up into all sorts of crazy-ass knots. Freckled bastard. I can still hear the thrum of his van’s engine on the other side of the hedge.

**To: 815-XXX-XXX  
oh my fuckin god can u just leave already!!!! this shit is fucking embarrassing**

**To: 815-XXX-XXX  
and if i see ur freckled face any time before tomorrow im gonna punch u ok**

Okay, so maybe I had finished those drawings I may or may not have promised Marco I’d do for him, that one time he came into my room. And I may or may not have just given them to him in that large, brown envelope. And I may or may not have included a post-it with my number scrawled on it as well. You know, all hypothetically speaking.

**From: 815-XXX-XXX  
Why did you give me your number? :D**

I literally want to face-palm myself right now, but I resist the urge, but only because I don’t want my mom to ask any more awkward questions than absolutely necessary. I can feel her observing me from over the rim of her sunglasses as my eyes scan the text messages blipping through on my phone.

**To: 815-XXX-XXX  
uhm cos thats what friends do right??? and like… if u feel like talking about… stuff well u got my number now so u can reach me easily**

**To: 815-XXX-XXX  
and i just thought it’d be nice ok  but if ur gonna laugh at me then i promise iw ill change my number and probably elope to some foregin country nd thatll be the last u ever see of me u NERD**

**From: 815-XXX-XXX  
Thank you Jean :))))**

Fucking emoticons.

 

* * *

 

The stars are out that night. I mean, they’re usually out – the sky’s so clear in the summer in Trost – but tonight I actually care to look at them.

I smoke lazily, because it doesn’t hurt, and I don’t need to rush of the nicotine, or the burn of the hot smoke. I guess I just need something to do with my mouth – because let’s face it, the alternative is going to be grinning like an idiot however hard I try not to.

I check my phone, the screen lighting up the dark around me, but there are no new messages. But it doesn’t surprise me; one-thirty in the morning and I’d hope Marco be in bed. I use the moment to change his entry in my contacts to something more appropriate than just a number.

I look forward to tomorrow, simply for the fact that I know he’ll be smiling when he walks through the back gate.

I really like looking at that smile. I don’t hurt so much any more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically this was all part of chapter 5, but it got so long that I divided it up, and added a bit more to this half of the proceedings.
> 
> This time feels more emotional, and I'm enjoying getting into writing the more intimate scenes (I feel the pacing is about right, judging by the feedback you lovelies have been giving me).
> 
> I'm not explicitly answering questions, but you can take a good guess about both Jean and Marco's stories from the hints I've dropped so far.
> 
> As always, I appreciate the HELL out of all the comments (and kudos) you have all given me - but the more feedback as to what you like and dislike, the better I can make the story! Please let me know whether or not you feel Jean's thoughts and emotions feel realistic to you?
> 
> Also props to nikkispartanva, who's gonna be podfic-ing this for us all - the taster sounds great! (Even if it's so cringe for me to listen to my own writing back lmao)
> 
> Coming soon: more feelings, more pain, more pool.


	7. Hotel California

I could list the things I’m not very good at, but trust me when I say that would take a hell of a long time.

I could tell you that I’m really bad at going to bed on time, or making a pack of cigarettes last longer than a week, or putting my clothes in my laundry hamper after I’ve worn them. That I’m really bad at being honest with myself, even if I can lay it straight when I’m talking to anyone else. That when it comes to mushy shit like _feelings_ , I’d much rather run for the hills, than look a person in the eye for more than five seconds.

That I’m especially bad at dealing with awkward situations.

But like I said, this list could go on for a _really_ long time.

Unfortunately for me, I’m faced with what I would probably class as an awkward situation right now.

The sun is hot on the back of my neck, which really doesn’t help when it feels like I could self-combust pretty much right now. I curl over the textbooks I have spread over the patio table, folding my hands over the back of my head as I let my forehead fall onto the diagram of some chemical mechanism I should really fucking know by now; I let out a low whine.

_Pull yourself together, you colossal embarrassment. Stop making such a big fucking deal out of nothing!_

I can tell myself this as much as I like, but it’s not gonna shake the general feeling of being… well, _flustered_.

God damn it.

It’s that feeling of anticipation that curls itself up inside your stomach – twisting your guts up, until you literally can’t sit still for more than a moment ‘cause you really feel like you might just baulk. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

To call this sort of thing an overreaction… well, that’d be the understatement of the century. I untwine my fingers, and run them through the mess of blonde hair on top of my head, breathing out through my nose forcefully. I sit up straight, and try to school myself into _not being an idiot_ – but I’m holding onto the edge of the table with definitely more force than necessary.

_Jesus-fucking-Christ, Jean. All you did was give him some drawings!_

Very true. All I technically did do was give Marco those drawings. But that doesn’t stop me from imagining over and over again the moment when he’ll walk into the yard, grinning like a happy little shit, and I’ll undoubtedly screw up whatever I want to say, and make a fool of myself, and… and—

Okay, so technically it’s not an awkward moment yet. But it’s gonna be. I can feel that shit _in my bones_.

_Oh come on, it’s not like you regret it… you’d still give them to him if you had to play it through again. Think about how happy he sounded in his texts. God._

Right. Let’s think about this _rationally_ , here. What should I say? Should I just, you know, play it cool – like it wasn’t _the_ most dorky thing I could’ve done yesterday?

Oh God, it definitely was. I can’t deny it. So, so, _so_ dorky. Kings of the dorks.

Considering the fact I’m having a mental back-and-forth between how smooth I felt yesterday, and how _not-smooth_ I feel now looking _back_ on yesterday, it’s not a surprise I don’t hear the back gate swing open, and rustle against the hedge.

I practically jump a mile into the air when a hand plants itself on my shoulder from out of thin air – my yelp of surprise is literally _the_ most emasculating thing that’s ever come out of my mouth.

“Gaaaaah!” I spin around in my seat, throwing my hands up in the air. “M-Marco!”

The surprise on his face (from being screamed at, no doubt) quickly melts away into a gleeful – genuine – grin. He runs the hand that was on my shoulder through the hair that falls onto his forehead, scraping it back against his head.

“Sorry Jean,” he chuckles, “It, uh… looked like you were having one hell of an internal debate there.”

“I-I wasn’t…” I mumble, flicking my gaze away from his face as I contort my mouth into disgruntled pout. “You, uh… you look happy today. Uh, I mean… like, happier than… yesterday?”

It’s exactly as I feared. Someone please explain to me why exactly I was looking forward to… this? _Fucking tongue-tied_.

“Uh-huh,” Marco smiles – but he doesn’t say anymore, leaving his words hanging in the air between us. He wants me to broach the subject. I swear to God, I regret every single time I called you freckled Jesus, because _I see how it is_ , deliberately making me want to suffer!

“Jean?” he asks – I whip my eyes back to meet his, as he taps one of his fingers on his cheeks. “You’re looking a little bit red. You might be sunburned.”

“I’m not sunburned,” I mutter, twisting back around to glare at the words in my text book. Acid chlorides. Anhydrides. Esters. Carboxylic acids. _Look how much happier he looks today_.

Oh geez.

I expect him to shrug it off – with a laugh perhaps – and head back to the pool side to start working, with some smart-aleck comment at my expense. But that’s not what happens. The chair beside me screeches across the concrete – Marco falls into it effortlessly, and rests his arms on the table top. His eyes don’t leave my face.

I scowl – and it’s obvious that I’m not doing that because of the Chemistry I’m pretending to read.

“I really did mean what I wrote in my text yesterday,” he says softly. “Those drawings are amazing.”

I can feel my ears getting increasingly hot, and I focus all my willpower into boring holes with my glare into the mass of black text on the page in front of me.

“… Aaand I can see you’re embarrassed,” he then adds, with a light chuckle. The chair creaks as he leans back in it; I catch him running a strand of hair between his thumb and forefinger. That’s not his nervous quirk, I mentally note. That’s his _I’m-thinking_ quirk.

“I’m not… embarrassed,” I grumble hesitantly. “I’m just… not good with the… gushy crap, you know?” I add as an afterthought: “I’m glad you liked ‘em.”

The smile that lights up his face is not patronising, or pitiful of the fact that I have absolutely zero skill with words – it’s just… well, I’ve taken to calling it a _Marco-smile_ , haven’t I? Or for lack of better word, I guess.

I get the impression he wants to say something else, but we’re interrupted by the arrival of mom, teetering across the patio in her ankle-breakers, balancing two stacked tumblers in one hand, and a jug in the other.

“Oh, Marco!” she exclaims, “I didn’t realise you were here already! Do you want something to drink?”

Marco slides to his feet, scooting the chair back from the table. I find myself pursing my lips together in a hard line.

“Oh, no, I’m alright,” he smiles politely. “I should really get to work.”

I turn back – properly – to my studying, aware of how my mom’s still rabbiting on to Marco at the pool side, who’s humouring her with awkward chuckles as usual. I manage to rescue the situation from continuing too long, by calling out to my mom that the lemonade she’s holding is gonna get warm if she doesn’t stop pestering Marco, and to put it down already.

Marco nods his head in my direction as a thank you, his eyes only briefly straying to watch my mom occupy the chair across the table from me. She unhooks her sunglasses from the scooping-neckline of her shirt, and relaxes into the recliner, assuming the best view of the pool boy. As per.

Below the table, I sneak out my phone, and type out a quick message with one hand, feigning interest in my work, as I flip the page of my book.

**To: Marco-Polo  
sorry about my mom**

I steal a glance across the yard as Marco obviously receives my message, his hand darting down to where his mobile vibrates in his pocket. He frowns a little, upon seeing the sender, and it seems like he almost moves to throw me a questioning look.

I quickly send another.

**To: Marco-Polo  
u looked like u wanted to say some more stuff when she interrupted lmao**

**From: Marco-Polo  
Are you seriously texting me across the yard, Jean?**

**To: Marco-Polo  
yes**

I look up at that, and see him struggling to repress a smirk with a bite of his lip. He’s leaning on the pool net, tapping away at his phone – and he’s lucky my mom is so attracted to him that she’s gonna be unlikely to realise he’s doing absolutely no work.

 

* * *

 

The next few days pass pretty smoothly – which is a blessing for me, considering the general hand of bad luck I’ve been receiving lately. I’m not subjected to any phone calls from my dad’s office from girls my age, and I don’t run into Eren the few times I make the drive to campus for revision classes.

I manage to persuade Marco to download Snap Chat to his phone – despite the fact he assures me that he doesn’t really understand how to use apps – and particularly enjoy the first few awkward snaps of not-quite-getting-how-it-all-works.

It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m sitting with Connie, Sasha and Historia in the library, when I get a particularly good one through on my phone. He’s managed to snap a blurry selfie of himself pulling a horrified face, the figure of a woman over his shoulder, in nothing but a bikini, reclining on a pool-side deckchair. The caption reads: _Help! Another one!_

I try to stifle my laugh, preparing my reply, but apparently Sasha has ears like a bat.

“Something funny?” she asks – but I recognise that pure _evil_ glimmer in her eyes all too well.

“No,” I reply curtly, probably too curtly, because she lunges across the table to try and grab my phone from my hands, sending most of her revision notes flying. Fortunately, I’m well prepared, and hoist it out of the way, pushing her face back with my free hand. Not this time! “Get lost, Sasha!”

She licks my hand, and I recoil away in disgust, wiping my palm up and down my jeans vigorously. “That’s fucking gross!”

“Don’t put your hand in my face then,” she pouts, still half-lent across the table. Waiting for another chance. I know her too well. _I got this_.

I lean back on the legs of my chair, and, holding my phone as close to my chest as physically possible, manage to type out my reply: _i dont think my mom will wanna share lol_ , accompanied by what I’m sure is a mega-attractive picture of my face, a handful of double-chins and a view up my nose included. Marco will have to deal with that. It’s better than having Sasha get her hands on my phone again… it can only ever end badly.

“You’ve been attached to your phone all day, man,” Connie remarks, his expression mimicking Sasha’s. Mischievous. _Dangerous_. “Who ya’ texting?”

“No-one,” I scowl, hoping that my expression will scare them into not asking anymore questions. It doesn’t work as I’d hoped.

“You’re being suspiciously defensive, Jean,” Sasha smirks, holding her chin between her thumb and index-finger. “Is she hot?”

“N-no! It’s not –” I splutter. _Well, actually…_ “Can you two not keep your noses out of my business for like, _two_ fucking seconds?”

“Gosh, you’re so boring,” Sasha groans, flopping back into her chair, and folding her arms across her chest. She glances around at the splay of paper all over the table – and floor – but doesn’t move to clear it up.

I pull a face, wrinkling my nose in her direction, and aim to turn back to the books. I’m not prepared to be pounced on by a flying, bald monkey.

“Ahhh, fuck!” I shout, my arms flailing as I try to stop myself topping over in my precariously balanced chair. Connie – the little demon child – uses the opportunity to grabble my cell phone from my hand, squawking in victory.  “Hey! Give that back you little shit!”

I’m not exactly sure what I’m sorry worried about him finding – it’s just a lot of dumb back-and-forth between Marco and I, and a couple memos from my mom to pick up milk from the store on the way home – but _still_. These two jump at any opportunity.

Fortunately, I have a blue-eyed _angel_ looking out for me. Historia expertly pinches my phone from Connie’s grip, and hits the lock button, the screen flashing back to black.

“Leave him alone, you two,” she says, as sternly as she can. “We’re in a library, remember?” I’m suddenly aware that every pair of eyes in the immediate area are trained on our table and… not looking particularly happy with us. _Whoops…_

I sink a little lower in my seat, gratefully accepting my phone back as Historia slides it across the table to me. It lights up with a new message as I take in my hand.

**From: Marco-Polo  
Wow, you’re SO attractive, Jean :P**

I check to make sure neither Connie nor Sasha are watching me – sure enough, they’re both bashfully nose-in-books, cowering under the glares coming their way – and sneak a reply.

**To: Marco-Polo  
not all of us can look like a freckled chris evans ill have u know**

I don’t get a reply to that one – maybe calling out his shoulder-to-waist ratio of a Dorito is stepping over the mark a bit. Oh well. I tuck my cell back into the safety of my slacks’ pocket, and return to my revision.

 

* * *

 

“I. Am. So. Bored.”  I can practically feel my brain turning to liquid mush and seeping out of my ears – there are only so many irregular verb conjugations one guy can take before he loses it. Why can’t they all just work the same? It’d make my life a whole fucking lot easier.

“I thought you liked French?” Marco chuckles, swinging his pool net across the concrete slabs, and shaking it over one of the white-plastic buckets that always accompanies him. I lie back on the stairs of the pool hut, feeling the sharp edge of the stone cut into my back – but I can’t be assed to move. I drop the open text book that I was holding over my face, shielding my eyes from the sun.

It’s Saturday. Just a normal Saturday. Hot weather. Revision. Marco. It’s become a routine. (Although I’m definitely more adverse to two of those things more than the other.)

“I never said I liked it,” I groan, voice slightly muffled by the book covering my face. “’S just that I’m good at it, so it doesn’t feel so much like a chore, ya’ know? Still boring as hell.”

“When are your exams?” Marco asks, his smile as unwavering as ever. I push the textbook forward a little, so that I can see him better over the top of the creased spine – but I don’t quite have it in me to sit up.

“Start a week on Monday,” I reply – I’m sure my enthusiasm just _radiates_ through. Marco sort of gives a noncommittal nod, before dunking the net back in the water, swirling it around in a figure of eight along the tiled floor. “I’ve got Chemistry and French the first week, and then the other three the week after. Fucking Philosophy is basically the last on the timetable – which is just my fucking luck. Sasha finishes on the tenth, and I’m not off till the _sixteenth_ —”

“The sixteenth?” Marco cuts in, his tone laced with gentle surprise.

“Yeah,” I sigh. The concrete is really making my butt go numb – I’ve been sitting out here ever since Marco pitched up at lunch time.

Marco mumbles something, and I don’t quite catch it, but I recognise the look of could-be-sunburn but actually probably a blush, on his face.

“What d’ya say, sorry?”

His mouth forms a round o-shape when he realises I didn’t hear him the first time, and he runs one of his hands through his undercut. I’ve noticed it’s getting a bit long lately.

“Oh, uh – I said: the sixteenth is actually my birthday.”

That makes me sit up, my French textbook falling down into my lap. I find myself grinning.

“Oh yeah? I’ll have to get ya’ something then.” It briefly passes my mind that I probably could’ve held onto those drawings from the other week for such an occasion as this, but… well, I guess I’ll have to get more creative this time. It gives me a great sense of satisfaction to watch Marco’s expression turn increasingly flustered.

“No, you don’t have to!” he says quickly. “You have finals to study for, and I d-don’t want you spending any money on me, Jean—”

Maybe it’s still slightly weird in his mind that I’m telling _the pool guy_ that I want to at least celebrate his birthday somehow – but I’d like to hope we’ve passed that stage. Because in my head, it’s definitely first: _friend_ , and then consequently: _pool guy_.

“You’re saying it like my family _doesn’t_ have surplus amounts of cash to spend,” I smirk crookedly. “It’s not a problem, honestly. And you know me—” I pause for dramatic effect, putting my hands on my hips as best I can whilst sitting down. “I am the _king_ of procrastination. I’ll get you something. Any excuse to blow off studying is good in my books.”

“It looks like you’re studying pretty hard to me,” Marco chimes – nodding his head to the pile of notebooks at my side. I guess he’s not entirely wrong. A lot of what I say _is_ bravado, I’m not gonna lie. I don’t really want to fail these exams, however much it _would_ tick off my dad.

“If you tell anyone I’m _secretly a nerd_ , I’ll slit your kneecaps and mail you to Antarctica, you got me?” I grin, hoping my threat isn’t too gruesome for his liking. Marco just throws his head back and laughs.

“Do you want to practice some French with me?” he then says, his smile pulled up as far as I reckon it’ll go. His teeth are blindingly – perfectly – white (and I wouldn’t expect any less).

“You don’t speak French,” I state, but he only shrugs.

“No,” he agrees. “But maybe it’ll help if you just speak it at me. That’s how I used to practice speaking to patients – I would run through it with my mom, even if she didn’t understand half the stuff I would say.” He seems to look a little wistful at that, so I quickly jump in before he dwells too much on the bad stuff.

“Yeah, alright then,” I say, adjusting my position a little, trying to get feeling back in my butt. “At least you won’t be able to tell me that my accent sucks balls.”

I start by explaining to him a bit about the general changes in French literature between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – if ever there was a topic that would make you want to claw your eyes out in absolute _fucking_ boredom, it’d be this – but Marco just seems to settle into the sound of my Americanised accent, and it almost looks like he could be worlds away (which I wouldn’t blame him for, because I’m sure it just sounds like garbled nonsense in his head).

I move on to talking about one of the case studies we’d looked at in class – some absolute BS about how Hugo and Dumas’ books translate into modern France – but change my tone a bit, throwing in plentiful amounts of _merde_ and _putain_ , and even finishing off with a heartfelt _c’est vraiment des conneries_ , but Marco doesn’t take notice of any amount of swear words I dutifully insert into my monologue.

“Hé Marco, je pourrais dire n'importe quoi maintenant, et tu ne t'en rendrais pas compte.” _Hey, Marco, I could be saying anything right now, and you wouldn’t realise it._

He doesn’t even notice when I obviously say his name. Wow. Well then, time to change tactics. I mean, being around Connie and Sasha kinda rubs off on you, right?

“Alors, combien de ménagères as-tu baisé?” _So how many housewives have you slept with?_

Still no bite.

“Je parie que tu aimes toute l'attention. Qui n’aime pas les femmes désespérées et d'âge moyen?” _I bet you secretly love the attention. Who doesn’t love desperate, middle aged women?_

Okay, still nothing. How about this, then.

“Mais moi j’voulais une moustache, une moustache, une moustache.” _That_ gets him to notice.

“Jean, I may not speak French, but I’m not stupid,” he says – trying to sound stern, but failing pretty dismally. The laughter lines around his eyes are all creased up. “Why are you talking about moustaches?”

“It’s a song,” I grin back, hoping to look as positively shit-eatingly cheeky as possible. “It’s called _Moustache_. Unsurprisingly.”

“I doubt your examiner is going to give you many marks for writing down song lyrics about facial hair,” he chuckles.

“There’s always a first time.”

Marco snorts loudly – it’s a really unattractive sound, but I can’t help but feel the burst of pride at making him laugh like that. I rock forward, resting my elbows on my knees, and my chin in my palms, watching him as he shakes his head at me, in amused disbelief.

“You’re ridiculous, you know.”

“Tell me something I _don’t_ know, man.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m going out of town ‘till Friday,” my dad announces at dinner on Sunday night. My mom props her cutlery down on her plate, and looks more surprised than I would like her to be.

“Again, honey?” she says, “This is the third time this month. You work yourself _too_ hard sometimes.”

I awkwardly push the vegetables around my plate, forming a small tower of peas that I don’t feel like eating (and it’s not just because I’m not a fan of the green stuff). I have a sinking feeling in my stomach that this trip might not _just_ be business.

I can feel the words forming in my stomach – the things that I want to just stand up and shout at that fat, old man sitting at the other end of the table. But… you don’t just need words to be able to do that. You need courage. I _don’t_ have that.

“And I went and did a shop this week too, because I thought you’d be home,” my mom continues to moan, a pout on her bright-red lips. “All that wasted food.”

“We can just freeze it, mom,” I mutter – neither of them even turn to look at me; I wonder if they even heard me speak. Not that it really matters. The tower of peas topples, and I lose one over the side of my plate. I sigh.

“I can’t help it, Céline,” my dad replies courtly, “It’s a busy part of the financial year, you know that. Lots of complicated contracts to sign that you wouldn’t understand, honey.” The way he talks to her makes me feel uneasy – how his voice is laced with patronisation, how he talks to her like she’s an idiot. I’ve started to notice that recently.

My mom seems disheartened, and she takes a sip of her wine, not pressing the conversation any further. I decide to try my luck.

“I was thinking of maybe doing a study session sometime this week, mom,” I lie. I hadn’t actually. But I want to take her mind (or more likely, my mind) off what my dad’s just said. “If that’s cool, I mean? It would solve the problem of having food go to waste if I had a couple friends over.”

It works a treat.

“Oh, that sounds like a lovely idea, darling,” she coos. That placates me a little. “It was so lovely to see Connie and Sasha back again the other week. Of course they can come around.”  
  
I probably didn’t even need to mention the studying thing – my mom would agree to anything involving those two. My dad, on the other hand…

“As long as you’ll be studying, Jean,” he says sternly, gesturing at me with his fork. I stare him down as best I can. “I don’t want you and your friends taking advantage of your mother and blowing off work. It’s serious now. You’ve got to think about your future.”

I’m not going to tell him that I’ve just made this whole scenario up on the spot, of course. That I don’t actually plan on inviting hooligans number one and two around again until _after_ exams. But again, there’s that spark of _you don’t like this, so I’m gonna fucking well do it_ lodged in my system.

“’Course I’m thinking about my future, dad,” I say, with a shrug. “I said we were gonna study, didn’t I? So, like, _trust_ me for once.” I hope he tastes the spite in my tone. I hope he picks up on how I stress the word _trust_. I hope he feels guilty.

 

* * *

 

I manage to catch my mom in the kitchen after dinner, once dad has crawled away to his study to “work”. I help her load the dishwasher, holding each plate in my fingertips, as far away from myself as I can manage, to avoid touching the gross food-water dripping from the plastic trays. My mom just rolls her eyes, and hits the door closed with her hip once she’s done.

“So what day do you think you’ll have Connie and Sasha around then, darling?” she asks, wiping her hands on the dishtowel slung over the door of the oven - I just opt for wiping mine hurriedly on my jeans.

“…I wasn’t actually thinking about Connie and Sasha,” I say slowly, gaging her reaction. Her face seems to drop a little.

“Oh.”

An idea suddenly pops into my head – and you know, fuck it, it’s worth a try.

“I was, uh, thinking maybe someone else… maybe, you know, since dad’ll not be here, we could see if… Marco… wanted to stay for dinner?”

In the half second that my mom stares dumbly at me as she processes what I’ve just asked her, I consider the two ways which this could go. The first, of course, is going to be nauseatingly enthusiastic agreement, because why _would_ mom ever pass up an opportunity to have Freckles inside the house? The second possibility is shock, because she might like ogling him, but inviting the pool boy in for dinner is a bit… well, probably not socially _customary_ in her books.

I kinda hope it’s the first possibility, if I’m brutally honest. In fact, it’s not really either.

“Marco…?”

I just stare blankly back at her, thinking: _yes, mom, you know, freckled version of Captain America, comes around twice a week, cleans the pool whilst you perv on his abs. That Marco_.

She obviously doesn’t quite get it.

“You mean, Marco, our _pool boy_?”

“Yes, mom, _Marco_. The only Marco we know. So, how about it?”

There’s a strange moment, because while I don’t think she looks necessarily _confused_ , she seems to look at me as if she contemplating something. But whatever the hell it is, she doesn’t voice it.

“Sure,” she simply says. “That sounds like a lovely idea, Jean. We can ask him about it on Wednesday when he’s over.”

“Nah, it’s cool, I’ll just text him now,” I reply – and I feel like I ought to regret the way my face contorts into a smile, but I distinctly _don’t_. I watch as my mom just quirks one of her finely-plucked eyebrows in my direction.

 

* * *

 

It takes me at least five attempts to write a text message that doesn’t sound, firstly, too corny, or secondly, too much like I’m asking Marco out on a date or some shit. But eventually I settle for something on the right side of _whatever_ , and hit send before I can change my mind.

**To: Marco-Polo  
hey man so my mom wants to know if u wanna come round for dinner this week sometime**

Actually, let’s be real – he’s _not_ gonna say yes if I tell him it’s my mom’s invite. I’d run in the opposite direction if it were me. I quickly send a follow up.

**To: Marco-Polo  
well actually it wasnt my moms idea it was mine but she said yes**

**To: Marco-Polo  
so what do u think**

**To: Marco-Polo  
ive got an xbox if that seals the deal any better**

**To: Marco-Polo**  
we can play dead rising 3 its pretty cool  
  
 **To: Marco-Polo**  
i don’t even know if ur into that sorry

**To: Marco-Polo  
but u should come over anyway ok**

I frown at my phone screen, realising it definitely looks like I’m rambling. And I don’t know why I would be. It’s just Marco – it’s not like I’m trying to ask Mikasa ‘round for a date night (because trust me, I’ve tried before, and if you ever want a definition of a _smack down_ …).

But fuck, I can’t look away from my inbox – I hold my phone above my head as I lie on my back, on top of my duvet, staring at all the already-read mail.  It doesn’t take long for a reply to arrive, though. I click to open it as quickly as humanly possible.

**From: Marco-Polo  
I’d love to come over. :D**

I exhale a long, _long_ breath as my fingers whip over the touch-screen keyboard, rattling out a response.

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
cool which day is best for u  
  
 **To: Marco-Polo**  
and also what do u like to eat and stuff

**From: Marco-Polo  
Wednesday works best for me. Maybe I can just stick around after cleaning the pool? And I eat basically everything. :D**

I text him back to tell him that’s fine, and then drop my phone onto my chest with a satisfied huff. So yeah, not necessarily something I was planning on doing, but you know, I’m hella looking forward to this now. Spending quality time with the guy who may or may not have become the closest thing I’ve had to a best friend in a long time – and I’m not _really_ sure when that happened. But it’s cool. I’ll go with it.

 

* * *

 

 _Of course_ the week has to drag by fucking slowly. On Monday, I spend most of the day at home, caught in the panic stage of _oh my fucking god I haven’t learnt enough and the exam is next fucking week_ , but on Tuesday and Wednesday, I feel slightly calmer, mainly due to the fact that if I’m screwed, Connie is _royally_ screwed.

We’re sitting in the library, pouring through an old exam paper, and I’m getting increasingly frustrated at the fact he _still_ hasn’t memorised the Taylor Series for Math.

“Jesus Christ, man,” I groan, stabbing my finger into my note book in front of his face. “You just gotta learn the formula! You get stuck on this every time we do practice questions.”  
  
“I can’t do it, I can’t cram anything more into my head!” Connie wails, throwing his hands up in the air. The library is relatively empty this time around, and those who are still here are probably used to the general hysteria and mental-breakdowns that accompany exam period. I definitely am. This is the third time Connie’s had a meltdown within the last _hour_.

My phone blips at that moment, reminding me to stop by the store on the way home to pick up some essentials for mom. It’s already gone four – so time to leave Connie to wallow alone.

“Look man,” I say, sweeping my mess of notes and papers into my rucksack. “I gotta scram. You better not leave until you’ve learned that formula though. I’ll ring you up when I get home to check, if you’re not careful.”

“I hate you, Jean. But not as much as I hate Math.”

 

* * *

 

It’s five-thirty by the time I pull up to the driveway of the house – my Jag (a gratuitous present from my dad post-passing my test) purrs as I tuck in behind my mom’s coupe, and kill the engine. The drive hadn’t been bad – but the first store I hit was out of Marlboro’s, meaning a detour one neighbourhood over to replenish my stock.

I sling my rucksack over one shoulder, and balance the bag of groceries on my hip as I struggle with opening the front door with one hand. I meet my mom as she’s coming down the stairs, and I am genuinely surprised by the fact she’s wearing flat sandals, rather than some ridiculous pair of stilettos, as per when Marco’s around.

She greets me, and I follow her into the kitchen as she asks me the generic: _how was your day_ style questions. I offer her a couple careless grunts and _myehs_ , my eyes instantly flicking out into the yard, where Marco’s whistling to himself as he’s packing up his equipment. I dump the brown paper bag of food on the counter top, and head straight for the back door.

“Yoooooo, Marco! Your favourite person is here, _and_ he brought food!”

He looks up, stops whistling, and a grin erupts on his face. I can’t help but return it.

“I hope you’re hungry, because we’ve got, like, a week’s worth of food to eat!” I smile crookedly as he strides over. I slip back into the kitchen, and start unpacking the groceries which my mom is nosing over. I’m glad I slipped my cigarettes into my rucksack.

“You bought beer, Jean?” she frowns, gesturing at the six-pack at the bottom of the bag. “Who sold you that without an ID?” I shrug playfully, blowing my cheeks out as I rip off two cans from the cardboard sleeve.

“Yup,” I say, watching as Marco slips off his flip-flops on the doormat, and steps onto the white-tiled floor, if a little hesitantly. I raise one of the cans towards him. “Hey, you want one?”

He doesn’t really have much of a choice as I toss him one of the cans – he fumbles with it as he catches it, looking momentarily confused.

“It’s just one,” I smirk, pulling the tab on mine as I lean back against the counter. _To celebrate_.

Not that I’m sure what I’m celebrating, but it feels like I should be. Even if I’m bogged down in studying, and my exams are next week, and my dad’s halfway across the state boning some twenty-year-old over his desk.

But I bought beer. I can’t remember the last time I did that – let alone drink any sort of alcohol. I find my eyes on Marco as he takes a curious sip of his drink, and his eyebrows furrow at evident dislike for the bitter stuff. My lips curl up, and I chuckle.

“That better be just one for you as well, Jean,” my mom instructs, pouting a little. As she flits across the kitchen, I pick up on the fact that she’s not… well, swooning as usual. Sure, she gives Freckles a grateful once over, but…

“Is there anything you’d like me to help with, Mrs Kirschtein?” Marco then asks, and I frown. Damn you, _you saint_. Now I’m going to be roped in to help as well.

“Oh, that’d be lovely, Marco,” she smiles. “If you and Jean could chop the veg, that’d be wonderful.”

Marco seems perfectly fucking pleased at this development, but when he looks over at my grouchy face, he laughs, and rolls his eyes.

_Don’t you roll your eyes at me, Freckles!_

I take a long draught of beer – it’s just a bit too dry for my tastes, but it’s still cool enough to be refreshing in the heat. I make a long arm for the knife block and the chopping boards, as Marco comes to join me – I elbow him roughly in the side when my mom’s not looking, but he just jostles me playfully on the shoulder in return.

It turns out – alongside all the other stuff (like being smart enough to get into pre-med, and looking like a Greek God, and just being an all-round perfect person), Marco is super pro at cutting vegetables. He does it that professional way, dicing the onion into little cubes, and peeling potatoes in one, long strip. In comparison, I suck. Well, not even in comparison. Cooking was never really my forte.

“You’re really making a mess of that,” he chuckles, leaning over my shoulder to watch my haphazard chopping. He’s so close that I feel his breath on my neck. I stiffen automatically.

“S-shut up,” I shoot back, “’S not like I do this very often.”

“No, _he doesn’t_ ,” my mom interrupts from the stove, waving a wooden spoon in our direction. “You’re such a blessing to have around, Marco. You should move in _permanently_.”

Marco’s laugh is musical, and I debate whether or not I should stuff some potato peel down the back of his shirt in revenge. I don’t though, but only because of the fact he tugs my chopping board away from me, and plucks the knife from my hands, his fingers gracing over my knuckles, and finishes chopping my half of the veg expertly. I take another gulp of my beer as I watch the way his hands move, and the way his face steels in concentration.

 When he’s done, I take our combined efforts and scrape them into the pan sizzling on the stove, and my mom allows us to leave. I firmly plant Marco’s beer back in his hands, and nod for him to follow me.

“Your mom is really nice when she’s not hitting on me,” he says, when we’re out of ear shot from the kitchen. I snort loudly, and take another swig of the dry stuff. The comfort of the couch in the living room is calling to me, but Marco’s voice stops me halfway across the hall. “Oh— Jean, is this you?”

I twist around, and to my horror, find him pouring over some of the family photos strung up across the walls.

“No,” I say automatically – though, of course it’s obviously me. A particularly attractive one of chubby, three-year-old me sitting on my dad’s knee at my birthday. I’ve asked mom to take it down multiple times, but she always makes an excuse. (I can think of _one hundred_ excuses why I don’t want it up there, believe me.) “I mean, yeah, that’s _me_ , but stop looking at that crap Marco. Come _on_.”

“I didn’t realise your hair was naturally like that,” he laughs, as I march back over to him, where he’s gesturing at my fat little face. “You were so cute as a baby, Jean.”

…

“Are you saying I’m not cute _now_?”

I regret the words the minute they come out my mouth.

_Jean, you may have just out-gayed yourself. Straight dudes don’t ask stuff like that. Congrats._

“… Not with the face you’re pulling now, you’re not.” Apparently the scowl on my face is enough to keep back the furious blush that I can feel crawling up the back of my neck.

Marco, on the other hand, seems embarrassed enough for the both of it. I literally hear the sound of him sucking air back into his mouth as he realises that he maybe shoulda thought his comeback through a little better.  
  
 _Not_ now _, but…_

“Uh I… what I meant was –”

“I-it’s cool, man, I got what you meant,” I stutter, turning away from him. “It’s cool. No homo. Come on.”

He seems hesitant to follow me through to the living room, trailing behind as I collapse onto the couch, swinging my legs up onto the white cushions. Marco drops down onto the couch at my feet, squeezing his hands between his knees. He doesn’t lean back, so I give him a dutiful kick in the thigh.  
  
“Knock it off,” I smirk. He seems to relax when he sees my smile.

A few more kicks in the side prompts him into talking – he asks me about how the studying’s going, about how I’m feeling about which exams, all boring shit like that. He clasps and unclasps his hands repeatedly – and eventually I’m not even listening to what he’s saying, simply watching how his fingers tense, how his rubs the skin at his knuckles too hard.

“Why are you nervous?”

“I, uh… I’m nervous?” he asks innocently. My mouth forms a tight line, and I haul myself up into a sitting position, using the back of the couch as leverage. I fold my arms around my knees, and shuffle forwards, a little closer.

“Obviously. You’re wringing your hands like crazy. What’s up?”

“I’m not, I just –” He breaks off when he meets my eyes, set into as firm a frown as I can manage. “I’m just, you know, wondering why…”

“Why what?”

“… You invited me ‘round?”

Where did this come from, I wonder – because he was hella confident and perfectly okay with one-upping me in the kitchen back there. Did I say something that wasn’t cool? Did I say something that made him doubt why I…

My train of thought circles back around to the fundamental question here: _why_ , indeed? And I can’t just say: yeah, my dad decided to go out of town to fuck some whores, and we needed someone to help us eat up all the food in the house. Even if that is true (which yeah, I guess it partially is), I get the feeling in my chest that’s it’s not the only reason.

“I dunno, man,” I shrug, running a hand through my undercut, the short, dark hairs prickly against my hand. “I just thought you’d like to. Why d’ya ask?”  
  
It’s totally not like I want to spend time with you or anything. It’s not like I’m _that_ pathetic that the minute someone shows vague interest in me, I latch onto them and do everything I can to get their attention… nooooo, not at all.

(Yeah, so this is the result of the last twelve months. Sorry Marco. Looks like you’re stuck with me now.)

Marco sighs, and leans back into the sofa, slinking down and dropping his shoulders. He twiddles his thumbs in his lap, thinking.

“It’s nothing,” he says, his voice small. “Thank you, Jean. It’s a nice excuse to get my mind off… other things.”

I shuffle a little closer, wedging my toes under his legs – surprise crosses his face, but he doesn’t move away from me.

“Other things?” No doubt he’s alluding to the outlook incident. Just like then, I get the feeling that the things he wants to say are on the tip of his tongue. But neither of us get the chance to speak.  
  
“Jean! Marco! Dinner’s ready!”

My mom’s got really good at interrupting moments just like this, when I think he’s going to tell me something about himself. Way to go, mom. Way to go.

 

* * *

 

One of the main things I like about Marco, I’ve decided, is the fact that I don’t have to be one-hundred-percent on edge when he’s around. He knows how to talk to my mom without me cringing so hard I self-combust, he smiles when he should, he laughs politely, he doesn’t _fill his plate to the size of a small mountain_ at dinner time (lookin’ at you, Sash).

Across the table from him, I find myself absorbed in the way he holds his cutlery, the way he places his glass back down on the table top without it making a sound, and the way he doesn’t slouch in the chair – like I do. I wriggle upright a little more, trying to mimic his posture, but I just feel like I’m trying too hard here.

_Wow, if mom even wanted a perfect son… he does this shit like he was born into it._

I jolt back into the conversation when my mom brings up something about Marco’s personal life.

“Nothing beats home cooked food, don’t you think?” my mom laughs coyly, resting her chin in her palms, and batting her eyelashes at poor Freckles – apparently he just made the novice mistake of genuinely complimenting her cooking. “Do you cook much, at home?”

“Yeah, when I can,” he replies, with a puppy-like, tilt of his head. _Stop trying to look endearing, you giant doofus_. “I usually cook dinner for my sister and me, because my mom works late quite often.”

“Oh, that’s charming,” mom coos, “I do love a man who can cook. It’s such an _attractive_ quality.”

“Mom, I’m going to stop you right there,” I interrupt quickly, gesturing at her with my fork. “Before you embarrass yourself. And _me_.”

“Maybe if you helped with the cooking once in a while, Jean, I would praise you just the same,” she shoots back – and okay, yeah, I get the slyness factor from her, I’ve got to admit. She turns her attention instantly back to Marco. “He could learn a thing of two from you, Marco, darling. Feel free to _rub off on him_ anytime.”

…  
  
“…M-Mom! You can’t just say shit like that!” _And especially not with a straight face, oh my God!_

She stares at me, completely confused for a couple moments, whilst I watch Marco click with the innuendo and turn a brilliant shade of scarlet. He looks like he’s just witness a cat being run over or some shit.

“Oh… oh, Jean! Get your head out of the gutter, for goodness sake! Do you see what I have to deal with here, Marco? I thought I brought him up to be a _nice_ young man.” Marco just nods, practically boring holes in his empty plate, avoiding looking anywhere but our not-really-all-that-fancy china. I roll my tongue in my cheek and bite back a smirk, giving him a sharpish kick under the table.

The look he gives me as he bites his lip is one that pretty much screams: _please change the topic right now!_

I end up retelling the story of the time last week when Ymir dared Connie to go flirt with one of the lunch ladies in the cafeteria – my mom’s scowl tells me that this is not sophisticated dinner conversation, but Marco laps my words up, and by the time I get to the part where we saw Connie vaulting across the lunch tables with a plastic-tray wielding murderess on his heels, my mom’s smiling too, and she even chuckles when I tell her how Connie eventually returned some half an hour later, having been smacked upside the head with a dinner tray multiple times. The bruises were impressive.

If dad were here, I wouldn’t have ever told a story like this. Not because he’d flip his shit, or anything like that. Just because… well, I can’t really place the reason. Maybe because he’d probably just interrupt me half way through with some of the usual crap he spews. Or maybe because my mom wouldn’t smile like she is now, and instead only nod along politely. Or simply because I don’t feel like sharing things like this with _that man_. I feel like he doesn’t deserve hearing it.

“I wonder how you ever get any work done sometimes, Jean,” my mom sighs, rolling her eyes dramatically. I can’t help the crooked smile plastered all across my face. “Right then. Who’s going to be a gentleman and offer to do the washing up? I just got a fresh manicure and I don’t want to ruin it already.”

“No worries, Mrs Kirschtein, I’m sure Jean and I can stretch to doing that. You cooked us such a lovely dinner, after all.”

Marco helps my mom gather the plates and glasses, and follows her towards the kitchen. Half way across the dining room, he looks back over his shoulder, because he realises I’m still sitting in my chair, brain dead, apparently.

“You coming, Jean?”

“Oh! Uh, yeah!”

I traipse into the kitchen after him, dragging my feet as I hear the splash of cutlery into the sink. A pretty pitiful groan-whine leaves my lips, causing my mom to remark.

“Won’t cook, and definitely won’t wash up,” my mom laughs brashly, gesturing for Marco to dump the dirty plates on the draining board. “Such a bad son, isn’t he?”

My pout is interrupted by the slightly-damp and definitely-gross dishcloth being flung in my face. I pull it away as fast as I can, holding the mangy thing at arms’ length. Marco just laughs at my disgust.

“I’ll wash, you dry, Jean.”

 

* * *

 

When my mom finally leaves the room, accompanied by a glass (re: bottle) of wine, polite, perfect-son Marco goes straight out the window. Usually I’m happy to see him go, but not this time.

It starts with a splash of water on my forearm.

“Fuck man! Don’t do that!” I exclaim, jumping back. I hurriedly wipe off the water on the leg of my pants, practically giving myself a friction burn in the process. Marco chuckles, and attempts to splash me again, but this time I jump back and glare at him.

“D-dude, no!”

“It’s just water, Jean,” he grins – my response is, simply, to tail-whip him in the butt with the towel in my hands.

“I don’t fucking care! That’s dishwater! I-it’s hella gross!”

My attempt at drying-up is half-assed to say the least, but in my mind, that shit can dry itself on the draining board overnight just as well. I’m practically pulling Marco along by his shirt as he strains to turn the faucet off before I yank him out of reach.

“Still don’t know why we couldn’t use the fucking dishwasher…” I mutter under my breath.

I procure the Xbox from the TV in the living room, despite my mom’s complaining that I’m in the way of the screen and disrupting whatever horrific show she’s watching this time; I bundle all the cables and controllers up in my arms, and kick out with my leg to stop Marco from taking another step into the room and being ensnared, no doubt, by mom.

“Upstairs,” I instruct, pushing past him, clutching my precious baby – I mean, the Xbox – as tight as I dare. (I’ve had reoccurring nightmares about dropping it on the wooden floor of the hallway, okay.) “Come on, move your freckled backside.”

I use brute force to open the door to my room – Marco being zero help whatsoever as he trails behind me, absorbed in the embarrassing family photographs that line the walls of the stairwell. The TV in my room isn’t nearly in the same ballpark at the fifty-inch downstairs; it’s a dusty, old little crap-pot that I’ve had for as long as I can remember (it was the one I had when I still had a VCR), but it serves its purpose as something to play video games on. (Although it’s probably about time to drop the hint to my dad that he should buy me a new one and get in my good books for this week.)

“Hey, you wanna choose some music or something?” I say over my shoulder to Marco, who’s loitering in the doorway – I’m not sure why, because it’s not like it’s the first time he’s been into my room before. I stretch behind the television, groping around for the multi-socket to plug in the console, and end up sneezing loudly as dust floods my nose. Nice to know the housekeeper does such a bang-up job. “There’s a pile of stuff over there, so pick something out that you like.”

Besides art, being a cynical asshole, and smoking cigarettes on my roof when my dad pisses me off too much, the one other thing I can probably say I love is music. Good music though – let’s be clear about that. _Dead Kennedys, Ramones, The Clash, Guns ‘n’ Roses_ … basically, if it’s classic rock, I’ve got it on vinyl. Another use of my dad and his wallet.

“Woah, I’ve never seen so many,” Marco remarks, going to crouch in front of the rack of ten-inch sleeves stacked up against my record player. He carefully picks out the album on the end, holding it in both hands as if it were the most fragile thing in the world, as he admires the cover art. “Aren’t these really expensive?”

“Meh,” I murmur, my hand finding the plug socket in the same instance. I pull back, and watch as the familiar white and green logo fizzles onto the screen. “My dad buys them for me. ‘S not like he doesn’t have the money.”

 _Might as well make some use of him_.

“I… I don’t know half of these bands,” Marco then admits, glancing back at me sheepishly, a different LP now in his hands. “Which one’s good?”

“They’re _all_ good,” I retort, stretching for the controllers – god bless wireless, because untangling heaps of cables always pissed me the fuck off with the 360. “What one are you holding?”

Marco holds out the album in front of him, and reads the only word visible on the blue and black cover.

“ _The Eagles_ …?” he says, phrasing it like a question. “I don’t think I know them.”

“Sure you do,” I shrug, before looking at his face. Nope, completely blank. “Jesus Christ, Marco! Do you live under a rock? Everyone knows _the Eagles_ , man!” Well, apparently not _everyone_.

I crawl over to him, and pluck the vinyl from his hands, sliding the black disc out of the sheath, lift the dust-cover of my player, and clip the thing in.

“Consider this your musical education,” I say, fiddling with the arm, until the familiar melodic twang of Don Felder’s acoustic guitar echoes out across my room. “You’ll know this one.”

“Oh, yeah!” Recognition lights up his face as the troll of _on a dark desert highway_ kicks in. I beckon for him to join me in front of the TV. “Uh… how does it go? W-welcome to the Hotel California~”

“See, told ya’,” I grin, dropping my less-preferred controller into his palms. (Everyone’s got a favourite controller, right?) That just brings the confusion straight back to his freckled face.

“I… uh, I _also_ don’t know how to play Xbox.”

No good music, no video games – no wonder the most exciting thing he could think of to tell me, that one time, was that he played board games with his sister. Poor guy. Deprived childhood much.

_Right, Jean, it’s up to you to show him what he missed out on. Your new mission._

It turns out – like all over things involving this guy – that Marco is a fucking natural. Hand-eye coordination to boot. And coupled with my general bad luck and ability to die quite a lot of the time, of course.

“Beginner’s luck!” he laughs bashfully, after the first match is over. I scowl at him, and stubbornly select the replay option. It’s not beginner’s luck. He kicks my butt on all six rounds that we play, _even_ when I switch up the terrain and upgrade my weapons.

“Oh fuck off,” I groan, collapsing onto my back, flinging an arm across my face in defeat. “This is not fair. You can’t be good at _everything_!”

“I’m not good at everything,” he huffs playfully, even going as far to nudge me with his elbow. “Maybe you’re just… _really bad_ at it, Jean.”

_Oi. Uncalled for!_

“You did not just –” I reach up and grabble for one of the pillows on my bed, before launching it at his face. It hits him square in the jaw with a muffled _oomph_.

I brace myself for the onslaught, but it doesn’t come – Marco just sits there staring at the pillow like it was some alien object that flew out of nowhere into his face. Worry crosses my mind for like, all of a millisecond, before I recognise that _wicked_ glint in his dark eyes.

_Fuck._

He smacks me across the chest with the pillow – hard. I do my best to try to defend myself with my arms, but lying down is definitely _not_ the ideal position to be in when someone declares pillow war on you.

In between bludgeoning me to certain death, Marco’s caught between grinning evilly and laughing.

“You don’t pick a pillow fight with someone with siblings, Jean!” he basically cackles, pausing, holding the pillow above his head. “I’ve had years of practice. You really want to do this?”

“Okay, parlay, parlay!” I smirk, holding up my palms to him defensively. “You gotta at least give me a weapon to defend myself, man.”

Marco’s good side wins out, and he leans across me to grab the other pillow from my bed. And then I wish he really _hadn’t_.

Close. Very close. Probably _too close_. Again, I’m overcome with the weirdly nice combination of camomile laundry detergent and chlorine.

 _Chest in face! I should_ not _be turned on by that!_

Every muscle in my body stiffens, and I suck in a very deep, _very loud_ breath.

“Oh, sorry! Did I kneel on your fingers or something?” he quips innocently, dropping said pillow into my lap, and leaning back on his calves. I shake my head, wriggle up into a sitting position, and wrap my arms around the pillow.

_Jean, if you get another hard-on, I swear to God…_

“I need a cigarette,” I murmur – Marco, sensing the mood has changed, scoots back into the place where he was, letting his pillow drop in the now-space between us. I keep my pillow clamped over myself as I lean for the drawer of my bedside table; pretty sure I have a couple cigarettes of my last packet left.

I don’t like smoking inside – because my mom’s bound to smell it – but you know what they say about nicotine killing the mood _down south_. Marco’s big, brown doe-eyes aren’t doing me any favours.

I feel the cardboard packet, and sure enough, the last two cigarettes. I press one between my lips, and offer one to Marco, out of courtesy, if anything. He doesn’t really strike me as the type.

“You want?” I say, the cigarette in my mouth bobbing up and down as I talk. I feel his stare on my lips – no, on the cigarette, and I’m guessing he’s not the happiest bunny. Ah.

“You smoke?” he asks hesitantly, as I tuck the unwanted cigarette behind my ear for safe keeping.

 _Only when I’m stressed. Or mildly-freaking out_. But I don’t say that, because I don’t want to throw him that curveball. I just shrug as indifferently as I can.

“Yeah, you know, once in a while. You not keen?”

“No,” he replies slowly, his eyebrows knitting together – and he still can’t take his eyes off the white roll of tobacco between my lips. He’s practically giving it a death glare. “… I was going to be a doctor, remember?”

“Oh, shit, yeah. Sorry man.” _Ah, fuck, I really want to light it though._ “I keep trying to quit, I promise. Bit of a guilty pleasure, I guess.”

I make a show of returning both cigarettes – and the lighter that was in my back pocket – to my nightstand. _Later_ , I think.

 

* * *

 

Marco stays ‘till around nine – and only leaves because he’s reminded of the time when he gets a text message from his mom asking when he’ll be home (and reminding him that he has to take his sister to school in the morning). I don’t like the dawning feeling that this means I have to go back to the dreaded revision, seeing as I will no longer have someone to distract me by kicking my ass on Xbox or (unintentionally) insulting my music collection.

I walk with him to the back door, hands stuffed in my pockets as we slip quietly past the sound of mom’s TV show. He slips his shoes back on, before turning back to me. I get the feeling he’s trying to pick out what to say, and I feel like I’m watching the cogs whir in his mind. I decide to beat him to the punch.

“Thanks for coming, man. It was fun.”

The draws out a smile – the perfect _Marco_ smile.

“Thank you for inviting me,” he says. His voice is quiet, but not really because he’s upset, or sad, or disappointed, or anything like that. It’s more like… intimacy. (However _not_ -straight that definitely sounds.) “I really had a good time. We should do this again.”

 

* * *

 

“You know what I downloaded last night?”

“What?”

“ _The Eagles’_ album.”

I grin crookedly, feeling smugness radiating out of every pore. Well, that was a relatively easy task to convince Marco ‘round to the correct musical allegiances. Success.

There’s only one way to describe today. Hot as balls.

Not that balls are hot. It’s a saying. You know.

Whatever. _I’m_ basically sweating _my_ balls off, even if I’ve got my jeans rolled up to my knees (maybe I should just bite the bullet and buy some shorts, fuck), and I’ve picked out one of the few tank tops I own to brave the heat wave. If I die of heat stroke, it’s nice to know that I’ll go out looking like a tool.

“I told you it was good,” I chirp, gesturing at him with the chewed end of my pen, pushing my textbook off my lap, and onto the sizzling concrete of the pool shed steps. “And to think you ever doubted my music taste. What would you do without me, man?”

He wets his lips, and tilts his head to the side teasingly, as if edge me on into telling him: _indeed how miserable his life would be without me_.

“Well, you wouldn’t be listening to that emo bullshit,” I reason. “Are you living in two-thousand-and-eight, or something?”

He props the pool net up against the side of the pool, making sure that it doesn’t slip into the water, and turns to face me, hands on his hips. He quirks an eyebrow.

“I sense some hostility towards _My Chemical Romance_ , Jean.”

“Oh yeah. They’re crap.” I run my tongue across my teeth as Marco takes a few steps towards me, his grin basically bouncing off of mine. He reaches for my wrist, and for some reason, I oblige him, as he pulls me to my feet. He seems to radiate warmth – but the sort of warmth I like, and not the sticky, gross sort of warmth like the weather has taken to subjecting us to so mercilessly lately.

_What is he…?_

He doesn’t relinquish his hold, his fingers clasped tight, his palm a little warm, sweaty. His teeth are fucking blinding.

“Hmm, I think you’ll regret saying that,” he hums – and maybe I should’ve sensed the mischief in his tone – but I’m still so fucking blinded by his smile, so focussed on the grip he has on my forearm as he coaxes me a little further forward… “No-one insults _MCR_ around me and lives to tell the tale, Jean.” Suddenly, he looks a little devilish.

“Well then, at least I’ll be able to – hey, Marco, wait, what are you –”

I quickly realise what he’s doing. He’s pulling me towards the pool. Revenge for the other week.

_No. Shit._

“Hey, Marco, man, wait a second –”

He just laughs – but it’s not music in my ears this time. It’s not. It’s like a shock of electricity through my system, and no, fuck, I don’t want to go in the pool. Please. No.

“I told you I’d get you back! You’re going in, whether you like it or not, Jean!”

The concrete of the pool side is baking hot on my bare feet.

“Just hang on a –”

“I take threats against _My Chemical Romance_ very seriously, believe me!”

He grip loosens, only for a second. His hands are on my back.

_No. Please!_

“Marco, wait!”

_Fuck. No. I can’t! I’m scared of –_

He gives one sharp push. And I go headlong into the water.

It fills my lungs, as I gasp.

Surface, _surface_. Where’s the surface? More water floods my system, stings my eyes, chokes me. Choking. Can’t breathe. Where’s the surface?

In the water there’s just silence. A great, heavy weighted silence, and I want to scream, I want to thrash around, _I need to get out_.

Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe. _I’m going to drown_.

I find the surface, and I’m spluttering, shouting, crying out garbled nonsense, thrashing around to find the side. Where’s the side? Where’s the side. I need to get out. Now. Please. _I can’t breathe_.

I can’t breathe.

Somewhere, in the distance, Marco’s shouting splits the panic – but just as quickly, the sound falls away, and there’s just white noise. White noise that’s all parts shrieking, and screaming, and all parts deafening quiet. All parts hot, all parts cold. Cold, _cold_. But it’s burning in my throat.

In my mind, in the water around me, all I can see is Eren Jaeger’s cocky little face, and his words, from _that_ time:

_How can you be scared of water, Jean?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taken so long for such a wishy-washy chapter .... I've been busy studying for my finals, and I've had some creative block. (Apparently writing happy scenes is too hard for me!)
> 
> Saying that, I'm not 100% happy with the final scene ..... feels a little clumsy. But the aftermath is going to be better. Can't wait to get stuck into what's going to happen next chapter.
> 
> Things will start moving quicker from here on out, now that we've reached the first plot point (finally!!) - and also seeing as Jean and Marco's friendship seems to be firm now. It's going to get fun (and I still promise Erwin in speedos ok).
> 
> It's kinda embarrassing to see basically how much I am Jean in this story. (But at least it just makes it easy to gauge his reactions to things!)
> 
> I need to shout out to the five (?) pieces of fan art I've received since the last chapter! When I went 'round to my friend's to watch Eurovision the other week, I found a new one, and I genuinely freaked her out with all my squealing and crying. (Yes, crying .....)
> 
> Oh, and speaking of which, spot the Eurovision reference! I really liked the French entry ..... why did it only get 2 points?!
> 
> Please drop by with some more feedback!! I really appreciate your comments (as they really do help me with setting the tone and pace to best effect) ~~


	8. Rumours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am allowed to complain. I am allowed to cry over simple things. I am fully aware that some people have problems, and they are probably worse off than me. Do not remind me of that when I am upset.
> 
> My feelings are valid. I am allowed to complain.

_How can you be scared of water, Jean?_

There’s Eren’s face. It stretches out beyond the inside of my head – and I can see him floating in the water beside me, or hovering somewhere above the surface in front of me, or treading water behind me, his hands pressing down on my shoulders, pushing me _under_. The expression he wore – the ridicule, the sneer, I don’t know what it was. But I can _see_ it now.

I’m shutting down. I can feel it – the plague of blackness stretching through my arms, coiling around my fingertips. I can’t feel anything. Fuck.

My hands sweep through the water, finding nothing; suddenly it feels so thick, like oil, like blood – something horrible and gross, slicking my throat and pouring into my lungs.

I gasp for air, and the mouthful that I _do_ get is spluttering, as I inhale a half gallon of water. The chlorine stings my eyes, and blurs my vision – not that I can see much anyway. Just water. So much fucking water.

I can’t make any noise. I feel the sounds building up in my chest, but the water pushes them back, drowns them in my lungs. A watery gasp explodes from my mouth, as I try to kick my legs harder to keep my head above the surface. I can feel my knees, my hips locking up, a paralysing wave run through my system.

In that moment, my flailing hand comes down with a crack on warm concrete: the edge! _Thank fuck_!

My fingers grapple around the rough surface, and never have I desired the feeling of concrete lacerating my fingertips more. I haul myself up onto the sun-baked slab, and that’s when I hear the shuddering wheeze for air that pours from my chest. I reach further, sinking my fingers into the grass beyond, the dirt caking itself beneath my nails, and pull myself further out – the only thought in my head: get out of the water.

My jeans are so heavy with water weight, so I just sort of flop my way onto the lawn like a drowning fish – which is, pretty much, what I am.

My heart beat is in my ears, my laboured breaths too, and the numbness in my limbs is turning into tingling, throbbing, shaking – like one thousand volts of electricity being shot into my body through my fingers and toes.

I press my face into the grass, inhaling the smell of dirt, squeezing my eyes shut, praying for it to just _stop_.

_Focus on breathing. Focus. Gotta breathe._

_Can’t breathe._

The pressure on my chest is blinding, and I can see stars behind my eyelids. It’s crushing. My shirt feels tight around my neck. There’s a lump in my throat, and I can’t push it back.

_Fuck. Help._

I can’t—

I try to push myself up, but I barely am able to get more than half a foot off the grass before my arms give out underneath me, and I face plant straight back into the earth with a feeble, choked cry.

Somewhere beneath the sloshing in my ears, and the palpitations thudding in my skull, I hear the muffled sound of my name.

“Jean…!”

The pressure on my shoulders is suddenly very warm and very real, and I’m being hauled upright.

_Ah, Marco …_

His face is right in front of mine, as he holds me at arm’s length, roughly shaking my shoulders. He’s freaking out. But I still can’t quite hear him right. It’s like he’s shouting at me through feet of deep water still.

I feel detached. Kinda unreal. Like I’m floating, and watching this all play out from above. Except not really. Marco’s eyes are definitely right there in front of mine.

Slowly, I look down at my hands, lying limply against my thighs, and raise one towards my face. I’m shaking like God knows what. Everything is trembling, almost vibrating, like I’m being electrocuted or something. It’s not like I can even _feel_ I’m doing this. It’s all beyond my control. I can’t stop it.

I continue to stare at my palm, like it’s the weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever seen, until Marco’s freckled hand wraps around my wrist, and pushes my arm back down.

“Jean, look at me! Are you okay?!”

I open my mouth, but the lump is still there. Can’t talk, can’t _breathe_.

His hands are still on my shoulders, and I’m grateful, because it’s the only thing anchoring me to reality. I can feel him trembling too, and I’m glad of it. He’s definitely there.

“Jean, listen to me.” He tries to steel his voice, but I can hear the shake in it too. “Jean, you’re having a _panic attack_. I need you to do exactly what I tell you, okay?”

The noise that pushes up through my throat is a guttural choke, and I’m able to gasp for air again. It’s as if it expels all the water from my system in one fell swoop. And suddenly I can _feel_ everything.

Something inside my stomach is doing jumps and flips and cartwheels, and punching me in the gut like I’m a fucking punch bag. It stretches out my lungs and pinches my heart, and I sweat.

“I … I can’t breathe …!”

It doesn’t even sound like my voice. I sound like a strangled cat. But it arouses panic in Marco’s eyes. I wrap my hands around my stomach, and keel over on myself. If I hold on tight enough, _maybe_ —

“Jean, Jean, you gotta sit upright,” his voice booms in my ears, suddenly too loud. _Too loud_. I have the overwhelming urge to make myself very, very small. “Sit up straight for me, Jean – you need to open up your airways. You’re going into shock.”

It takes him prizing my arms a part for me to do as he says – but he manages to manhandle me into a better position, clamping my hands together on top of my head. I gladly tangle my fingers in the wet mop of my hair, and try to focus on the pain caused by pulling roughly at my roots.

The air floods my lungs easier. I gulp on it greedily, the oxygen hit making everything spin.

Marco’s wide-eyed in front of me, practically sitting on my legs, the front of his shirt plastered to his skin from where he’s grabbed me, and the water’s soaked through the cornflower-blue fabric. I want to be closer to him. I want to feel his hands on my shoulders again. But at the same time, I want to run away as far as I can.

I’m still shaking, but I think it’s subsiding. The cold ripples down my spine are not though. They’re almost painful.

“Jean?” he asks tentatively. “Jean, are you okay?”

Every breath shudders. I try to concentrate on that: in, out, in out. Breathe. I can feel the hysteria coming back. _Come on, breathe. Focus_.

“Jean, I’m _so sorry_.”

There it is. I kinda feel like I want to cry. Start blubbering, curl up into a ball, disappear into the ground.

Who’s scared of water? What nineteen-year-old guy freaks out like—

It’s pathetic. I’m pathetic. And _Marco_ …

“I’m so sorry, I should have realised when you— _oh God_ , I’m such an idiot.”

I want him to shut up. Now. But I still can’t find my voice. I can only shiver as he starts apologising profusely, trying to comfort me with near-touches on my arms and shoulders, his hands flailing all the while.

_Stop apologising. Please. Please, this is all because of—_

“J-Jean, you’re shivering like crazy.”

Oh. So I am. But my head feels like it’s on fucking fire. Burning up. The hot creep of sweat rolls in waves up the back of my neck.

“You need to change out of those clothes, Jean. L-let me help you inside.”

The first words that roll out of my mouth sound just as cold as he thinks I am.

“I can do it myself.”

His face is bad. It really fucking stings. It says: _oh God, I really have fucked up this time._

No, _you haven’t_. It’s me that’s fucked up, you idiot. I’m pathetic. I’m useless.

I find strength in my legs that I shouldn’t have – the quivers that rip through my muscles have me fearing I might collapse at any moment. But I manage to stand. Just.

I stagger across the lawn, one hand fisted in wet denim, practically hauling my leg forward with each step I attempt to take.

_Don’t fall over. Don’t. You gotta walk. Focus._

Despite that, I’m not sure how I get inside, or how I make it up the stairs to my room. But here I am, standing with my forehead pressed against my door, my hands balled up at my sides, my body shaking from head to toe.

Here comes the break down.

I grit my teeth to try and stop the humiliating sobs, but they come anyway – they force their way out between my grinding teeth as ugly hiccups. I slam my head into the wood grain again and again.

_Stop it! Fucking stop it!_

I pray to hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs, to feel Marco’s fingers curl ‘round shoulders again. But it doesn’t happen. He doesn’t follow me into the house – to comfort me, to tell me that it’s okay to freak out like this when you’re scared, that my babyish behaviour is fucking justified. Shit. It’s not fucking _justified_.

Obviously he knows that. Obviously I know that.

Weak. Pathetic. Useless.

 

* * *

 

I strip outta my clothes in a state of numbness. The shaking subsides, but nothing replaces it. Nothing.

I peel off my t-shirt like it’s a second skin, and fling it into my hamper. It misses, landing in a squelching pile on the floor. I throw my jeans in the same direction, and my boxers too. I crawl into my bed, and burrito myself up in my duvet, despite the heat, despite the sweat that’s slick on my neck and in the small of my back – I burrow down, nestling my nose in the smell of unwashed duvet. I inhale deeply. Need to get the smell of chlorine out of my head. The feel of water wrapped around my arms and legs. The sound of sloshing inside my ears.

Just the thought has my heart ricocheting around in my chest. I try my best at a deep, steadying breath. It’s pretty dismal.

The hours pass slowly, I guess, but I don’t budge. I don’t think I have even enough energy left to roll out of bed. I stay committed to my feathery cocoon. It feels safe. Secure.

I don’t know if Marco’s still down there, if he’s waiting for me to come back – but he doesn’t come after me. I feel the tingle of a strange hope when the landing creaks, but the sharp knock at my door is not him. It’s mom.

I grunt loudly, and she pokes her head around the door.

“Jean, honey?” He voice sounds tentative. “I’ve been calling you for dinner for the past ten minutes. Are you alright, sweetheart?”

 _No, mom. I’m really not_.

She doesn’t mention Marco. I guess he’s left. Don’t blame him. ‘S what happened the last time I freaked out like this, after all. Except that was more than just one person.

I let out another troubled groan from my duvet mountain. Her heels click on my wooden floor, and I feel the side of the mattress sag as she perches beside me. I make the effort to at least wriggle my head out of the safety of my fort. I stare blearily up at her face, and she frowns.

“You look awful,” she admits.

 _Thanks mom. Tell me something I don’t know_.

“I feel like shit,” I murmur. She presses her palm to my forehead, and I even see a crease form on her Botoxed forehead. Amazing.

“You’re burning up, Jean. You shouldn’t be bundled up like that in this weather. If you’ve got a fever, you need to cool down. Do you want to run a cold bath?”

Possibly the worst thing she could’ve suggested. I groan a little, and try to kick off the duvet. It just seems to tangle in my calves, so she helps me with it.

“I’ll put some dinner aside for you, okay, sweetheart? Just close your eyes and try to get a little rest. We don’t want you getting sick this close to your exams.”

Ah yes, of course. The prerogative. I kinda want to cry.

 

* * *

 

When I close my eyes, there’s only Eren. I remember the feel of his fist in my shirt – or was it _my_ fist in _his_ shirt? Breathing down his neck, sharp words pressed out between sharper teeth as a hiss … and then there’s Armin’s face, and Historia’s face, and Connie and Sasha’s faces.

_How can you be scared of water, Jean?_

Under his breath, he’d said that, with a biting laugh.

_I’m not scared of water, I’m just— I’m just—_

That time I’d seen red. This time, it’d been black, seeping into the corners of my eyes. In a way, that was worse. The numbness. At least hitting Eren, I’d felt something, got the fear out of my system through the sicking crack of his nose against my knuckles …

I screw my eyes shut tighter still – maybe I can squeeze out all these bad images, maybe I can … I feel the urge to press my pillow over my face and scream into it.

I don’t know when I fall asleep – hours or minutes later, I really don’t know. But my consciousness just drips steadily through the cracks into my dreams – or nightmares, I guess – and I struggle against the feel of water licking my calves, or Eren’s mocking tone, and of Marco’s face.

 

* * *

 

I don’t know what really happens to Sunday. It just … passes. My mom comes to check on me a couple times throughout the day – that I’m aware of, at least – checking my temperature, and attempting to spoon feed me some fucking horrific aniseed-flavoured gloop. I just about manage to shove her away with a bleary-eyed grunt, and bury my head back in the pillow with a _whomph_.

I feel tired. Like really fucking tired. I drift between unconscious and nearly-unconscious, but that’s not a great thing, seeing as even a day later, I really don’t want to close my eyes.

The third time my mom ventures up to my room, I’m sprawled sideways across my mattress, forearm flung across my eyes.

“Hey sweetheart,” she says, forcing a disgusting smile. “Your dad was asking where you were at dinner, so I told him you’d been up all night studying, and were sleeping it off.”

I mentally thank her for getting the pig-man off my back. I couldn’t have dealt with him marching his obese backside in here and demanding why I wasn’t at the books for my Chemistry exam tomorrow. Shouting at me for wallowing away for … for what? I don’t know. It’s the empty thing again.

“I made you a sandwich, so please eat it if you think you’re up for it.” I hear the clink of china on the bedside table, and the shuffling of stuff being pushed around. My stomach growls loudly at the thought of food … haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday, and that was only a pretty pitiful slice of toast.

I wriggle myself up into a sitting position against my headboard; looking at my mom, I can see my pitiful state basically reflected in the look in her eyes. She tries to supress it, but …

“Mom…” I rack my brain for words. Something like: _it’s okay, I’m dealing with it. Don’t worry about it_. But I’m tongue-tied. So, I just offer a menial: “Thanks.”

Her smile is small and sad on her bright red lips, and she reaches across to ruffle her manicured fingers through my bed-hair lovingly, before getting to her feet, with a creak of her joints. Half out the door, she briefly turns back to face me.

“Your phone was ringing a lot earlier, sweetheart. Did you get back to them?”

I frown. Apparently I’d blocked out any memory of my phone ringing whatsoever. I haven’t even heard the _tring_ of my message tone in two days. My mom lets the door shut gently, and I make a long arm for my Samsung.

The screen lights up with one of those things you never really want to see.

**Unread messages: 15  
Missed calls: 4**

It’s up there in the panic-stations of “we need to talk”. But I literally have no memory of receiving any of these.

It’s not a surprise really, that they’re all basically from Marco. There’s a couple from a number I don’t recognise, but the first text in the thread reads:  
  
 **From: 899-XXX-XXX  
Hey Jean it’s Bert! Marco asked me to ask you to text him back, when you have time :) Hope everything’s alright!**

That’s bad enough. I decide against doing the probably-sensible-thing of opening up Marco’s own messages. I leave them unread, and fling my phone across the room.

Fuck this.

 

* * *

 

To call Monday horrific is a seriously gross fucking understatement. All the Chemistry I’d crammed into my head over the past few weeks has flown the nest, and I’m left staring blankly down at a half-answered paper for three hours, seriously hating myself.

I curl my fingers around the back of my neck, and bury my head between my elbows, praying that something – anything – will come to mind. It’s like, I can _see_ the pages of my notes in my mind, but I can’t pick any of the information out of them.

 _Focus. Come on. You gotta push through this, you pathetic excuse for a man_.

Not so good. I’m still tapping my biro on the side of the desk erratically when the invigilator calls time on the exam session.

I totally fucked that one over.

I avoid talking to any of my classmates as I slither through the crowds outside the exam hall – too many people animatedly discussing their answers for part _this_ and question _that_ , and I feel sick to my gut.

I’m just mapping the quickest route to a bathroom when I’m pounced on from behind, arms wrapping around my neck in what’s basically a strangle hold. I instantly freeze.

“Jeeeean!” Sasha squeals in my ear. I take a deep, shuddering breath, and try to force myself to relax. “How was it!? We just got out of Theatre! And it went super, duper well!”

I force a smile onto my face – but can’t help but think it’s gotta look painfully forced. I want to feel happy for them – even if they only started working on their theatre piece like two weeks ago, and by all means it shoulda been shit for the amount of work they didn’t put into it – but hearing someone else’s glee at how an assessment went just irks me the wrong fucking way.

I guess Connie picks up on this, as he strolls over, and tugs Sasha off my back by her ponytail.

“Leave the guy alone, Sash,” he instructs, and Sasha pouts. “Not go so well, man?”

“You could say that,” I mutter darkly, threading my fingers through my hair restlessly. “My dad’s gonna have my balls.”

“Tch, I bet it didn’t go that bad,” Connie smirks, but his face drops when he sees that does absolutely nothing to cheer me up. I probably look like a walking zombie, judging by the purple eye bags I spotted on myself in the mirror this morning. “W-well, you didn’t want to do Chem next year anyway, did you?”

I don’t reply to that; just shrug, nod in the direction to the parking lot, and start walking, expecting them to keep up. Sasha involves Connie in some excited discussion about the fact she only has two exams left, or some BS like that, and Connie nods along, although I’m pretty sure I can feel his eyes scanning my hunched back as I stalk a step or two ahead of them.

The parking lot is a lot emptier than usual – always is during finals week, when people are only coming in for exams and shit. So what’s weird is the fact that, of all the empty lots, someone’s gone and parked right up next to my Jag.

I don’t pick up, straight away, that that’s a white van I definitely know.

“Hey, isn’t that pool boy?” Sasha grins, slapping me on the shoulder, and pointing towards my car. I follow the line of her index finger, and yeah, sure enough, there’s Marco perched on the hood of his van, scrolling through something on his phone. His usually open face is kinda twisted into a scowl. Doesn’t suit him.

“What’s he doing here?” she continues, amidst my blocky train of thought. “Does he go to uni here too?”

I feel a whole bunch of things at this point. Wary. Confused. Still really fucking tired.

Sasha is practically vibrating at my side, tugging me by the arm towards my Jag. Yeah, like hell, Sash.

“Guys, can you—”

Sasha looks up at me with puppy-dog eyes from beneath her thick fringe, but Connie catches on, for once.

“Hey Sash, the truck’s over this way, come on.” He takes her hand as he says that, and widens his eyes expectantly, trying to tell her to leave me the hell alone via his expression. “My mom was baking cookies today, so we need to get home ASAP before they’re all gone.”

That does the trick, and with a reassuring slap on my back from Connie, they’re gone, chattering their way across the lot to where Connie’s beat-up truck is poorly abandoned.

I turn back to face my Jag, the van, and Marco. He still hasn’t noticed me here, still nose-deep in whatever’s got his interest on his phone. I find myself taking a really dramatic gulp of air, and balling my fists up a couple times at my sides. My feet are taking steps forward before I even finish mentally bigging myself up to do this.

The thing is though – and this is a pretty fucking important thing – is that he’s _here_. Still here. Came to… find me? _That_. It’s not like what happened _last time_. I try to remind myself of that with every step.

I’m only about six feet away from the van’s hood when Marco finally looks up at the sound of my footsteps. He all but drops his phone as he springs to his feet, and covers the distance between us in three rapid strides.

“J-Jean!”

“H-hey man,” I say gingerly, staring hard at the concrete, scuffing my shoe in the dirt. “What you doing here?”

He genuinely scoffs and shakes his head at me.

“Are you kidding me, Jean?” he says sternly – I don’t think I’ve heard him take a tone like that before. I feel like I want to shrink, crawl under one of the cars, be eaten up by the ground… something. “Why haven’t you replied to any of my texts or calls? Are you alright? I was freaking out all weekend.”

 _Oh_.

Oh.

“I’m fine, I’m fine man,” I lie through my teeth, forcing that same smile. It’s a pretty pathetic attempt though, because I literally can’t raise my eyes high enough to look the guy in the eye. “Honestly, I-I’m fine.”

I hate the sound of the tremble in my voice, because it’s weak. And I’m weak. And I want so badly to just tell him: no, I’m not okay. I want someone to make it better. _I want you to make it better, Marco._

It doesn’t matter. He’s obviously not fooled by my lie.

I don’t know why his face looks… well, kinda shocked, for a split second. What’s he surprised at? That I’d lie to him like that? That I’m trying my best not to be a disgusting, snivelling wreck of a person? Jesus, Marco. This is _me_ we’re talking about.

“I-I mean, who the hell freaks out like that over _water_ ,” I chuckle bitterly – the sound is hollow and broken in my throat. “W-what a joke, right?”

I’m taken a back when he reaches out, and cups his hand around the top of my arm, his thumb rubbing back and forth across my shoulder. I feel like I want to recoil from the touch, and you know, just freak the hell out some more, _why not_ , but at the same time …

His hand is warm, and makes my skin tingle. In a good way.

I snivel loudly, snorting all the snot and crap back up my nose with an unattractive hack.

 _Fuck, no, come on Jean. Not here_.

I grind the heels of my palms into my eyes forcefully. Not here. Not gonna cry. Not gonna be a—

“You know…” Marco’s voice is quiet, gentle, and most importantly, _soothing_. I feel his hand clench a little tighter on my bicep. “You… you don’t have to lie to me. It’s okay if you… you know… I don’t want it to have to be… _like that_ between us, Jean. You know I wouldn’t judge you.”

“… Fuck.”

If he says one more thing, I’m gonna— I’m definitely gonna …

“I won’t judge you,” he repeats. Ah, there we go. Last nail in the coffin. My palms are suddenly wet, and I growl, rubbing harder and harder at my eye sockets to wipe away the pathetic tears.

Marco’s hand leaves my arm for a second, and I hear the sound of him heaving open the passenger-side door of the van, before he touches me again – this time him hand firmly pressed between my shoulder blades as he guides me forward. His voice is close to my ear as I keep scrubbing at my eyes.

“Sit in the van,” he instructs calmly. “It’s more private.”

I semi-fall into the passenger seat, snivelling wreck and all, as Marco hops over the hood gracefully, and comes about the driver’s side. He slips behind the wheel, and turns to me – earnest and sincere. I can count every freckle on his face then. Dang. His freckle game is strong today.

“You didn’t have to…” I start gruffly, my voice sounding really rough as I try to blink back the redness in my eyes and the lump in my throat. “You didn’t have to drive out here b-because of this. I-it’s my fucking mess.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“But don’t you think I’m—”

“No.”

_I didn’t even say anything!_

I open my mouth to tell him that I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought I was a basket-case or some shit, but he interrupts me again.

“Whatever you’re about to say Jean – and I know you’re about to say something, because I can see it in your face – stop it. Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it.”

That shuts me up good and fine.

I shuffle around awkwardly, and end up drawing my feet up onto the seat, resting my chin on my knees, blowing out my cheeks. I sniff for good measure.

“What _do_ you want me to say then,” I say in a quiet voice.

He rests one arm on the top of the wheel, and with the other hand, he runs his fingers through his hair, sweeping the dark strands back against his scalp – but they all jump back into place anyway.

“Tell me what happened,” he says, with a soft quirk of his lips and a tilt of his head. “Tell me what you need to say to make yourself feel better. I don’t mind.”

Tch. What I need to feel better. If I knew _that_ , I’d be on it like Sasha on a fridge, man.

There’s no better. There’s only _less worse_.

I hug my knees tighter against my chest, and press my nose into the dark denim of my jeans.

“I’m not letting you leave this van until you talk to me, by the way,” Marco adds as an afterthought. I roll my eyes, but at least they’re feeling a little bit drier now.

“Dunno what to say.”

“Well… start from the top.” _Easier said than done, Marco_. “Have you, you know… always been like… that?” _Like a baby around water, you mean? Just say it_.

I study the fibres in my jeans for some time, following with my eyes the way each thread weaves under and over all the others. I even begin tracing the pattern with my finger, but Marco doesn’t budge, doesn’t say a word, just watches.

A voice pipes up from somewhere deep – real deep – inside my head. I like to call that place: _good ideas_. I don’t visit there too often.

 _You’re just going to end up pushing him away, if you don’t say anything. Remember what happened last time. You’ve only just started getting your friends back from that, and that was some damn good luck. This guy is the best friend you’ve had in all your fucking life. You push him away, and I bet you you’ll end up living in that duvet burrito of yours for the rest of your pitiful life_.

Hate everything.

Except Marco.

So I tell him. I tell him everything. Achievement unlocked: tragic backstory. Yep.

I tell him about the first time I went to the beach with my parents, when I was three, and screamed for hours after my dad decided it would be funny to dunk me in the sea. I tell him about the time when I was eight and I was walking the neighbour’s dog for some easy cash from old Mr Reeves, and it pulled me into the stream chasing a fucking squirrel. I’d sat on the bank and sobbed until it got dark. I tell him about what happened with Eren last summer.

 

* * *

 

It was April, end of the second semester of twelfth grade. First heat wave of the year. Three days of hitting upwards of seventy-five degrees. Approximately six thousand mosquitos in your face every time you even _thought_ about taking a step outside.

Connie’s parents were getting rid of their weird, stand-alone outdoor pool, which they’d had since approximately the dawn of time. Apparently it was ruining the back yard being there, and they wanted the grass to grow back, or something – to be honest, I don’t really remember exactly what the reasoning was for deciding to send the thing to the dumpster.  

But that’s not the point. The point was, that when Connie invited everyone round to his place after school, they all jumped at the chance to use the old pool for the last time before it became trash-bound.

I wasn’t keen. Of course I wasn’t. I was pretty good at slinking out of going to the pool usually. But Connie had slapped me on the back, and Sasha had persuaded me with some lame-ass joke, and I had shrugged and thought: _hey, I don’t have to swim. It’ll be fine._

Connie’s house was built by the old guy who owned the place before his family had moved in – it’s kinda old-looking, the paint around the windows has peeled so badly that you’d think the slightest gust of wind would dislodge them, and some of the panelling around the back of the garage would see better days even if it was rotting – but the good thing, the main selling point, for us at least, was the fact that Connie’s bedroom looks out on the roof awning that was ideal jumping distance above the old pool.

I’d seen the others do it before – I’d sit on the awning with a cigarette, and laugh as Eren belly flopped into the water below, or admire Mikasa in her swimsuit perform a perfect double tuck into a cannonball. It was cool. I could deal with that. As long as I never got wet.

We’d all bailed out of the back of Connie’s pick-up and my Jag, the others making headway immediately for the drainpipe that was the best way up to the awning (without climbing out through Connie’s window). I’d trailed behind, listening to Eren proclaim that he was gonna beat everyone with the _majesty of his cannonball_ or some crap like that. I’d been craving a cigarette all day, but the guy at the Seven-Eleven had refused to sell to me that morning without an ID, so I was without a fix. I shoulda seen that as a bad omen at the time.

I must’ve watched half a dozen repeats of painful belly flops, before Eren, on his fifth or six time scaling back up the roof, mid-argument with Connie, had said the damning words.

“No, I totally won that one! The only person who hasn’t jumped yet is Horseface!”

I’d looked up from studying the roof tiles upon hearing my totally-favourite nickname pass the shithead’s mouth. I hadn’t quite caught the whole conversation, but I got the gist of it, Eren edging his way across the slope of the roof towards me, dripping water all over the black slate.  I automatically shuffled away, but he’d reached out a hand to grab a fistful of my shoulder.

“Come on Kirschstein, you haven’t jumped yet!”

I jerked my shoulder away from his grip, but he’d held tight, looking back over _his_ shoulder with a huge grin at Connie.

“Yeah, come on Jean! You gotta show him how it’s done!” Connie had said. You woulda thought, after knowing me so long, Connie would have noticed, before that moment on the roof top, that he’d never seen me swim. But Connie… well, he’s never been the sharpest tool in the box.

“N-no I definitely _don’t_ need to!” I’d protested loudly, giving Eren a dutiful shove. “Piss off already, Eren.”

It all happened very quickly, but very slowly at the same time. I remember him pushing me towards the edge of the roof awning, his hands gripping my shoulders. I remember digging my heels into the tiles. I remember yanking at his hands to let go, to leave me the fuck alone, to: _Eren, stop_!

I remember taking a step forward as I staggered, but there being no more roof to stand on.

The jump down from the roof into the pool wasn’t far – like, six feet at most. But that fall felt long.

It hurt when I hit the water – I sorta went in shoulder-first, and the smack of the surface against my arm and my neck stunned me. Even worse was the sudden weight of Eren jumping in after me with a loud whoop, his bony ass crashing down on my back and slamming me against the pool floor.

With my cheek pressed against the slimy blue surface, I’d gasped – and then all the stale water had shot up my nose and down the back of my throat, sharp and stinging, like sandpaper at the back of my mouth.

We’d surfaced at the same time – Eren laughing wildly, smacking his hands in the water, throwing up waves as I’d hauled myself over the edge, landing with a _splat_ on the muddy grass on the other side.

The sky had been real blue that day – no clouds, save for the jet stream of a plane dividing in half the view above me as I lay on my back, stunned, winded, and numb. But that feeling hadn’t lasted.

Water had splattered across my face as Eren heaved himself over the side too, bringing with him apparently half an ocean soaked in his trunks. The blue of the sky had been so quickly replaced by _red_.

Reactions are either flight or fight.

 

* * *

 

“So what did you do to him?” Marco asks softly. I realise I’ve balled my fists in the bottom of my shirt, and that my knuckles are white, and that I’m trembling with… anger? Fear? I don’t know. But the energy is rippling through my system, tearing up my veins.  I pinch my eyes shut, and exhale sharply out my nose.

“I hit him. A lot. I broke his nose, his collarbone, two of his ribs.”

“Oh.”

I glance up at Marco, and see his face is pained. I hate that. I don’t want him to realise what a fuck-up I am. What a stupid thing I did.

I don’t want to tell him that I enjoyed the crack of Eren’s nose on my knuckles, at that time. But equally: the feeling of Sasha’s arms wrapped around my shoulders, shouting in my ear, telling me: _enough, Jean_! I enjoyed that too, because I’d felt the cool hand of control sweep back over me, if only for a moment.

“I fucked-up,” I murmur. Marco doesn’t agree or disagree with me. “I fucked-up so bad. You know what happened after that? They stopped talking to me. For a year. Couldn’t blame them. I fucked-up so bad, and it’s all because of my fucking stupid—”

 _And I’d stopped talking to them_ , I remind myself pointedly. Of course they wouldn’t have wanted to put up with someone so fucking _unhinged_ at the sight of _water_.

I ruined everything because of a fear of water that I should’ve grown out of when I was five.  I am literally the _worst_ excuse for a person.

“I’m pathetic,” I mutter. “And I understand if you’ve… had enough, Marco. I’m a proper basket-case, I get it, it’s cool.”

“Jean.”

“No, Marco, seriously. I get it. I beat the shit out of the guy. That’s messed up. Like, what if the others hadn’t been there to stop me? Like, what if—”

 _Don’t, Marco. You don’t… you don’t understand_. _You can’t, I mean—_

“Jean, listen to me.” Quiet, patient and _understanding_. That’s Marco. Fuck what I just thought. One look in his dark eyes, and it’s the feeling that everything I hate is just melting away. “I want you to stop giving people – stop giving _your fear_ – the power to control your worth, your attitude… your _smile_. Seriously. It’s okay to feel weak, believe me. But you’re not. You’re _strong_.”

The moment kinda reminds me of one of those diabolical chic-flick romance movies – dare I even say it – when the heroine suddenly looks at the love-interest as if she’s seeing him, for who he is for the first time, sparkles and floating rose petals included. This is like that, just without the cherry blossoms.

I feel like I’m seeing him for the first time?

“You’re the worst,” I mutter gruffly, smearing the back of my wrist across my eyes. I feel like something’s been dislodged in my chest, some stuffy lump of guilt and pain and fear that’s been stopping me from breathing for a long time – longer than just two days ago, for sure. I think a small smile piques my lips.

“W-why am I the worst?”

“Because you’re so fucking nice, man. It should be illegal to be this nice.”

Illegal to be this _perfect_. Jesus Christ, how does he know _exactly_ what to say? I’ve been dealing with this for nineteen fucking years, and _I_ still haven’t figured out what to do. He gets it right in two shitty days.

Marco shrugs meekly, and does the thing where he pinches a strand of his black hair and rubs it between his thumb and forefinger. His cheeks grow a little red.

“You helped me out w-when I was having a rough time, Jean. I-I wanted to do the same… for you.”

I let out a breathy laugh, and shake my head. I think back over the last year – the loneliest and most miserable year of my life – and I think: _why… why did I have to meet you now, Marco? Why couldn’t it have been then. I could’ve used someone like you a lot._

_Where were you the last twelve months when I had no-one?_

I realise I want to hug him. Hug him a lot, and be sappy, and press my nose into his shoulder, and not let go. Gross things like that.

But I have to let that smile he holds for me be enough right now. I don’t hug him.

 

* * *

 

We sit in the cabin of Marco’s van for a long time (just talking, mainly, but even the silences that happen are comfortable enough) – the only reason I’m even _persuaded_ to leave is the text from my mom worried about the fact I haven’t come home and may or may not have offed myself after a disastrous exam. I drop her a quick text back, informing her that I’m still very much alive and haven’t actually thrown myself off a bridge.

“You wanna come by for dinner?” I ask Marco, sliding my phone back into my pocket. “My dad’s out again, and I think mom’s making cobbler for dessert. It’s usually pretty good.”

Marc runs a hand through his undercut awkwardly.

“I can’t. I, uh… I kind of, well, I pushed back one of my appointments today so I could catch you after your exam, and well… still gotta go do that.”

Oh boy, the warm feeling that spreads through my chest (despite being turned down) is stifling. I bite back a smile at the thought of Marco skipping work to come find me. It makes me feel good. Real good.

It might be selfish, but the feeling of being prioritised… fuck, I could get used to that, okay.

“Bummer.”

Marco laughs as I clamber out of the van, and press the door shut. He quickly winds down the window as I lean back on the roof to say good bye.

“Text me when you get home,” he says.

“Will do.”

“Text me before your French exam as well. And after it.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll see you, Jean.”

“See you, Marco.”

 

* * *

 

I text him when I get home. It’s the first thing I do when I kick off my shoes at the front door, my mom rounding the corner when she hears the commotion.

“There you are!” she exclaims. She’s got oven gloves slung over her shoulder, and her hair is up in a loose ponytail. She looks freakishly domestic. Freakishly _mom-like_. “I was really worried about you, Jean!”

“Sorry mom.” I quickly send off the message, watching the screen until the “sent” appears beneath my few words. “I ran into Marco after the exam. We got talking.”

“Oh.” She seems to look me up and down, actual frown lines appearing on her forehead. Hasn’t had an injection in a while, I guess. “So you’re feeling better?”

One conversation is not going to change what happened. And it’s not gonna change the fact that I’m not going to get over this thing easily. But yes. I feel better. A whole fucking lot better.

 

* * *

 

“Apparently one in every ten adults suffers from some sort of aquaphobia.”

Marco phones me around ten that night – the ring tone surprises me at first, because I’m just lying on my bed, dozing, the exhaustion from the last two days suddenly having caught up with me in one massive tidal wave. But when I see the caller ID, I can’t pick up quick enough.

“W-what?” I practically squeak.

“That’s a lot more than you’d expect, right? It’s quite a common thing. I’m reading about it now.”

“You’re reading about it?” My voice goes a little higher than I’d like it to. Marco just laughs, and I can hear the click of a computer keyboard from his end of the line.

“Uh-huh. I just found this really good article on _Health Central_ actually. It’s talking about ways to overcome it. There’s some good stuff here!”

I gulp loudly, and hope the sound doesn’t travel across the line.

“… You’re stupid.”

“And I’ll gladly keep being stupid,” he replies, without missing a beat. Idiot.

He reads the article out to me, despite me telling him that he’s being, well, kinda ridiculous. It doesn’t deter him. He tells me that he wants to help me. Get me standing in the pool, get me swimming, get me “confident”. (Whatever that even means.)

I keep telling him he’s stupid, but he just keeps on laughing every time I say that. I wish I was as determined as he is.

It’s two-in-the-morning before we finally give up – and by that point I’m laughing too at all the crazy things he’s suggesting. He tells me goodbye with a yawn that I can hear coming through a smile.

“Sleep well, Jean.”

He hangs up first, and I toss my phone onto the night stand, and flip the switch on my lamp. The room plunges into darkness – minus the ever present glow from the streetlamps outside, of course. So, it’s sort of a perpetual orange blackness. I’m used to it though.

My phone blips beside me, just as my head hits the pillow. I grab it, and there’s one new mail in my inbox.

**From: Marco-Polo  
I really did mean the thing about helping you out, Jean. I hope you own swim trunks! :D**

I roll my eyes, and just reply with an emoticon appropriate of my level of: _oh really?_ As I click send, I scroll back up in the thread, to the tirade of messages he’d sent, that I still haven’t read, from yesterday.

The words pull my heart right up into my fucking mouth.

**From: Marco-Polo  
Jean! Are you okay? I don’t know what to do, so text me back please!**

**From: Marco-Polo**  
Are you okay?  
  
From: Marco-Polo  
Please just let me know you’re okay.

**From: Marco-Polo  
Hey, I’m really worried about you, Jean. Please text me.**

**From: Marco-Polo  
I rang, but you didn’t pick up. I’ll try again later.**

**From: Marco-Polo  
All I’m asking for is just a word, Jean.**

**From: Marco-Polo  
Bert should’ve texted you, just in case you’re not getting my texts or something. I’ll try ringing again.**

**From: Marco-Polo  
Jean, I’m so sorry.**

**From: Marco-Polo  
I was such an idiot, and I’m so sorry. I understand if you’re ignoring me because you’re mad.**

**From: Marco-Polo  
Jean, you’re my best friend. I really hope I haven’t ruined everything. I’m so sorry. Please text me. **

I scowl, and can only wonder at what must’ve been going through his head whilst I was wasting away in my bed for two days straight. I must’ve put him through some serious shit. I feel the guilt coiling up as a pain in my gut, and it makes me wince.

 _As usual, you fucked-up. You owe him, Jean_.

 

* * *

 

I have my first French paper on the Wednesday that week – which kinda sucks a bit, because it means no chance to hang out with Marco. It’s made extra bad by the fact I really want to… apologise to him in person for being a little shit before.

It goes a lot better than the Chemistry on Monday – maybe or maybe not because of the ridiculously insipid smiley response I get from Marco to the text I send him just before going into the exam hall. Dumbass.  

I think it’d be even safe to say that I breeze through the paper. French, I can do. I even feel confident enough to join in the debate, at the end, about what people wrote for each question, glad to offer my humble opinion on the multiple choice.

Glancing at my phone to check the time, I notice the little message icon in the top left corner.

**From: Marco-Polo  
Just finished at your house… hope everything went great! **

I quickly whip out a reply whilst still riding the high of confidence.

**To: Marco-Polo  
answered all the questions fine so thats a start**

**To: Marco-Polo  
but yeah it went prtty good so **

My phone blips just seconds later.

**From: Marco-Polo  
Awesome! I’m super happy for you, Jean!**

I have to excuse myself (re: slink away) from the crowd, to go grin stupidly to myself in the parking lot.

 

* * *

 

Coming out of my French speaking exam on the Friday, I run into Connie, Sasha and Ymir leant against Ymir’s _death trap_ – I mean, minivan. It’s a monster of a machine, and that’s not in a good way. A nineteen-eighty-nine Dodge Caravan Turbo is never gonna win a beauty award to begin with, but its maroon paint job, and a carpet practically made out of compressed beer cans does it absolutely zero favours. Ymir swears by it though.

“Hey Jean!” Ymir calls, waving at me over Connie and Sasha’s heads. “You alright?”

I’ve decided I like Ymir. She definitely has the best taste in music out of our circle of friends. And you gotta stick together with people like her when you associate with morons who entertain ideas of Nicki Minaj or Katy Perry. Shudder.

“Hey,” I greet them casually, strolling up behind Sasha, and giving her a flick on the back of the head. “What you guys still doing here? And what are you doing here full stop, Connie?”

“Waiting for the bae,” Ymir grins wolfishly, and I shoot her an _are you serious_ look at her use of cringe-worthy slang. “Historia’s got her Health exam.”

“And Connie came to pick me up!” Sasha chimes in, slinging her arm around her boyfriend’s neck. Connie beams proudly, and I roll my eyes. “Sasha has no master, Sasha is now a _free elf_!”

Oh right, it was her last exam today. Lucky shit.

“Aww, Jean, what’s with that face?” she teases me, with an elbow to the rib cage. Ouch.

“Oh, I dunno, maybe some of us still have finals till next week?” I pout, rubbing my side and glaring at her far-too-happy demeanour. I still have the trials of Philosophy to face next week, geez.

“You guys need to stop complaining,” Ymir cuts in, stabbing a freckled finger in our direction. “When you’re sophomores, you’ll be begging to go back to your first year exams. Believe me. I want to rip my brain out right now. I hate _everything_.”

There’s a call from across the parking lot, and we all look up, to see Historia waltzing quickly towards us, her blonde hair in a loose ponytail over one shoulder, shallow heels clicking on the tarmac, and a dazzling smile in place. Goddess.

“Except that,” Ymir quickly adds, hand on her hip as she appraises her girlfriend. I’m gonna puke. “That, I like. Very much. Yep.”

She greets her with a smattering of kisses that verge basically on the explicit, so I make a point to stare purposely at the concrete, until Historia manages to wriggle out of Ymir’s bear-hug, and joins the group.

“Hi guys,” she smiles, angelically. “Hi Jean. How did French go?”

“’S good,” I shrug, kicking a loose pebble with the toe of my sneaker. “How’d yours go for you?”

“I think I wrote enough,” she sparkles, swatting Ymir away as she tries to duck in for a sloppy kiss on the blonde’s neck. “Ymir!”

“What?” she smirks, leaning her chin on Historia’s shoulder, and nuzzling her. Get a room, guys.

“When do you finish, Historia?” Sasha then asks, and I’m drawn to the fact she and Connie are swinging their clasped hands between themselves. Ah. The ultimate fifth wheel. That’s me. All this affection is gonna make me ill.

“Tuesday is my last,” she chimes. “Same as Ymir.”

“That’s great! Connie and Jean finish Wednesday, so we should all go out after their Philosophy exam – there’s a new bar on Rose Street that I really want to try—”

“Only because of the paninis you saw they sold,” Connie adds.

“Maybe because of the paninis I saw they sold, yes.”

“A drink would be a nice way to celebrate though,” Historia agrees, and Ymir nods furiously (I’ve learned that she’s basically an alcoholic with the amount of shitty beer she’s seemingly always drinking).

“Wednesday doesn’t work for me, guys.”

All four of them turn to look at me as I say that – Sasha and Connie looking more affronted than surprised. Ymir judges me over the rim of the sunglasses that rest on the bridge of her freckled nose, for turning down booze.

“What? Why?” Sasha protests, puffing out her cheeks. “College is over, Jean! What do you have to do that’s more important than getting plastered off your face, huh?”

Well, how do I say this in a way that isn’t one-hundred percent super-awkward?

“’S Marco’s birthday,” I mutter below my breath – not sure if Sasha actually hears me, or is just far too happy at this development. She just screeches a loud and over-excited: “whaaaaaat?!”

“I said, it’s Marco’s birthday,” I repeat, more forcefully, scratching the back of my head through my undercut awkwardly.

“Who’s Marco?” Historia jumps in, clasping her hands in front of her expectantly. Oh no. Here we go. Freckled Jesus, save me. “And why haven’t we met him, Jean?”

“Oh, _we’ve_ met him,” Sasha boasts, grinning wickedly, waggling her eyebrows. “Veeeeery nice. Very nice indeed.”

“Sasha!” Connie and I both shout at the same time, causing her to just throw back her head and laugh bellowingly.

“You dating him, Jean?” Ymir smirks, in between Sasha trying to placate Connie by pinching his cheeks and making baby-noises at him (why do I get a sense of déja-vu from this scenario?). I think I genuinely produce steam from my ears.

“N-no! Come on! He’s my fucking pool boy, Jesus!”

“Pool boy? Kinky.”

All I can manage is a defeated whine at that, and I pinch the bridge of my nose.

“Why don’t you invite him out with us then, Jean?” Connie asks. (Which is a bit surprising, seeing as how openly appreciative Sasha has been about Marco’s… appearance.)

“Nah, man, it’s cool,” I reply. I decide to ignore the jibes coming from Ymir about my sexuality, and Historia trying to shush her. “I, uh… I don’t think he, you know, drinks that much. I dunno if he’d enjoy it.”

_Also I’d rather keep him away from you lot after what happened last time. Don’t want you corrupting nice, perfect Marco to your evil ways._

“Laaaaaame,” Sasha sings. “You better not bail on us for the party too. Bring Marco. We’ll sort out his drinking problem fine.”

 _Yeah, that’s not a reassuring thing, Sash_.

I hadn’t even thought about inviting Marco to that party, but actually… yeah, it would make it a whole lot more bearable for me. Especially if Eren’s gonna be there. That’s not too selfish a thing, is it? Plus, Bert and Reiner said they’d go, so it wouldn’t be like I’d be the only one he’d be going there to hang out with…

“Jean?”

“Huh?”

“I just asked you want you’re thinking of getting him,” Historia smiles prettily, “for a gift.” For someone who only just found out about this guy, she seems suspiciously invested already… hmm. Gonna have to keep an eye on this one. Might have a secret meddlesome streak like _Springles_ over there.

“I, uh…” There’s no going back once you say it, Jean.  “I was, uh… I’m making him a mixtape.”

Connie and Sasha’s attempts at concealing their laughter just end up with them both spewing spit all over me. Diiisgusting.

“Dude!” Connie exclaims, and then continues in a hushed whisper, “Isn’t that a bit… you know, _lovey-dovey_?”

I feel blood creeping up into my face, and I feel really fucking warm. Don’t say it like the thought hasn’t already crossed my mind, Connie.

Of all people, it’s Ymir who comes to my rescue.

“Hey guys, knock it off! I think that’s a cool thing to give! _Someone_ has to educate everyone else with what music you lot should be listening to. That’s the reason people are so dumb… One Direction kills brain cells. It’s science.” I watch as Historia rolls her eyes at that. “What you got so far, Jean?”

I shoot off a list of tracks I’ve already picked (I mean, it literally _stresses me out_ thinking about how much good music Marco hasn’t listened to), and Ymir nods appreciatingly, and gives a reassuring hum at my choice of Fleetwood Mac songs – Connie and Sasha only groan dramatically.

“Don’t listen to these losers, Jean,” she grins. “They wouldn’t know the greatest album of all time if _Rumours_ hit them square in the face. I mean, Connie has Nicki Minaj for his fucking ringtone. His opinion is irrelevant on all musical matters until the end of time.”

 

* * *

 

That Saturday is a weird day. It starts out weird because I may or may not be sleep deprived from staying up till two-in-the-morning transferring songs onto the CD for Marco (I thought an _actual_ tape might be a touch too outdated, even if he is a bit of grandpa at times).

Marco turns up around midday, and it’s not a lie to say I’m literally pacing back and forth in the kitchen waiting for him to appear at the back gate. (I press my face to the window when he does, and the sight of him chuckling at my squished, turned-up nose against the glass makes me grin like a loser.)

I slip out the back door with a can of Coke for me, and a can of Dr. Pepper for him, and stride purposely across the grass as he dumps his equipment, ‘til I’m about six feet from the pool edge. Then I freeze up.

Oh yeah. The pool.

I haven’t really considered _that_ yet.

It’s strange because I _want_ to take another step forward. I’ve sat around the pool all the time with Marco. Hell, I’ve even fucking knelt right on the edge that one time he fell in.

But here I am now, legs rooted to the ground, feeling like ice, or steel, or lead, or whatever else is distinctly _unmoveable_.

This shouldn’t be happening. It’s been a god damn _week_. So why is this stupid thing worse than it’s ever been before? I can’t fucking move.

I _don’t_ want to go down this route again. Fuck.

You know the thing about Marco though, right? He always seems to know what to do. Like that time when he came ‘round for dinner, and he was just _really good_ at being a guest. Or when he knew how to treat a concussion. Or how he knew exactly what to say to get me out of my flunk. 

So he drops all his equipment without a second thought, and meets me halfway across the lawn. Now I’m looking at him, and not at the water that laps against the pool side. Some semblance of life feels like it returns to my limbs.

“Hey.” Ah, the smile.

“H-hey. I, uh, I brought you a drink.”

I hold out the Dr. Pepper can stiffly. He takes it, but his dark eyes are scanning my face – not really sure what he’s looking for – but I can’t find it in myself to really look him in the eye, so I focus my stare on… uh, his chest. ( _Why_ does he have to be taller than me…?)

That polo shirt never really left much to the imagination, even when _dry_. (And with that thought, I can practically hear the cackling laughs of all my friends and Ymir’s “well I told you so”.)

Eyes _off_. Let’s not got there, Jean. Things get suspiciously _gay_ whenever you go there.

“I missed you on Wednesday,” he smiles. Perfectly innocently. But I fucking cringe. Say stuff like that, Marco, and you’re actually giving those idiots at college some foundation for their fucking nonsense. Can we not.

“Y-yeah. Me too. Can’t say French exam was my preferred way to spend the afternoon.”

“If you ever want to swap and get solicited by forty-year-old women, just let me know,” he smirks. I scoff. “No, I’m kidding. You’ve got it worse, for sure, Jean.” He pulls the tab on the can, and takes a grateful sip. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down with each gulp.

Shouldn’t be looking at that _either_.

 

* * *

 

His 2AM text that night says:

**From: Marco-Polo  
That was six feet away from the pool today. On Wednesday let’s make it five! **

I drop my phone onto my face, and sigh. My smile is reluctant, but it’s there.

 

* * *

 

European History, Math, and Philosophy are crammed _brutally_ into the first three days of the week. It’s like they’d actually rather have students keel over in the middle of a paper, rather than actually pass it. History is okay. And if by okay, you actually mean genuine fear that my hand might fall off from writing so fucking much, then you’re on the money.

Math is alright as well – I can barely keep my eyes open, but I manage to get myself through the paper well enough to think that my grade won’t be bad enough for my dad to kick me out onto the street.

The same can’t be said for Connie, though. I told him he needed to learn the Taylor series. (People need to listen to me more often.)

The second we step out of the exam hall, Connie literally collapses onto the ground, and presses his face into the concrete with a muffled scream.

“That bad, huh?” I chuckle dryly, nudging his leg with my foot. A couple people walking by us stare warily at the sight of a bald guy lying face-down on the path, and start talking in hushed tones to themselves.

“Huuuuuuuuuuuuuurghhhhh,” comes Connie’s reply. I think he’s broken. The only appropriate thing to do is take a photo of his misfortune, and Snap Chat it to everyone in my contacts.

It takes a while to scrape his corpse off the concrete, but when I do, my stomach tells me that it’s food time, and we head to the cafeteria, Connie swearing me to a pact to never talk about the Math exam ever again for as long as we live.

Armin’s already beaten us out of Math to the cafeteria (not surprising after Connie’s self-wallowing spectacle) – and he’s sitting across from Ymir and Historia at our usual table. That’s a bit weird. Armin’s usually stuck to Eren and Mikasa like glue.

“Hey,” Historia chirps – no doubt in extra good spirits because she and Ymir are now finished with damn finals. “How did the exam go?”

“’S alright,” I shrug, and then remember Connie’s pledge. “We, uh, we’re not talking about it though.” Connie nods furiously, and sulks into one of the hard plastic chairs. I slide into the one next to him, and make a long arm for the plate of fries in front of Ymir (she heartlessly slaps my hand away). That’s when Armin pipes up.

“Oh Jean, Mikasa said that she was looking for you, by the way.”

Curveball, much.

“Huh?”

“Yeah, she said it was something important.”

What’s this now? Has Mikasa finally realised her undying feelings for me and wishes to confess her love in front of all our friends?

Yeah, only in my _dreams_.

I can’t remember the last time I swapped a word with Mikasa, let alone a conversation (that wasn’t in some wish-fulfilment fantasy in my head). What the hell could she want?

I consider all the possible (and equally, _impossible_ ) reasons she could want to talk to me, whilst Connie and Ymir begin blabbing on about something to do with the end-of-the-year party Connie’s planning.

“Yeah, so we hit a snag,” I hear him say. “The ‘rents said I can’t have the house for this year, which… sucks.”

“You’re kidding?” Ymir complains loudly, craning her head back to glare at the ceiling. “That fucking blows.”

“Is there anywhere else we could have it?” Historia asks.

“I dunno… Bert and Reiner have a pretty big place, but like… they don’t know half you guys, so maybe that’d be a bit weird,” Connie sighs. “The only other option is…”

There’s some seriously unsubtle side-eyeing going on from him. I’m on to you, you little thug. Don’t think you can blackmail me into _anything_.

“The only other option is what?” I say sharply, joining the conversation, and pushing Mikasa (unfortunately) to the back of my mind. “Out with it, you cheeky little shit.”

 “Well… your place is pretty big, Jean.”

Before I can even begin to protest all the ways why that’s never going to be a thing that will happen (what with my dad being an asshole, and my mom probably not being cool with us drinking, and having to be near the damn pool, and… and just _Eren_ in general), Connie begins spouting bullshit in the hope of changing my mind.

“Come on man, you’ve got the space, and the yard, and the _pool_. It’d be great. Please? Throw me a bone here.”

My inner monologue makes an appearance in my head at that moment.

_You know, it’s not a bad idea. Final patch up of all the things you ruined last year. Make yourself seem like a cool guy again. Not a guy who’s gonna flip his shit or shun people for another twelve months because of some stupid fear._

But Eren. Do I really want Eren at my house? Do I want Eren, at my house, near a _pool_ , with the probability of him _definitely_ bringing up what happened in a way I’d rather not be reminded of? That’s a pretty easy _no way_.

_But what do you think would Marco do?_

Don’t think about that. It’s pretty obvious what freckled Jesus would do.

“Jean.”

That’s not Connie. Or Armin, Ymir or Historia. I whip ‘round in my seat to see _Mikasa_ standing behind me. Damn. Someone that scary shouldn’t be that hot.

“H-hey.” Welp. What _is_ my voice. Get a grip, Jean. “What’s up, Mi—”

That’s when I see Eren, awkwardly loitering a few feet behind Mikasa, scraping his foot back and forth across the linoleum, glaring daggers at everything but me. Oh.

“Eren wanted to talk to you.” Or you mean: _you_ wanted Eren to talk to me.

… Wait, _what_?

I stare at Mikasa dumbly as she tugs Eren forward by his sleeve, and everyone at the table is suddenly quiet. Can’t blame them. All evidence of coherent thought has left my head too.

“Hey man.”

 _What, what, what, what, what_.

I don’t reply. He gulps loudly, and awkwardly scratches his arm. Probably expects me to say something. He seems to steel his expression into something more determined. I’m still something like a deer in headlights.

“So, uh, I was thinking,” he says, before turning to look at Mikasa for reassurance. “Do I _really_ have to do this, Mikasa?”

She just nods sternly, crossing her arms across her chest. He grumbles something, but continues.

“Listen man. This… _thing_. It’s been going on a real long time. And, well… I figured it’d be cool if we called it a truce, ‘cus, uh…”

What is this trying to be? An apology? Why is he doing this? Who put him up to this? I feel distinctly cynical, and continue to stare him down. His eyes briefly flit to the floor, but he’s too hard-headed to be put off by just me glaring at him. Never has been before.

“’Cus, uh… well, I miss when we all used to hang out, you know? And it sucks not sitting with everyone at lunch time, and avoiding each other in class. And ignoring each other in the corridors. And not being able to see you guys after class." (Is this directed at me, or at everyone?) Eren continues despite my sidetrack. "And it was really shitty of me to push you in the pool that time when you obviously didn’t want to go in, and I’m sorry for whatever it was that freaked you out, and I don't really get it, because you acted really wired and hella fucked up, but I guess what I'm trying to say, is, uh... fuck—” His words are coming out pretty quickly by this point, and he’s stumbling over his sentences to try and get this done as sharpish as possible. But he manages to avoid mentioning the water thing right out. Which is surprising. ‘Cus this is Eren, and he usually just says whatever comes to mind first. “Look, it was really _not cool_ of me. I get that now. I got it then.” 

 _Not cool of you is damn fucking right_ , I think. Eren looks to Mikasa, who gives him a small, rare smile in return, before he looks back down at me. Oh. I’m meant to say something. Shit.

“I, uh… so, we cool, man?” he offers, seeing as my brain-to-mouth function has apparently timed out. Maybe if I stare at him long enough, I’ll be able to see through him. There’s no way this can be a product of genuine regret, right? _Right_?

“Jean?” That’s Connie, accompanied by a hefty stamp on my foot under the table. _Dude_! I shoot him a glare, but he just widens his eyes and tries to gesture unsubtly between me and Eren. Over his shoulder, I notice Historia mouthing something along the lines of: “apologise”.

Really? Apologise? Does twelve months of shit, of being whispered about in the corridors, of being glared at across the lecture theatre – does it all get undone just by one half-assed speech?

Internal monologue – who more and more recently has become (shamefully) an internal freckled Jesus – speaks out to me. Forgive and forget, Jean. Be the bigger man. Sort this the fuck out.

“I, uh… I’m sorry-" I start slowly, words coming out before I have time to really process them. “-about your ribs. And, uh, your _nose_ … and everything else.” But I'm not sure if I can be sorry for freaking out.

 _I don’t think I ever hated you. I was just… fucking scared, man_.

Eren grinds his teeth, and for a millisecond I think he’s about to explode at my lame-ass apology. But he doesn’t. He just sort of bites the inside of his cheek, and scratches the side of his wonky nose. It crosses his mind that actually, maybe he's been feeling like shit too. Maybe he's been living twelve months thinking - _knowing_ \- he fucked up. He was just too fucking proud to admit it.

“Nah, it’s cool," he says. "My nose looks kinda better this way, right?”

I hear Connie stifle a laugh, and watch Mikasa roll her eyes, as I am struck frozen in disbelief. _What_.

“Mikasa, Eren, why don’t you join us?” Armin pipes up, pointing to two of the empty chairs next to him. Apparently _he’s_ decided that’s good enough. Right. I haven't quite decided if it's good enough for me. It should be. I really want it to be.

Mikasa obliges, and Eren seems to let out a massive, pent up sigh of relief as he follows her ‘round the table, and slips into one of the hard-backed chairs. Mikasa instantly falls into friendly conversation with Armin, whilst Ymir slaps Eren on the back, and Connie lunges across the table top to punch the guy playfully on the arm.

As for me… uh, well, shell-shocked would probably be an accurate description. Overwhelmed. Speechless.

D-did that just really happen?

Did Eren Jaeger just come up to me and apologise? And did I just - lamely - apologise right back at him?

I can’t put a word on how that makes me feel. I look around the table, and everyone’s smiling, chatting, _laughing_. Connie grapples Eren into a noogie, almost sending Ymir’s plate of fries flying (luckily she’s too quick for that, and saves it, with a fierce growl). I can't smile, I can't laugh, but I do feel ... something. Like something bad has started to be chipped away, flake by flake.

I feel like I need to rub my eyes, clear away this _dream_. This can’t really be happening, can it? It’s too good to be true. I never thought… I never…

Something twists itself in my gut, and slithers up into my chest. It constricts, wraps its hands around my throat. Ah. Now this is a feeling I’ve been on good terms with lately.

“H-hey,” I say, leaning over to Historia, seeing as she’s the closest. “I-I’m just gonna go to the bathroom, so… be right back.” She nods, and beams at me – she’s so fucking pleased, and I’m so fucking _elated_ , and… fuck. Gotta leave.

I basically leg it out of the cafeteria, and high-tail it to the closest bathroom. Fortunately, it’s empty, and I go lock myself in one of the stalls, and collapse onto the toilet lid. I deflate. And everything just suddenly overwhelms me.

 _Shit. Fuck. Don’t cry. You’re such a fucking loser. This is a fucking good thing_!

I whip out my cell phone from the pocket of my jeans, and mash the keys into a coherent-enough message.

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
 **rlly need to talk to u right now**  
  
 **To: Marco-Polo**  
 **can i call u**  
  
Someone comes into the bathroom, and I hold my breath automatically as I hear them piss in the urinal, run the tap, and then blast the dryer. Feels like the longest piss of my life, Jesus. I draw my legs up onto the lid of the toilet seat, and rest my chin on my knees, staring at the screen of my Samsung like it’s an oracle. (It basically is at this moment.)

The door swings shut as the person leaves, and at the same moment, my inbox flashes with a new message.

**From: Marco-Polo  
Sure! Are you okay? Has something happened?**

Trust Marco to worry. He worries a lot.

I don’t bother with a reply – instead just slide my thumb across his contact, which dials his number. I press my phone to my ear as it rings. He answers before even the first ring is through (which actually makes me jump).

“Jean? Are you okay? What’s up?” Wow, he sounds _concerned_.

 _It’s okay Marco, I’m alright. It’s nothing to worry about. Something really good just happened_. That’s what I want to say to him. That’s not what comes out though. I just about manage a strangled, choking noise. Fuck.

“Jean? Jean! What’s wrong?”

I cup my forehead in my free hand, and try to control the way the lump in my throat is trying to push its way up and out of my mouth. I blink back the stinging in my eyes. I try again.

“I’m… okay.” I take a deep breath, and repeat. “I’m okay. I’m great. Marco, I’m really, actually, fucking _great_.”

It takes him a minute, because I guess he’s trying to figure out if I’m being my usual sarcastic asshole self. I’m not. I think he gets that, because his tone changes a little, becomes less flustered.

“What’s happened?”

“It’s uh… Eren, he… he started talking to me again. And Mikasa too. I, uh… fuck. Fuck, sorry. I’m just a bit of a mess right now.”

There’s a (what I guess is) stunned silence – I can only hear the small intake of breath from his end. The sound bristles down the back of my neck.

“… He did?” Marco’s voice is really small, but, like, I can _feel_ his smile. I picture that in my head.

“Yep.” _He did_. I don't know why. Why now? Why he decided today, he'd had enough. But he did.

“Are you with them now?”

“Ah, uh… no… I, uh, had to, uh… I mean, that’s really lame, but…” _I had to leave. I was going sappy on their asses._

“I get it. I’m really happy for you, Jean. Really am.” My ears feel really warm at that, and I kinda wish there weren’t however many miles between me and him. I want to see his expression in person. “You deserve it, Jean.”

There I times when I want to ask him what he’s thinking. Like, really thinking. Actually, that’s most of the time. He’s the kinda guy I wouldn’t mind spending the whole day talking to. Whole day, whole week, whole _life_. Wouldn’t care.

I can’t say any of that. So I just sniff loudly, and he laughs.

“Shut up,” I hiss down the line. “Stop laughing!”

That has the opposite effect, of course. Marco just laughs more, and I bury my head between my knees with a really stupid grin.

“You’re such a loser,” he chuckles.

“I know,” I reply breathily. “So are you.”

“So I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“On my birthday.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

I have to tell him “bye” five times before he agrees to hang-up first. Which is _totally_ not embarrassing. I wait another five minutes ‘till the redness in my face goes down and I feel okay about heading back out to the cafeteria.

Armin shoots me a look as I slip back into the plastic chair next to Connie, but he doesn’t mention it. I’m glad. I dunno if the others even noticed I scarpered. Doesn’t matter. I join in with the conversation, and something nice-feeling swells in my chest.

“Hey, Con,” I say, poking him in the shoulder, grabbing his attention from his debate with Ymir over whether beer tastes better in a can or in a bottle. “I, uh… I think it’d be cool if we had this party at my place after all.”

The brutal slap on the back, the chorus of deafening whooping, the feeling of being included, finally, _finally_ … it feels so damn good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hiatus is over! /party poppers everywhere/
> 
> Poor Jean ... a roller coaster of a chapter for him! He's got a lot of demons ... and they're not just gonna go away, sadly. 
> 
> I did a lot of research before writing this chapter - mainly about panic attacks and aquaphobia, and dealing with both. it was very eye-opening, and I hope I've presented both realistically and respectfully. 
> 
> This has been a jean-centric chapter. Next time will be a more Marco-centric chapter, in terms of what happens. His birthday is not going to go smoothly, I'll tell you that much. These poor boys. I'm horrid to them.
> 
> But this also means that Erwin in speedos will appear next chapter. That's something to look forward to, right?
> 
> Other than that: Ymir is right when she says Rumours by Fleetwood Mac is the greatest album of all time. Don't fight me on this, guys.
> 
> Please drop me lots of feedback! I live for comments like there's no tomorrow! Let me know what you like, what you hate, what you hope to happen! Ask me questions! I love you all... see you next time!


	9. You Give Love A Bad Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're too young to be this sad.

“Jean, honey, is that your phone that keeps going off?”

I squint up from the Philosophy notes spread haphazardly over my chest, and attempt to subtly uncross my feet from the arm of the couch, as my mom appears in the doorway of the living room, hands on hips. Judging by her face, I don’t think she’s thrilled with my _totally_ clean socks up on the furniture. The jingle of my message tone sounds again, kinda muffled, from where I’ve buried it under a pile of couch cushions. That’s the thirty-seventh fucking time. I’m definitely gonna lose count soon.

“Are you not going to answer it?” mom queries, glancing from the cushion mountain, to me, then back to the cushions again.

“Nope,” I reply incredulously. Whether Connie cares to remember or not, we’ve got an exam tomorrow. Even if it is Philosophy, and we both hate it with the passion of one thousand burning suns.

I still want to pass. Connie, apparently, wants to text me, non-stop, for the best part of the three hours since I’ve been home.

The first few texts had been fine. I’d replied, humoured him. Not surprising really – seeing as I _was_ in a good mood when I left campus earlier, and hey, his excitement about the party _was_ infectious.

Thirty-seven texts later, and enthusiasm kinda wanes a little.

“’S just Connie,” I explain briefly to my mom, craning my head back over the arm rest to look at her upside-down. “Wasting his tariff.”

“Just Connie,” mom repeats, a little absent-mindedly. Probably debating why ever I would ignore such a charming friend of mine. “Oh! That reminds me!” She potters over, and sits down on the slither of visible sofa left between me and the edge. I wriggle over a bit, to give her more space, but mainly to not let myself be suffocated by her genuinely sitting on me. “Grandma called this morning. Seeing as your father is out of town next week, I was thinking about flying out to see her. Do you fancy coming with me, honey?”

I call tell by her face that she’s expectantly hoping on a yes. She’s going to be disappointed. I’m a selfish bastard.

“I’ve, uh, kinda got plans, mom,” I say. Sort of a lie. I don’t have plans, yet, but I’ll gladly _make_ some plans if there’s the possibility of me having a free house for a few days. Her face drops a little bit, but she doesn’t seem too disheartened. I think I can live without it weighing on my soul _too much_. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

“No, no, honey, it’s alright,” she says, patting my arm affectionately. “You’re a nineteen-year-old boy. Of course you have plans. You’ll be wanting to see your friends this summer.”

“Yeah.” And definitely not cooped up in grandma’s _shack of a house_ in the middle of fucking nowhere. No internet. No phone signal. No air conditioning. Everyone speaking French all the time. Hell on earth, basically. “Will, uh… you be okay, mom? Flying over there by yourself and all…?”

“I’ll be fine,” she says, with a smile that stretches her red lips. “Your father shouldn’t be the only one able to get away once in a while.”

I glance up at her then, curiously, warily, basically _confused_. The way she phrased that makes me think that she _knows_. That she’s picked up on the fact that some business trips aren’t really all about business.

“Jean?” she asks – I’ve been staring intently at her face for a bit too long. I duck my head back towards my Philosophy revision notes, and don’t make a big deal out of it. I really fucking hope she _knows_.

“’S nothing,” I murmur, leafing through a few pages of my untidy scribbles about Bertrand Russell. “Sounds like a nice plan. I’ll try to keep the house in one piece for you whilst you’re gone.”

She laughs, slaps me gently on the arm again, and informs me that I’m far too _uninteresting_ a son for that ever to be a worry for her. She says the most she’s concerned about is my turning to a diet of entirely fruit roll-ups. Gee, thanks. (Fruit roll-ups _are_ good though.)

Of course dad doesn’t come home for dinner, so it’s just the two of us, and my Philosophy books at the table that night. Mom doesn’t really mind – she’s usually fussy about my phone, but she’s cool with textbooks. I don’t really look at them all that much, though. The pie is too good for that.

“So what time can I expect you home tomorrow?” she asks, as she clears away my empty plate. I follow her into the kitchen, with both our empty glasses, and prop them on the draining board, as she loads the dishwasher. “I’m assuming you’ve got something planned?”

“Nah, not really,” I admit, with a shrug.

“Oh? Isn’t the hip, young thing to go out and get very, very drunk after you finish exams?” I question her use of “hip” and “young” with an unamused expression. Please don’t ever speak like that again, mom. “Goodness me, Jean! What is with you? Are you sure you’re a normal teenager? Sometimes I worry there’s actually a fifty-year-old man trapped in your body.”

“You should be happy, ya’ know,” I pout, folding my arms across my chest. “I could be a drug-addict, or in jail, or fuck knows what.” I could be like _dad_. “I’ll be home just after lunch, probs. Gonna see Marco.”

“Ah, Marco,” my mom grins. Oh _snap_. She’s learning things from Sasha. I don’t like that look. “Who’d have thought that I was hiring _you_ a friend, instead of hiring us a pool-guy?” She flips her ash-blonde hair over her shoulder, and shoots me a seriously mischievous-looking smile. I scowl at her.

“Jesus Christ, do you actually have _no shame_?”

 

* * *

 

 

I leave mom to enjoy a _Desperate Housewives_ rerun, and retreat upstairs, to the safety of my room. (Less likely to endure mind-numbing TV, less likely to be _harassed_ about my life choices.)

It’s around eight-thirty when I decided to reward myself with a quick scope of my newsfeed – I open up my laptop lid, entirely expecting a _tirade_ of little red notifications in the top right corner of my Facebook homepage, from Connie. Thankfully, there are less than I’d feared.

I flick through the usual things: _Sasha Braus poked you, Armin Artlet and three others liked your status, Historia Reiss commented on a photo you posted_. The final notification in the queue is what I click on last: _Connie Springer invited you to his event: **END OF EXAMS PARTAAAAAAAY**_

Oh man. The amount of extra letters in that _party_ is obnoxious enough as it is. I think I regret clicking it.

I scan the event’s page quickly, eyes flicking over who’s been invited (and who’s said they’re going without even knowing the date yet). I type out a new comment under Connie’s sparse information and fucking _atrocious_ choice of cover photo at the top of the page.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _the house is free weekend after this one. get here for 8ish. bring alcohol or ill kick u out_

Almost as soon as I hit enter, I get an insta-like from Connie and Sasha. It’s accompanied by a comment from Sasha containing far too many exclamation marks. Guess she’s excited.

I go back to look at the invite list, and noticing Reiner and Bert are missing, move to add them from my friend’s list. That makes ten. Well, eleven if they bring that creepy neighbour of theirs.

_And last, but not least …_

Two months, a handful of emotional crises, and one near-death experience (in my opinion at least) later, and I still haven’t clicked the friend request button at the top of Marco’s profile. That little white button … I guess I’ve been avoiding it a little more than purposely lately. Not that Marco’s actually ever brought it up. He’s probably not so into the old Facebook stalking practice.

… Not like me.

But in order to add him to the invite list, I’m gonna just have to take that metaphorical leap. I almost can’t look at my laptop screen as I hesitantly click down on my mouse-pad. _Friend request sent_.

Hnnng. Can my heart please get out of my throat, because that should _not_ have been as nerve-wracking as it fucking was! _A button, Jean. You just clicked a button._ Jesus Christ!

The _bing_ of a notification genuinely gives me a heart attack. Fucking sound wasn’t on mute. I hover my mouse over the globe icon in the top right corner of my screen.

 _Marco Bodt accepted your friend request_.

Well… that was _quick_. Someone’s keen. (Or just maybe _online_ , you know, Jean.)

I have approximately one millisecond to process this development, before Marco pops up in a chat window.  
  
 **Marco Bodt:**  
>> _Hey! :D_

I stare at the unobtrusive smiley face for a real long time, trying to decide its subjective worth. Because talk about appearing eager. I’m not complaining though. In fact, I may or may not be flushing a pretty dark fucking red, judging by my reflection in my laptop screen. I deliberately turn the brightness up so I can’t see that shit.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _hey man_  
>> _that was quick_  
>> _accepting my friend request that is_  
>> _lol_

Not really laughing out loud. More: staring intently at the ellipsis that appears next to Marco’s name, indicating that he’s typing something.

 **Marco Bodt:**  
>> _Haha yeah! I was wondering if it would ok to add you on here … but I guess you beat me to it! :D_

I can imagine him scratching the back of his neck, or chewing on his lower lip – his usual kinda flustered quirks.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _so that means u were stalking me on fb huh  
_ >> _don’t u lie to me marco_

 **Marco Bodt:**  
>> _“Stalking” makes it sound creepy!_ _D:_

I refrain from making a comment about that, but I don’t fail to… _entertain_ the notion of him creeping through my Facebook posts and photos (like _I’ve done to him_ too many times I’d like necessarily to admit). Briefly, I glance over at my Philosophy notes, a post-it note marking where I was on my final read-through. Man. I know what’s definitely more interesting. I hope I don’t regret this.

Another message from Marco pops up during my deliberation over whether or not to throw in the towel on the work.

 **Marco Bodt:**  
>> _So what made you want to add me? :D_  
>> … _You’re not procrastinating over revision, are you?_

Cheeky bastard. I sometimes reckon he gets his kicks out of asking mildly awkward questions like this. But it does remind me to go finish adding him to that guest list on Connie’s event page.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _gonna invite u to a party_  
>> _but if ur gonna be cheeky I might retract my offer_

I type in Marco’s name to the search bar, click his icon, and the deed is done.

 **Marco Bodt:**  
>> _Oh, I’ve just seen it!_  
>> _Are you sure you want me there? I don’t want to … cramp your style in front of your friends or anything!_

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _u did not just type that_  
>> _also yes_  
>> _u gotta come_  
>> _will be super dull without u_  
>> _dont let me suffer reiner by myself pls_

Or Connie. Or Sasha. Or all the things I’ve heard about drunk Ymir. You don’t even know what they’re like when they’re drunk. I _need_ this emotional support.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _also u will already be at my house  
_ >> _cos its a saturday_  
>> _so u can just stay around_  
>> _pls man u gotta_

My plea for help is answered when the number of people checked to be “going” to this thing jumps up by one. I can’t help but grin, rolling my tongue in my cheek.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _knew u wouldn’t be able to resist (me)_

 **Marco Bodt:**  
>> _I could just as easily change my mind! :P  
_ >> _Do you want to Skype, maybe?_

I actually slam my hands down on the keyboard in surprise. (And just as quickly backspace the intelligible nonsense I’ve just created.) _S-Skype_? _Like, video calls and stuff_?

I glance over my shoulder for a once-over of my room. It looks like a small bomb has gone off in here. There are textbooks and stacks of paper piled high at the foot of my bed, at the foot of my wardrobe – basically everywhere where there isn’t half-worn clothing strewn across the floor. I wonder how much of it is viewable via webcam.

My room is a pig-sty. But I still say yes.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _sure_  
>> _add me_

I send him my username, and open up the Skype app on my desktop with that really weird bloop noise. It’s been a while since I’ve used this thing, and it takes a few minutes of randomly clicking stuff to try and figure out what it all does again. There’s an orange pop-up at the side of the screen saying I have a new chat.

From _Robodt_. Simply amazing. Didn’t expect any less.

I dutifully inform him of this fact.

 **Robodt:**  
>> _I don’t think yours is any better!_

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _hey its a stroke of genius ok  
_ >> _and i mean robodt was is that man_  
>> _are u five_

 **Robodt:**  
>> _So what if I am? :P  
>> You’re so kind to me, Jean._

There’s a few moments of silence as I stare at the screen, neither of us typing anything, when my laptop starts makes a noise. I don’t even realise it’s the sound of an incoming Skype call until I’ve been staring at the green, phone-shaped button in front of me for at least half a minute. Behind the pop-up, I see Marco’s typed something else.

 **Robodt:**  
>> _Why won’t you pick up? D:_

His frowny-face spurs me into clicking the accept-a-call, without really sparing another thought to the state of my room, or the state of my hair (I have been lying on the couch for like, three hours, so who even knows _what_ it looks like), or the state of my face.

Scratch that. I’m definitely thinking about the state of my face. Because it’s gotta be bright, fucking red, as Marco springs up in webcam form. There’s _a lot_ of skin on show.

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _dude where is ur fucking shirt ?!_

I realise, as I slam enter, that I could’ve just said that out loud to him. From his end, he laughs – the usual musical sound kinda ruined by the grainy quality of my speakers.

“It’s too hot,” he chuckles, and yep – there’s his hand on the back of his neck, as he awkwardly looks away from his camera shyly. “And we don’t have air con here.”

“Don’t have air con in my room either,” I frown, leading back in my wheely-chair. His webcam is not great; the room around him is too dark for me to see much else bar him, what I guess is a dining table, and maybe a door – and the quality is too shitty to be able to see many of the freckles that I remember being all over his shoulders … _wait_. No.

“I promise I’m not an exhibitionist,” he smiles. I know there should be creases at the corners of his eyes… but I can’t quite make them out. “Just don’t tell your mom, okay?”

“Don’t worry man, you’re safe. She’s involved in some trashy soap downstairs,” I shrug, trying to give him my best mischievous smirk.  Marco rolls his eyes, and leans his head into the palm of his hand, _his_ smile seriously dopey.

“So how’re you?” he says.

“Huh?”

“How’re you?” he repeats, “Since this afternoon.”

“Oh.”

He waits patiently for my brain to catch up with his words; I catch his eyes roaming over his screen, and I really hope he’s not noticing the state of my room in the background of my feed.

“I-I’m good,” I stutter, as smooth and fucking eloquent as ever. “Sorry about… you know… being such a loser when I called you. That was pretty embarrassing…”

“You weren’t being a loser,” he hums. He’s wrong. I am one-hundred-percent a _blushing_ loser at this moment in time. “You were just being _normal_. So, will Eren be at this party you’ve bullied me into?”

“Yeah,” I say. “But it’s cool. We’re cool.”

“I’m proud of you, Jean.”

Ah. Hmm. Please don’t _ever_ say things like that with a straight face. I might internally combust. And that’d be pretty fucking messy.

“Y-you’re so fucking corny.”

I cross my arms over my chest, and will my ears and face to not be as red as I feel they probably are. Marco just laughs. I decide I hate his stupid, amazing laugh. Hate it.

“You should learn to take a compliment, you know, Jean. And I really— _oh no_.”

He seems surprised, suddenly sitting upright, head whipping ‘round to look over his shoulder at – I guess – the direction of the door of whatever room he’s sitting in right now. I watch his jaw clench.

“Marcooooo!”

The Skype call manages to pick up the voice which Marco’s evidently already heard.

“Mina, I’m on the—”

“But I need heeeeeeeelp!”

I remember him mentioning his sister maybe once or twice before – but obviously this is the first time I’ve seen her. And talk about a mini-me. She’s lanky and thin, not like Marco at all, but her hair is long, black, and kinda unruly, and she seems to have the same smattering of freckles all across her cheeks (unless that’s just grain from the webcam, I can’t exactly tell). Marco’s half-turned in his chair to look at her, as she stalks up to him, clutching a sheet of paper and a pencil in her hands. Her eyebrows are pulled up in the middle in the same way he does it.

Marco sighs, and I think he throws me an apologetic glance, as he reaches out to be handed the paper.

“You know, you should have already done your homework, Mina,” he states, though judging by her face, she’s having none of that. “You’re supposed to be going to bed soon.”

“But mom’s not home yet, so I don’t have to, duh!”

“You know I’m in charge when mom’s not home.” Yeah, no luck there, Marco. That face she’s making could kill.

“Alright, show me what you’re stuck on then,” he sighs. His sister slinks up beside him, and looks over his shoulder, stabbing one bony finger down onto what I guess is a problem.

“That one,” she announces. I try to remember how old he said she was … eight or nine? Something like that. Her beady, dark eyes suddenly meet mine on the webcam feed. I freeze.

“Who is that?”

“H-huh?” Marco says, his head shooting up. “O-oh! Mina, this is Jean.”

“H-hey,” I offer nervously, with a twitchy wave of my hand. She’s definitely not impressed, and a frown appears on her face as she looks between me and Marco. She then jabs her finger at the screen.

“Is he your boyfriend?”

Do you ever have those moments when you have the epiphany of exactly what song would play in the soundtrack of your life at one particular moment? This is one of those. In my head, I hear the yowling opening lines of Bon Jovi’s _You Give Love A Bad Name_.

 _Shot to the heart_ is probably a gross understatement.

There’s no time for a mental guitar solo, due to the wave of embarrassment that flushes over me in that exact instance. I _hate_ situations like this.

“I-I, uh—”

Marco’s probably just about as coherent as me, but he at least manages a sentence, despite the shade of red he’s currently rocking. Still, he kinda sounds like a drowning cat, with all his spluttering. (But I’m no better.)

“N-no! Mina! We’re not— He’s not… he’s not my boyfriend!”

She doesn’t miss a beat.

“Good. Because his hair is reeeeaaally weird.”

Well, now we all know why I really hate kids. I run an affronted hand through my dishevelled hair.

“Hey! It’s not weird, it’s very nice!” Marco jumps in, tapping his sister on the nose with the end of the pencil in his hands. My face is burning. It might in fact be on fire. _Marcoooooooo_ , I whine internally. I don’t even dwell on the fact he thinks my hair is nice. (Well, I do, but only for live, five seconds, I promise.) “Now please can you please humour me and go back to whatever you were doing, Mina?”

He pushes the piece of paper back into Mina’s hands, and they exchange a stuck-out-tongue at each other. I would laugh, but I’m still riding the mortification wave over here.

“You suck, Marco,” she proclaims, tapping him on the head with her problem sheet. Marco hums something intelligible, and gives his sister a nudge in the direction of _away from him_.

When she’s safely out the room again, Marco collapses onto his desk with a groan, burying his face in his arms.

“That bad?” I laugh weakly, my voice a little too squeaky than I’d have liked it. Marco peaks up from his arms, with an awkward wince.

“I’m sorry Jean. She used to be cute, but now she’s just sarcastic and annoying. I really don’t know what on earth happened.”

“Hey! I heard you, Marco! Don’t talk about me behind my back!” comes Mina’s voice from somewhere on the other side of the door. Marco grimaces again.

“Hmm, sarcastic and annoying,” I muse. “Sounds like me.”

“You’re not annoying,” he smiles, with a deflating sigh. “Well, _most_ of the time. Nine year old sisters, on the other hand …”

The silence that follows is heavy, and kinda awkward, as we both obviously rack our brains for something to say to resume conversation. I get there first … which is probably not for the best. But hey, might as well address the elephant in the room, or let is gnaw away at my curiosity until it becomes too weird to ever attempt to bring it up again.

“So, uh, your sister, she said… uh, well, she asked if I was your _boyfriend_.” The red flags start springing up inside my head, and there’s definitely a significant part of my inner monologue instructing me to _stop now_. “What, uh… what did she mean by that?”

“Oh, uh, I… I like men.” When I don’t reply instantly, he quickly follows up with, “I’m _gay_ , Jean.”

“Oh.”

He looks a little hurt. Shit.

“O-oh?”

It’s not like I’ve said anything wrong. I just haven’t said anything at all. And now I’m just staring dumbly at the grainy feed of Marco looking more uncomfortable than I’d really like him to be.

“W-well, uh… I guess… I guess that explains why you’re so bad at noticing when housewives start hitting on you…”

Marco laughs gently, and looks, thankfully, a bit more relieved.

“Yeah, I guess,” he agrees quietly. “So… you’re okay with… uh, me telling you… that?”

“Okay?” I’m taken a back about why he’d think I _wouldn’t_ be okay with his… being _gay_. I mean, has he met Ymir? (Well, no, but you get the point.) She’s the biggest raging homosexual on the planet. But also, my _friend_. Like Historia, and Reiner, and Bert. Hell. Maybe there’s something in the water around here. “’Course it’s okay! Why wouldn’t it be okay, man?”

His eyes seem to skirt around looking directly at me.

“I-I don’t know,” he says. “Just… sometimes, especially, you know, people are a bit… and I thought—”

I can probably take a stab at where he’s coming from. People in my neighbourhood are notoriously right wing. My _dad_ is notoriously right wing. Not so good with the old open-minded thing. I guess the thought must’ve crossed Marco’s mind… but I wish he’d thought better of me. I’m not like my old man. Not in a million years.

“I’m not like that,” I say pointedly, jabbing my finger at him, through the screen. “Come on Marco, you know me better than that. If you like dicks over chicks, I’m game. It’s totally cool.”

“So you’re not uncomfortable with—”

“Hell no.”

“Oh. Oh. That’s good.” His voice seems to rise several octaves as he says that – and I wonder: why is he so scared? It’s just _me_.

He exhales loudly – loud enough for the mic to pick it up, and for me to discern what the sound is. Feels like he’s been holding that in for a while. I decide to test the water.

“Did you think I’d freak out or something?”

“N-no,” he says quickly, practically cutting me off. His expression then becomes a little meeker. “I-I mean, maybe…? I, uh, I only just came out to my f-family, and they’re still getting used to the idea, so I was a little… well, you know.”

“Your sister seems perfectly _at home_ with the idea,” I smirk. “Perfectly cool with pairing you up.” Solve the awkward situation with humour. That’s the only way I know. It apparently works well enough, because a sort of reluctant, but peaceful smile appears on his freckled face.

“Alarmingly so,” he agrees, with a shake of his head. “She’s freakishly invested in my love life. And she’s only nine. I think… I’m going to fear for my life by the time she’s a teenager.”

He sounds like normal Marco again. That drags out a dumb smile onto my own face, and I relax back into my chair (turns out I’d gotten increasingly close to the screen of my laptop with increasing nerves/embarrassment/whatever you want to call it).

“… What about you, Jean?”

“Huh? What about me?”

“W-well, I mean… do you like girls … or g-guys, or…?”

I think one guy can only internally combust so many times in one night. But, I’m not exactly sure why I feel like I’ve been set on fire yet again, because I mean, hey, pretty normal question, _right_?

To be brutally honest, I always get embarrassed by these kinds of questions. Not just with Marco. Connie and Sasha have a tendency to _always_ be on my case, and let’s not even get started on Ymir and her strange fascination with my sexuality (though I don’t see what’s up for debate, because I swear to you, Mikasa’s been the be-all and end-all since sixth grade…).

It’s embarrassing because I have, like, _zero_ experience with… well, anyone. And I don’t like to admit that.

In sophomore year, I had a thing with a girl called Hitch – and by thing, I mean _thing_ , and not relationship, by any stretches of the imagination – just a hasty getting-each-other-off behind the bike sheds, simply because I liked someone else, and she liked someone else, and we were both really, really frustrated and angry and horny.

Hitch was scary though. She’d shout at me a lot, and freak out over the smallest thing, and really just liked knocking me down a peg whenever she had a chance. In the end, it wasn’t really about, you know, the kissing (and the other stuff), just more about making me feel like absolute _shit_.

But I never really expected it to be anything else – because it was just a ploy to make Mikasa think, _hey, Jean’s a likeable guy_ , and make her jealous, and all that …

_But when, actually, was the last time you looked at Mikasa the way you used to?_

Marco tilts his head to the side, and watches me – maybe my internal monologue is noticeable.

_And let’s not even get started on popping boners around half naked pool boys._

Wow, totally the best time for that memory to resurface. I thought I’d decided to completely block that event from memory for the rest of my life?

I open my mouth to say… _what_ , exactly? But – thank God, or Jesus, or Buddha, or whoever – I’m rescued from a potentially awkward situation.

_Mina, kid, I take back everything I thought about hating children. You’re great. Thank you._

“Marco! I still can’t do this one! Help meeeee!”

Marco sighs, and turns to accommodate his sister again, as she throws her homework into his lap with pretty intense determination.

“Okay, okay, grab a chair, Mina,” he says, before glancing up at me. “You don’t mind, do you, Jean?”

“N-no, it’s cool,” I say, waving him off. I’m glad of the change of topic. “What subject is it?”

“Math,” Mina complains loudly, over the screech of her dragging another chair from off camera into the view of the webcam. “It sucks. I hate it.”

“Preach,” I say, feeling more than sympathetic towards her plight. “I agree with you, kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” she pouts angrily. “I’m nine and three-quarters, actually. I’m almost ten!”

“Ten, huh?” I shoot back, sarcastically. (What? I can’t help it.) “Wow, my mistake. That’s real old!”

“Jean,” Marco warns, one eyebrow quirked upwards, as if to ask me what on earth I’m doing. Mina seems to be content with my grovelling apology, however. “Mina, come on. Sit down, and let’s get this done before mom gets home.”

I watch quietly as Marco explains some math problem to his sister, playfully _booping_ her on the nose with the pencil every time she complains about not getting it. I feel a warmth sorta swelling in my chest as I watch them tease each other, and the way Marco’s eyes seem to light up. (That’s definitely not just a play of the webcam quality.)

“Do you get it now?” Marco grins, as Mina examines the problem set with a scowl.

“I got it,” she says, begrudgingly, “… Thanks, Marco.”

Marco ruffles his sister’s hair affectionately, despite her attempts to swat caring-older-brother away, and then ushers her to, essentially, get lost.

“Mom will be home soon,” he says. “So make sure you’re at least in bed before that happens. You don’t have to go to sleep… I’m feeling nice.”

Mina seems to think this is an acceptable deal.

“Night Marco,” she says, slipping off her chair, “See you in the morning! You’re really going to like your present!”

Marco spins back ‘round in his chair, and greets me once again with a stupid, Disney-prince grin, less apologetic than before.

“Where were we?” he smiles broadly.

“Talkin’ about your love of dicks,” I smirk, and Marco chokes. He slams his fist firmly against the base of his throat a few times, eyes wide, swallowing hard.

“J-Jean!”

“What?” I cackle, “That’s basically true.”

“ _Please_ be quiet! My sister might hear you!”

“I bet she doesn’t even _know_ what a dick _is_ , Marco.”

“But she can _ask_.” There is genuine fear in his voice at the thought of that as a consequence.

I snicker quietly to myself whilst Marco shakes his head in mortification – but I sure as hell can see the smile he’s trying his hardest to now repress, and not give me the satisfaction of knowing that I still made him laugh. Success.

“Hey Marco.”

“What?”

“Hope you suck a lot of dicks this year.”

The crudeness is worth his facial expression alone. I think he might actually be having an aneurism.

“J-Jean! W-what sort of birthday wish is that?!”

I throw my head back and laugh, desperately clutching my stomach, and trying my hardest not to genuinely fall off my chair. Marco’s got his head in his hands, and is staring down at his keyboard in disbelief.

“You’re awful,” he murmurs. I lean forward again, towards my webcam.

“I know,” I grin brazenly. I know he can’t help himself; his face is bright red by this point. I’ve broken him.

“I regret telling you,” he says weakly.

“I _bet_ you do.”

I tease him for a while – it gives me an increasing level of smug satisfaction to watch him get more and more flustered – but eventually we lapse into a normal conversation. I ask him about what he’s hoping to get for his birthday (of course, he informs me that there’s nothing that he really wants, and that he isn’t expecting much), and then he starts prying for information when I let it slip that I’ve got him something. I sneakily eye the CD I’ve burned for him, where it sits on my desk just off screen. I tell him that I’m looking forward to giving it to him, and at that, he bites his lip, and looks away from the screen. It makes me blush like a dork again. We’re _a pair_ of blushing dorks.

Around half-eleven, there’s commotion in the background of his feed.

“What’s that?” I ask, as he turns around in his chair to glance at the door somewhere behind him. The muscles in his back tense as he twists.

“Sounds like mom’s home,” he replies. Damn, that’s late. I wonder if she’s been at work? Must be tough on Marco and his sister if she does shifts this late every day. (And I haven’t even seen or heard any sign of their dad?) “Hang on, I’ll be right back, Jean. Just going to see if she’s okay.”

He stands up, and I get an awkward, if mildly-appreciated view of his chest as he pushes his chair away from the desk, and then of his back, and the pool of freckles just above his waistband of his shorts, as he leaves the view of the camera.

I can just about make him out in the background as he opens the door, and leans out, obviously talking to someone out there. He points back over his shoulder at one point, obviously gesturing towards the computer.

I watch him take a step away from the door, and a short, soft, crinkled looking woman comes into the room. I guess his mom. They both approach the computer, Marco sliding back into his chair, flashing me a grin – albeit slightly nervously, I reckon.

“Jean, this is my mom,” he says, pointing with one finger at the woman who’s hovering, with one hand clamped on his shoulder. She’s not like _my_ mom in the slightest – she’s got a heart-shaped face stripped of any sort of makeup, dark, frizzy hair tied up in a ponytail, and is wearing a smock top and a loose-fitting, momsy cardigan. Lots of round edges. She looks very _homey_ , if that’s not too weird a thing to say. And very like Marco.

“N-nice to meet you, Mrs Bodt,” I say, sitting up a little straighter in my chair, running a hand through my hair in an attempt to flatten it. She pulls her glasses down from the top of her head, props them on the bridge of her nose, and squints at the screen, continuing to hold onto Marco’s shoulder with one hand. She looks down at her son.

“This is Jean?”

Marco nods affirmatively. (And the thought crosses my mind that this means he’s been speaking to his mom about … well, _me_.) His mom smiles, and her face lights up like Marco’s often does. It’s a really great smile, so I can’t help but return it.

“Nice to meet you too, Jean,” she says. She turns back to Marco. “It’s getting late, honey. Don’t you have an early shift in the morning? And Mina wants to give you her present before you leave the house.”

Marco glances at the bottom corner of his screen, which, I guess, is him checking the time. His eyebrows quirk upwards a little bit. We’ve been talking for gone three hours already. Sure hasn’t felt like it. I decide to butt in before Marco’s persuaded to leave.

“Uh, actually, I was kinda hoping to catch Marco at midnight,” I say; both Marco and Mrs. Bodt turn to look at me on their screen, looking surprised. “U-uh, you know, to wish him a happy birthday and stuff.” To be the _first_ to wish him a happy birthday, actually.

“I’ll keep it down, don’t worry mom,” Marco adds earnestly. “And don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

Mrs Bodt agrees with an unassuming sort of sigh, and presses a kiss into Marco’s hair, before bidding us both good night. We both wait a few moments in silence before she safely leaves the room.

“Your mom seems nice,” I say to break the silence. “Like a proper mom.”

“Your mom is also a proper mom, Jean,” he retorts.

“You know what I mean. A momsy mom,” I elaborate, drumming my fingers against the plastic baseboard of my laptop. “Not a slave to shitty husbands and high heels and _Zumba_.”

“That doesn’t make her any less of a mom.” I know that. My mom’s great. But a mom like Marco’s looks like the sort of mom who wouldn’t hesitate to squish you in a bear hug at any given moment. I envy him that.

“… Yeah, I know.”

 

* * *

 

We talk for a bit longer about pretty mundane things; mainly how I still need to watch the season four finale of _Game of Thrones_ , despite Marco’s protests at how, quote, “uncouth” it is. He just hasn’t seen the light yet. Or the dragons.

When the clock on my laptop ticks over to eleven-fifty-nine, I tell him that he’s gotta be quiet, because I have to focus on getting midnight exactly on the dot.

“Jean—”

“No, Marco, shh! I wanna get this right!”

“But you’re—”

“Sssh!”

00:00 rolls around on the bottom corner of my screen. June sixteenth.

“Marco?”

“Yes?”

“Happy Birthday!”

 

* * *

 

We don’t stay up much after that – Marco’s yawning a lot, which makes me yawn a lot, because that shit’s infectious. He also dutifully reminds me about the exam I have in the morning. Oh yeah.

“Psh, fine,” I say, admitting defeat. I roll my shoulders and click my neck with a satisfying _crack_. “Time to call it a night.”

“That’s probably smart,” Marco smiles knowingly. “I’ll see you tomorrow –uh, well, today. Later today.”

“I hope you’re looking forward to your present,” I grin. “I think you’re gonna like it. Or maybe hit me with it. Haven’t decided yet.”

“Hmm, now that’s an idea,” he chuckles, and I pull an affronted face mockingly. “No, I’m looking forward to it. I really am. Good night, Jean.”

“Night.”

His camera clicks off, and my screen returns to the chat pop-up. Marco types one final smiley face of parting, and then his green-tick icon changes to offline. I do the same, but his _good night_ still rings in my ears.

 

* * *

 

I’m not gonna lie, I mildly regret staying up so late when my alarm is like a fucking drill in my ears at seven-thirty that morning. With a groan/cry of pain, I roll over and slam my hand down on my alarm clock blindly, successfully missing it a few times, until the beeping is finally silenced.

The sun streams through a crack in the curtains, illuminating a bright, yellow block up the centre of my bed, which hits me directly in the face. I wince, and grind the heels of my palms into my eyes.  It already feels hot. Great.

I decide to go forgo the sea of t shirts and half-worn jeans on the floor of my room, hopping from clear space to clear space, over to my closet. Gonna make an effort today. (For Freckles, obviously.)  I grab a pair of tan chinos, which fall a bit low on my bony-ass hips, and a belt to go with them. I pick out a denim button up to go with them, feeling that maybe it’ll do me some good not just to roll out of bed into some grungy band shirt for once in my life.

I feel kinda _put together_ , and that gives me the sorta buzz I wouldn’t usually expect to have right before an exam (especially an exam of a subject I really, genuinely _hate_ ).

I eye up my collection of beanies in the bottom of my closet … and grab the black one. My favourite red one looks a bit worse for wear (plus, it doesn’t really match today’s outfit). I shove the thing on my head, and spend a few minutes preening in front of the mirror.

 _Right … sunglasses, car keys, textbooks for last minute cramming, check_ , I think, tallying up a mental list. _Marco’s present ready for later… check._ The CD is sitting proudly on top of my laptop, inside a spare case I’d found and scribbled on suitably (I figured Marco wouldn’t mind my doodles).

The drive to campus is alright – I have all the windows in the Jag rolled down, and I just about manage to refrain from sticking my head out like a dog on the freeway. When I swing into the parking lot, I’m surprised to see Ymir’s shitty van pulled up a few spaces over.

Freckled gay number two (she automatically gets demoted after last night, okay) lifts her head from the trunk when I saunter over to her; the traffic wasn’t so bad, so I still have a little time to kill by talking to her.

“Hey,” I say, lifting a hand in greeting. “I thought you finished yesterday.”

She looks me up and down, and raises a thin eyebrow, apparently amused by something.

“Wow, your pants don’t look like they’re cutting off circulation to your dick today, Jean. What’s the occasion for the get up?” she grins wolfishly, hands on hips. Behind her, in the trunk, are a couple massive canvases, covered with what I’d call messy splatterings of paint. (Okay, so modern art definitely isn’t my forte. But I’m not going to insult it in front of Ymir. She’d have my balls for that, without a second’s thought. For real.)

“Gee, _thanks_ ,” I grumble, scratching an itch on the back of my head, where my hair peaks out under my beanie. “That’s not the answer to my question.”

She laughs to herself and turns back around, heaving the door to her van shut. Her hands come away covered in black dirt, which she wipes haphazardly on her grungy-looking shorts. That van needs one hell of a power-wash.

“Picking up some coursework,” she explains. “If I don’t take it home, they’re gonna hang it up here, or something.”

“You not want that?”

“Nah,” she shrugs, her smirk pretty complacent-looking. “I got a guy from some gallery in midtown who said he wanted them. And I’m getting paid for it. Like hell I’m letting the art department here keep ‘em.”

I find myself intensely jealous.

Ymir majors in art (with some weird-ass minor in Norse history, or something retrospectively useless like that), but it’s not like she even needs to be at college. She’s already got interest in her work from professionals, people with fucking galleries and exhibitions and all that jazz. She dumps paint on a canvas and sells it for hundreds of dollars already. She has the things I desperately want.

“You gonna invite us to this exhibition then?” I ask gruffly, as she spins her van’s keys on her pinky finger.

“Maybe? If you guys are up for it, sure,” she says. “I mean, Historia’s already on the guest list, but if you want in, just lemme know, and I’ll write you on.” Her face then lights up, as if she’s remembered something crucial. It’s not crucial. It just makes my ears burn. “Oh, hey! I know why you’re dressed up – it’s the pool boy you-have-a-kink-for’s birthday, right? I remember! You feelin’ lucky today, huh?”

“Fuck off,” I hiss. “Why do I even bother, like, seriously?”

Ymir cackles, so I flip her off, and gruffly announce that I’ve got an exam to go to, and that I hope to see her _never_.

 

* * *

 

I catch up with Connie just before we go into the hall for Philosophy. He seems to have recovered from his emotional crisis post-Math, and can’t shut up about how drunk he’s going to get tonight with Sasha, Historia and Ymir. He tries to persuade me ‘round to joining their sorry asses again, so I dutifully tell him to get his mind back on the Russell.

The paper itself is … pretty grim. The questions are phrased really weirdly, so it takes me a while to actually figure out what the hell they’re asking – in the end, I don’t write as much as I might have liked, but I don’t think it’s a _total_ disaster either.

That, and I think I’ve finally lost all ability to care. Summer is so close now that I can _taste_ it. When the invigilator comes to collect my paper, I can practically feel Connie vibrating from three rows over. He shoots me an ecstatic grin, and I roll my eyes, but I can’t help but feel insanely relieved. I’m glad the year’s over.

Connie’s like a fucking jumping jack as I pull him away from the crowd of our Philosophy classmates, and we head back towards the parking lot. Ymir’s van is long gone, and I spot Connie’s truck a few slots down from where I’d run into Ymir earlier. I break away from him when we pass my Jag.

“Are you _sure_ you don’t wanna come out with us later, man?” he tries one last time, hanging on the car door as I slide in behind the wheel. I roll down the window, and pull the door to, out of his grasp.

“I’m saving my liver,” I reply with an exasperated smirk. “For next weekend.”

Connie deems this acceptable enough, and rocks back on his heels, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts.

“I’m hella looking forward to it. It’s gonna be mental!”

 

* * *

 

I can’t get out of my car quick enough when I pull up in front of the garage back at home. My mom’s coupe is missing, so I guess she’s out at the store, or a fitness thing, or whatever – I don’t really care, to be honest, because I’m only really thinking about one thing.

I throw my rucksack over the end of the bannisters the second I’m through the front door, and toe-off my shoes with so much force that they ram into the bottom stair. I slip-slide into the kitchen, aiming for the fridge, and take a glance out the kitchen window.

It’s not the blue polo shirt I’d been expecting (and looking forward) to see.

Well, that’s not entirely true. It _is_ the same polo shirt. It’s cornflower blue, with a name embroidered over the left of the chest.

But it sure as hell is not Marco who’s wearing it.

I stop, and lean against the window, shielding my eyes from the glaring sun with one hand. The guy in the blue polo shirt is short – like, the same height as a middle schooler, but looks really fucking angry at the pool net he’s holding. I don’t really have much time to dwell on the why, because then I notice the other guy at the pool side, hauling the pool skimmer out of the water.

Every single stereotype I ever formed about pool cleaners is fulfilled in one eyeful of this guy’s ass. He’s rocking the speedos. _Get me the bleach_.

He’s tall. And tanned. And blonde. And with abs that make Marco look like a flabby, fifty-year-old man.

_Are they cleaning the pool or filming a god damn porno out there?!_

The short guy starts mouthing off to the super-stacked guy, who in return just seems to laugh. The first thought that crosses my mind is: _mom, where are you?_ She’d have a fucking field day with these abs of steel.

Not the point. Where is Marco? He said he’d be here.

I grab my phone from the pocket of my chinos, but there are no unread text messages in my inbox, no missed calls. I draw my mouth into a tight line.

I drop him a text that’s straight to the point.

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
hey man where are u ?

I grab a Coke from the fridge, having to reach past a six-pack of Dr. Peppers, my eyes not moving from the screen of my Samsung. Marco’s usually pretty snappish with his replies … but not this time, apparently. I pull the tab, and take a long swig, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand messily.

Might as well ask.

I open the back door, and step cautiously out onto the patio. The short guy is intimidating, despite being a good half-metre smaller than me. And the big guy … well, let’s just say I’m trying my hardest to look anywhere but his ass. It’s like a fucking great _beacon_ out there. Butt beacon. Great. Just peachy. _Literally_.

I don’t go too close to the pool – the short guy takes one look at me approaching, and then pointedly ignores me, finding sifting through non-existent debris _far_ more interesting. But I’m close enough to read the embroidered name on his shirt: _Levi_. Like the jeans, I guess. Name sounds familiar, but I can’t remember why.

“Uh, hi,” I say awkwardly, clutching my Coke can close to my chest. Blondie then notices me, looking back over his shoulder when he hears me talk.

And to top it all off, he’s got great looks. Like, model-worthy looks. Makes me wonder why he’s cleaning pools for a living, with a face and body like that. I certainly wouldn’t be.

“Hey,” he smiles, offering me a hand. I hope he doesn’t notice the way I slyly wipe _my_ hand across my thigh, because my palm is sweaty and gross. I shake his hand pretty limply, entirely unsure where I’m meant to be looking right now.

 _Not his crotch, that’s for sure_. _Keep the eyes up at all costs_!

“I’m Erwin,” he continues. That name also rings a bell. “Are you the house owner here?”

 _Of course I’m not the fucking house owner_ , I briefly muse. _How old do I look?_ But obviously he’s just asking for money’s sake.

“I’m not,” I say. “But my mom left the money for you guys, so it’s fine.”

Erwin smiles a bright, but probably fake smile, and moves to get back to work. But I’m not done.

“S-so, uh, what happened to Marco?”

“Marco?” That’s the shorter guy, Levi, with the scowl, who speaks up. He leans his weight on his pool net, and kinda cocks his hip a little. “He took a few days off. Landed us with his shifts, the little shit stain. Double the work on double the amount of grimy-ass pools.”

“Days off?” I repeat robotically. Marco didn’t mention that last night. “When did he—”

“Half-way through his first god damn job this morning,” Levi replies before I’ve even finished forming the question.

“Did he say why—”

“Nope.”

“Levi,” Erwin panders. He shoots the shorter guy a knowing look, and raises his thick eyebrows expectantly. Levi scowls, his eyes flicking down to the water.

I obviously get that they know _something_. And that this Levi guy doesn’t really want to tell the intimate details to some random teenager, who he assumes has some second-hand connection to their freckled colleague. And that, in turn, doesn’t sit well with some part of me.

“Was he okay or was he like—”

“Look, kid,” Levi says, swinging his net out of the water, and gesturing with it in my direction. “His drama, not mine. And probably not yours either.” _Of course it’s my business, dickwad. I’m his friend. The friend who Marco promised to see today._

“But… Marco said he’d be here. Today.” _It’s his birthday_ , I mentally add.

“Sorry,” Erwin says, a little more sympathetically. “Looks like you got landed with us today. We’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

That’s not what I‘m bothered about.

I trudge back inside, and gulp down the rest of my Coke without taking a breath. I crush the can in my fingers, and toss it towards the trash. It clips the rim, and doesn’t make it, clattering onto the kitchen tiles. I’m forced to make the walk of shame to throw it in by hand.

 I check my phone again, but there’s still no reply. So I send another text.

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
hey are u coming over today? stick-up-his-ass and  blond superman are cleaning the pool so ? they said u took some time off. lemme know

 

* * *

 

Marco’s birthday passes without any sign or word from Marco himself. There’s a distinct sinking feeling in my chest when I begin to consider the possibilities… like him not wanting to spend his birthday with me, stuck cleaning my pool. Like maybe he’s reached the end of his tether for humouring my situation. Like something else way better than _me_ came up. Wouldn’t blame him.

I have to literally shake my head to clear myself of those thoughts. No. Stop. No. It’s not like it was before. _People just don’t ditch you like that, Jean_. _That’s just what happens in your head. Not in reality_.

Marco’s not like that.

Which raises the main question: _what else came up_?

I text him a couple more times throughout the day, and just before my mom gets home, I give in and ring him, but it goes straight to his answer machine.

 _“Hi, this is Marco Bodt. You know what to do_. _I’ll get back to you when I can!”_

I hang up before the message tone beeps in my ear.

Maybe his family threw him a party. Maybe some of his friends decided to take him somewhere for his birthday. Maybe… _maybe_. Lots of maybes. (I try not to dwell on the facts that a party wouldn’t require multiple days off, and that his friends amount to the grand total of me, Reiner, and Bert.)

_C’mon Marco, a text would be nice. Did you throw your phone across the Pacific ocean or something?_

It all puts me in a distinctly bad mood. It shouldn’t, but it does, because I’m _Jean_ , and this is what Jean _does_. Get mad a lot, for no particular reason.

To make matters worse, my dad pitches up for dinner. Nice to know he’s still attempting fatherly duties, coming to check on how the exams went. I’ve got my phone on my lap under the table when he starts the grilling.

“So? Your mother told me that you think Maths went well? How about Chemistry?” He doesn’t bring up the other three subjects – he doesn’t care about them, really.

“’S alright,” I say, peeking a glance at my phone screen, hovering my cutlery above my plate. My gaze gets nowhere near my dad at the other end of the table. I don’t elaborate, I don’t try to diffuse the inevitable bomb by telling him it was a hard paper and not to expect much. I just don’t.

“Alright?” my dad laughs dryly (but he’s not _actually_ amused). “Is that all you can say, Jean? Tell us about what was on the paper.”

I don’t see how that’s going to help, because any and all chemistry will go right over mom’s head, and I can guarantee the minute I open my mouth and start talking, I’d be interrupted anyway. I glance at my phone again.

“There’s nothin’ else to say,” I retort as gruffly as I dare. “’S over now, and I’m gonna drop it next year anyway.”

Shit. That wasn’t meant to come out.

“We haven’t discussed that,” my dad answers, feigning the statement as a question. I feel like he’s trying not to let his true feelings slip through, but he’s failing pretty dismally. “It’s Chemistry or Math, Jean. You’re going have to pick one of them as your major for next year. And preferably keep the other as your minor.” The rest of that sentence in his head probably goes something like: _French, History and Philosophy are as good as useless to me_.

I can see Ymir and her shitty van full of paintings in my mind, and have to bite back that image. Push it as far back as I can, bury it under equations, and numbers, and statistics. It doesn’t go away easily.

I take another peek at my phone under the table, but this time my mom notices.

“What _are_ you looking at, Jean?” she says, leaning over towards me. “What have I told you about phones at the dinner table?” She snatches up my cell in her nail-claws, and puts it on the glass table top with a sigh.

“Mom,” I stress, making a long arm for it, rising up from my seat. She simply slides it out of my reach along the length of the table. “I need that back, come on.”

“You know you shouldn’t be texting at the table,” she says.

“And not whilst I’m trying to have an important conversation with you,” my dad adds. “This is serious, Jean. I’d like to see you understand that, once in a while.”

That grinds my gears in all the possible wrong ways. I grit my teeth, and shove my way through the thoughts in my head.

“Mom, c’mon. I need that back,” I repeat, deliberately ignoring what dad’s just said. “I’m not texting anyone.”

I hope to deities plural that she’s not gonna be an airhead for this one moment in time. I hope she can see what I’m trying to say, without bringing up the thing that I know would throw us both in the deep end. Come on, mom. Take the hint. _Give me my phone back_.

“You’re being _incredibly_ rude to your mother,” my father scathes. “Sit down now, and eat the rest of your dinner, Jean.”

I’m being rude. _I’m_ being rude? And you’re not, are you? Not being rude to mom? I can’t believe the bullshit that comes out of his mouth sometimes.

“Mom, _please_.”

I watch her waver, torn between: pocketing my Samsung and remaining good housewife to scumbag of the century, and realising that I am genuinely very serious here.

“J-just don’t text under the table anymore,” she says. “It can wait until after dinner, okay?”

“Céline,” my dad urges. What, dad, _what_?

She drops the phone back into my expectant hand, and my fingers clench around it firmly. She meets my eyes for the briefest of seconds, and I hope she can see that I’m thankful.

The atmosphere after that is the fucking _worst_. But at least dad doesn’t go back to the questions about my god damn future, as he shovels carrots into his mouth.

As such, I can’t get out of there quick enough, leaping up out of my chair when my dad finally sets his cutlery down last, and I race for the dishwasher, which I all but throw my own plate into. The white-wire tray rattles on its hinges as I shove it back into the machine, and I’m just so fucking _riled_.

“Jean.” My mom stands in the doorway to the kitchen, holding both hers and my dad’s dinnerware. She doesn’t budge. “What was _that_ about, Jean?”

“Nothing,” I grumble, with the intention of walking straight past her, and hermitting myself away in my room with my sketchpad for the remainder of the evening. The best sorta way to start the summer holidays. Angsting.

But mom – usually weak-willed, easy doormat mom – she reaches out her arm to stop me.

“Jean, look at me. I’m your mother. I know when something’s wrong, baby.” I cringe at her pet name, but find myself rooted to the floor. “Something’s obviously happened for you to be that glued to your phone, _especially_ in front of your father.”

Here’s the thing, mom. I don’t know if anything’s _actually_ happened. Which just makes the whole thing that much more ridiculous, because I shouldn’t be this dependent on a text message, should I? I might just be expecting too much.

“Did Marco come by today?”

“No.”

She sighs through her nose, and drops her arm, sliding across the kitchen to dump the armful of plates on the kitchen counter. Her shoulders seem to droop, before she turns back to look at me, that _I’m-a-mom-and-I-know-you-better-than-you-know-you_ sort of expression on her face. She doesn’t wear it very often.

“Well then,” she says pointedly. She doesn’t elaborate, she doesn’t thank me for not bringing up pool-boy in front of volatile dad, she just expects me to know what _well then_ means. I don’t.

“Look, mom, I told you it’s nothing.” I’m basically acting like a thirteen year old school girl getting in a tizzy over her crush not phoning her back within the promised one-day. It’s fucking ridiculous. Don’t think I   _don’t_ know that.

That’s when I leave, because I reckon she’s not gonna say anything else (and if she did, I’d just get increasingly more annoyed, and more frustrated).

I drop Marco another three texts, and try to beat his answer machine once more, whilst staring at that CD on my desk, before I decide to call it a night. I have my sketchpad on my lap the entire time, but nothing gets drawn. Every time I pick up my pencil, I want to draw Marco, and when I want to draw Marco, I can’t help but think why he’s ditched me without a fucking word. In the end, I’m worn the hell out from exams, and I pass out for a good twelve hours.

One of the final things that pass through my head is: _why do you have to get so fucking attached the minute someone pays you an ounce of attention, huh?_

 

* * *

 

Still no news from Marco on Thursday. I wake up around lunch time (which, for the briefest moment when I don’t remember everything I wrong with my life, feels absolutely fucking amazing), and I allow myself approximately ten seconds of hope when I see unread messages on my phone.

They’re not from Marco though – they’re just a whole barrage of very drunk, very _incoherent_ texts from Connie and Sasha. At least _they_ had a good end-of-term. I scroll through them for kicks, but don’t bother with any sort of reply. They’re both probably still sleeping off the hangover.

I drag my laptop off my desk, swiping Marco’s CD to the side, and retreat back to my bed, making a suitable duvet mountain to collapse back into. I balance my laptop on my knees, and quickly log into Facebook; only three notifications, and none which I care about. I go to Marco’s profile, but there’s no activity.

I check his Skype too, but he’s not been back on that since our conversation the other night. I send him a message anyway, because he’s bound to see it sooner or later. Right?

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _yo have u disappeared off the face of the earth_  
>> _cos it sure seems that way_  
>> _can u like… reply to my text and tell me ur alive or something_

That should be enough, but I’m urged to write one final line.

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _im worried man. i was looking forward to seeing ur face lol_

There. That should do it. The _lol_ counteracts the kinda-gay undertones. Suitably not creepy.

 

* * *

 

On Friday, I head ‘round to Connie’s to play some Xbox. Well, that’s the plan, but I recognise Sasha’s rusty death-trap bike leant up against the side of the house when I pull my Jag up to the curb side.

Sasha insists on playing with us, despite the fact Connie only has two controllers; she and him end up taking it in turns with one, despite the fact Sasha has absolutely zero use on the _Call of Duty_ battlefield, and keeps getting us both killed.

“Sasha, c’mon!” I complain loudly, dropping my controller into my lap. “You’re so fucking bad at this, Jesus Christ!”

“I’m not bad at it, you’re bad it!” she retorts childishly, sticking her tongue out at me.

“Sash, you suck,” Connie sighs in agreement. “Jean’s right.”

“Well maybe you two just need to lighten up,” she quips. “It’s only a stupid game.”

I groan, and lie back against the ratty couch cushions as Connie and Sasha begin a mild domestic about the virtues of _Call of Duty_ as a game. I slip my phone out of my jean’s pocket as a custom, and slide the lock screen. Nope, nothing. _Still_. I frown. I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened the same way today. Don’t know why I’m still getting my hopes up. It’s not like I’m feeling the buzz of an incoming message in my pocket or anything.

“Whatcha keep looking for?” Sasha remarks, “On your phone, I mean?” I glance up at her, and realise she’s got Connie halfway into a headlock, but she’s paused to nod towards the Samsung in my hand. “Is your secret love affair giving you the silent treatment?”

“Piss off, Sasha.”

I watch as Connie wriggles, a bit like a fish, out of her grasp, and then shoves her on the shoulder. Sasha dutifully returns the shove, significantly harder, to her boyfriend.

“You can’t fool me, Jean,” she smirks. “I have a sixth sense about these things, you know!”

“ _Right_ ,” Connie and I both say in deadpan unison. Sasha reaches up to slap us simultaneously on the backs of our heads. I have such caring friends.

“Oh! That reminds me!” Sasha then quips, turning herself on the couch to face me. Things can only be bad when she says something like that. I grimace in advance. “How’d it go on Wednesday? With the lovey-dovey mixtape?”

I don’t want to ask _why_ the previous few minutes of conversation have _reminded her_ of that. I don’t really have time to dwell on it though, because the general grouch in me begins to swirl in my stomach again.

“ _It didn’t_.”

“Whaaat?” Sasha exclaims. “What do you mean? Did Marco not like your present?”

“I don’t know,” I say, attempting an indifferent shrug. “I haven’t given it to him yet. He didn’t turn up.”

“Ohhhh,” Sasha coos. “Oh no. And you’re waiting for him to ring you? Oh goodness, Connie do you hear that? _Trouble in paradise_.”

“This may not be my house, but don’t think for a minute that I won’t kick _your sorry ass_ outta here, Sash.”

“Oh come on, Jean, you’re basically attached at the wrist to your phone. Don’t pretend I don’t see those little cutie pie smiles you get when you’re texting him,” Sasha chortles, and I can’t deny the urge to smack her with a couch cushion is rising exponentially. “It’s like a soap opera story, it’s _great_.”

“I don’t think I watch the same soaps as you do, then,” I retort sharpishly.

“Aaand you _never_ reply to our texts,” she continues with a whine. “Right, Connie?”

“She’s got a point, man. You _don’t_ reply when we text you.”

I kinda want to point out here that the idea is that Marco’s _not_ replying to my texts. I’d actually be pretty happy if he _was_ , so that I _could_ reply to him.

“Can’t you see it? Freckles and haircut, that’s what you’d be,” Sasha grins, messing up the blond hair on the top of my head.

I reply to that with a groan, and try to roll away across the sofa. Sasha’s having none of it.

“You know, I’d laugh if you ended up sucking his dick, after all your protesting.”

That’s the final nail in the coffin for me, and I roll onto my side and press my face into the back of the couch, muffling a defeated scream. _Huuuurrrrrrrgh_.

I’m pretty sure _boning_ the guy is the last thing on my mind … I’d rather just, you know, have him fucking _call me back_ already.

“No way, Sash,” Connie interrupts, deciding he has a worthwhile say on my sex life as well. “C’mon, that’s definitely pushing the boat out waaaay too far.”

Maybe Connie’s noticed I’m about to morph into the sofa at any given moment. Why. Why is it _always_ me. I _never_ asked for this end of the stick.

“I told you, I know these things! It’s my sixth sense again,” Sasha says seriously.

“We all know your gaydar is shit, Sash. You didn’t believe us for, like, three months when we told you Eren was gay.”

“He’s not _gay_. He’s a _noncommittal wiggly hand gesture_.”

“Swings and roundabouts. My point still stands.”

I tune back into the conversation properly then, feeling like I might need some air in between my groaning into the couch. My head pings up to stare at Connie and Sasha mid-debate.

“Wait, Eren’s _gay_?!”

“ _Wiggly hand gesture_ ,” Sasha corrects, before Connie interrupts.  
  
“Uh, _duh_. You not heard about sexy, upstairs neighbour with a superiority complex yet? ‘Cus he doesn’t shut up about it.”

“No.”

“Good. Thank your lucky stars that you’ve been spared, man.”

Sasha doesn’t really care about Eren though. She’s still more interested in what we were talking about _before_.

“I’ll put money on Jean bedding his pool guy by the end of the summer,” she says, punching Connie gently in the arm to get his attention once more. I don’t think she even hears my whine of _please no, no more_. Connie seems to consider this proposition for approximately two milliseconds. Thanks man. Nice to know you have my back here.

“You’re on. I might still be able to service my truck before September after all.”

Apparently my relative interest in dicks has _no_ say in this conversation any more.

 

* * *

 

 **From: Ymir**  
so i heard there’s a pool going on whether or not you bone pool boy.

 **To: Ymir**  
idk where u get this information from but its all lies

 **To: Ymir**  
connie and sash are little shits do not believe a word they say ok. their only purpose in life is to make my life a livin hell

 **From: Ymir**  
whatever. count me in. i need the cash.

 **To: Ymir**  
for what exactly ?! ur like the only person who actually has a job

 **From: Ymir**  
for beer. duh.

 

* * *

 

When I get up on Saturday morning (it’s _technically_ still morning at quarter-to-twelve, okay), there’s no-one in the back yard. I roll down stairs to find mom leafing through a magazine on the kitchen countertop, sipping some stupid _not-really-coffee_ coffee. You know, that bizarro health crap.

“There’s, uh… where is… has someone come to clean the, uh, pool yet, mom?”

She glances up at me, letting the page between her fingers drop.

“No, they’re not coming today. I had a phone call this morning to let us know they’re under staffed right now, and had to push our appointment back to tomorrow. Which is a pain, really, because I’m not going to be in for most of the day, and— will you be in, honey?”

Huh. Great.

“Yeah, I’ll be in.”

 

* * *

 

The hours between 12AM and 6AM have a funny habit of making you feel like you’re either on top of the world, or under it. I’m _weak_. I don’t even last ‘till two in the morning before I feel that weight.

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
so listen its 2am so im probably not thinking straight  
  
 **To: Marco-Polo**  
and i know its only been a week since i saw u last and i know that we only spoke on tuesday or w/e

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
(i know im lame)

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
but PLS can u text me back bc before i was just annoyed but now im kinda worried about u

 

* * *

 

Sunday is a cigarette sort of day (and I really hope this isn’t how the rest of the summer is gonna go for me).

I haven’t even been up for an hour before I’m in desperate, pathetic need of a nicotine hit, and then I’m hauling ass up onto the roof, cigarette packet and lighter in hand.

The air is really fucking still in Trost that day – still, and hot, and dry. I can practically feel my lips shrivelling up and drying out with just one breath. The usual summer smells of cut grass, food on the barbeque, even chlorine… can’t smell any of it. It just seems to be replaced by car fumes from the inner city. It’s not the nice sort of smoke – it’s the thick, black, putrid stuff, and it goes straight to my head and makes it swim. _Ugh_.

I scramble a bit to try and get into a good spot on the grey-black tiles (which are already baking hot, by the way). The short guy – Levi – turned up sometime earlier, and is working more diligently than Marco ever did cleaning out the pool in the yard below. He’s worse than my mom at seeing imaginary dirt in it, I guess.

It’s a shame superman pool cleaner didn’t come with him. Mom would’ve liked that, and maybe, just maybe, if Marco ever turns up again, she’d have abs other than his on her mind.

My mom potters out into the yard to give Levi his white envelope of payment, which he takes without really saying much, from what I can see. Mom turns heel to go back to the kitchen, but her line of sight flicks across the rooftop, and she sees me.

“Jean!” she calls, her hands going to her hips. “ _What_ are you doing on the roof exactly?”

Luckily I haven’t lit up yet, so I sorta just subtly tuck my cigarette pack under my thigh. (Not that she’d be able to make out what I was holding at a distance like this though.)

“Being miserable,” I shout back. Don’t feel like beating around the bush today.

I think that throws her, but she’s in a rush to get to whatever fitness class or plastic surgery appointment she has, so she has no time to confront me on my behaviour. She just settles for that nasty, berating sort of mom voice.

“I don’t understand you sometimes, Jean.”

That makes two of us.

Five minutes or so later, I hear the thrum of her coupe leave the drive way, and roll out onto the street, so I light up a cigarette. (The pool guy is probably not gonna dump me in it, so I’m safe.)

The nicotine goes straight to my brain, which is good, because I don’t really _want_ to think so clear right now. I try to focus on the way the smoke scratches at my lungs and throat – it’s not so great a feeling as it once was, but I suffer through it, because I _need_ it.

I churn through five cigarettes in far too quick a succession (if Marco were here, he’d beat my ass for that), absented-mindedly watching Levi as he works. He moves quickly, and all his movements seem to be sharp. I swear I hear him mutter something about the state of the filter once or twice ( _so he doesn’t like dirt_ ).

Something rumbles up to the curb on the other side of the back hedge, and I can just about make out the roof of something white (the roof of the house is not quite high enough to get a full view of the road, and the hedge definitely needs shearing sometime soon). I don’t really dwell on it, because Levi, with his rubber gloves up to his elbows, and a bottle of some sort of serious bleach, is crouched over the drain, and apparently that’s much more interesting. No sarcasm. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so invested in cleaning before.

I _do_ look up when the back gate opens though.

It doesn’t click, for a moment, that that’s _Marco_ there, walking in, looking like he bloody well lives here, for all that it’s worth. He’s not in his pool-boy get up – and I’m so used to seeing him in cornflower blue, that I have to blink rapidly to make sure _yep, he hasn’t fallen off the face of the earth after all_. He’s wearing dark purple shorts, tailored just above his knees, and a black and white striped t shirt, sunglasses hooked over the round neck. Simple. But nice. His clothes look good. I don’t think _he_ looks so good though.

Tired, worn-out, running on caffeine, I’d guess. I know the feeling well.

He strides quickly across the grass to meet Levi at the poolside (he doesn’t look up my way, so I guess he hasn’t noticed me on my perch). Levi straightens up with a face that could probably curdle milk or something, like it’s the most difficult task in the world to talk to his co-worker. ( _Bastard_.)

They talk. Not sure what about, because their voices are low, so I can’t hear them. I’m not really listening though, because I’m just staring at Marco like a fucking creeper. My cigarette burns out in my fingers, and I jolt, flinging away the smouldering end with a startled _fuck!_

Marco must ask Levi if he’s seen me. I only guess this, because the short-ass just points directly up at me. I freeze.

Marco’s face opens up almost instantly, and I can see him trying to coax a smile, but it doesn’t quite work out. His lower lip just sort of trembles stupidly. Levi says something else to him, which is probably some smart-ass comment that neither of us need, and then goes to start packing up his gear. Marco takes a few, long, deliberate strides across the rest of the lawn, until he’s standing almost directly under me, craning his head to look up.

“Hi,” he says, almost timidly. That’s it. I’d almost expect him to start spouting out something along the lines of _Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair_. ‘Cus that’s what this scene kinda looks like.

“… Hey,” I reply slowly. “Why’re you here?”

Shit, didn’t mean it to come out like that. Now I sound like a _total_ douchebag (not that I didn’t think I already was, of course. I just prefer the douchebaggery to stay _inside_ , or at least, inside when I’m talking to Marco. He’s yet to discover what a _dick_ I really can be.).

I feel selfish. Because I want to know where he’s been, why he hasn’t replied to anything I’ve sent him, why he ditched me when he _promised_ he’d be there, why he’s turned up _now_ , despite the fact I can see something is clearly horrifically _wrong_. He looks absolutely fucking exhausted. It scares me to think about Marco broken, or weak, or crying. Marco’s meant to be the put-together one in this friendship. I feel like a goddamn _child_ here. His face is so drawn out, and his freckles stand out on his cheeks like polka-dots; he’s looking way paler than usual.

Seen it all on his face before. I can take a stab at what it means.

Marco glances around the yard, before calling back up to me.

“How do you get up there?”

 _W-what_?

He doesn’t wait for an answer, because he’s looking purposely at the pool shed, and considering how he could climb up on that, and then use the drainpipe to pull himself up onto the roof.

 _I-idiot_!

Levi apparently picks up on this idea of his at the same time as me, despite me thinking that he was too disinterested to be following our hella awkward reunion.

“I am not calling 911 when you fall and kill yourself, Bodt,” he says sharply, as Marco kicks off his loafers, and hauls himself up onto the roof of the pool shed. I watch the muscles in his arms ripple.

Marco gets his foot up on the bracket of the drainpipe bolted to the side of the main house, and clumsily clambers up, until he has both hands grasped around the edge of the roof, at which point he swings his legs up to safety. That shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, but hey, it’s _Marco_. What do you expect. He can do anything.

He stumbles across the roof, arms outstretched for balance, and even manages to traverse the L-shape of the house, before he’s standing (re: wobbling) only a few metres away from me. I look him up and down, and raise an eyebrow, automatically grabbing a cigarette out from under my leg, and slipping it between my teeth.

“You know,” I mumble. “If bad ideas were an Olympic event, you woulda just taken the Gold, man.”

He rolls his eyes, and damn, there’s the inkling of the smile, and fuck, it’s doing the melty thing to my soul again.

“You gonna sit down or what?” I say. “Or do I have to kick you off this roof?”

I budge over a bit on the good sitting spot, and pat the space beside me. Apparently the dork was waiting for my permission to get close. (But when he gets it, he doesn’t hesitate, and scrambles across the remaining tiles to plonk himself next to me.)

When his shoulder brushes up against mine, it’s like a jolt of static jumps between us. I hope he doesn’t feel the way I shudder.

“I thought you were trying to quit,” he says quietly, pointing at the cigarette hanging from my mouth. I roll it reluctantly between my teeth, but I’m surprised when he reaches across, and plucks it out of my mouth with _stupidly_ close fingers, and stubs it out on the tiles. The embers fizzle, a bit like my sanity, because holy hell, that was _close_ , and this is awkward, and we all know how I deal with awkward situations.

“Oi,” I murmur, “I am.” Marco flicks the butt down into the gutter, before wiping his fingers on his shorts.

“Could’ve fooled me, Jean.” There’s not really much _humour_ to be heard in his tone, for once. That unnerves me, and feels a bit like a cold shiver rattling up my arms.

Levi finally leaves the yard, but we just sit in silence, with Marco drawing his knees up to his chest, and folding his arms on top of them. He doesn’t look at me, just staring out onto the sea of same, slate-grey roofs, and the tips of skyscrapers in the far distance. His eyebrows are pinched up in the middle, which makes him look kinda worried.

“So, uh… you, uh, had a good birthday?” Way to go Jean, avoid the point like it’s the plague. Might as well just ask him how the weather is. Fuck.

He lets slip a little sigh that makes something in my chest twinge painfully. He lays his head on his arms, tilted, so that he can look at me.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I saw your texts. I should’ve replied.”

“… It’s cool, man.” Minus the fact I’ve been a mopey shit for the past four and half days. But he doesn’t need to know that. I’m sure my messages sounded desperate enough.

“I wanted to reply, but…” he trails off, and swallows audibly. I watch the lump travel down his throat. “I-I mean, I started a few texts, but… it just… didn’t happen. I’m sorry.”

“You, uh, wanna tell me now?” I probe, with a dry, humourless laugh. “Where you disappeared off to and stuff?”

“No,” he says, but then retracts. “No, I mean… yes, but… I can’t. I don’t think I want to… talk about it yet. Sorry. Can we… could we just sit like this for a bit, maybe?”

“… Sure man. We can do that.” I guess my old-fashioned method of shouting out your problems like a lunatic is not appropriate this time around.

The silence returns, thick and heavy. Fuck, I want a cigarette. Marco turns his face back to bury his nose in his hands, and Jesus, he looks like he’s hurting bad, and I have no fucking clue _why_.

If our situations were reversed, and I was in his position, I wouldn’t doubt the fact that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d squeeze the information out of me, even if it was like trying to get blood from a stone. But he’s better with words. Knows how to make people better with just a smile… or maybe that just works on me.

I’m just good at having mental debates with myself, and ultimately not doing anything proactive. I’m so fucking lost.

It’s gotta be something to do with that time at Bert and Reiner’s. It’s gotta be. Not that that conclusion makes any difference in figuring out what the fuck I’m meant to do bar sitting next to him like a fucking clueless idiot.  How do I get him to tell me what he’s thinking?

I decide to try the question that’s been somewhere at the back of my mind since I walked in on Bert and Marco in the kitchen that one time, poring over medical documents.

“Hey Marco, can I ask you something?”

He replies with a vague murmur, but doesn’t budge.

“… Are you ill?”

“No,” comes his reply, and his tone is soft. I find myself breathing a sigh of relief.

“G-good. I was kinda worrying about that, you know? Since that time at Bert’s house. I thought… well, you get what I thought. I’m glad it’s not that. Dunno what I’d do if… well. You know.” I can feel the weirdness of this situation is dragging out the nervous word-vomit, and I’m stepping into rambling territory. I’ve never claimed to be good at making people feel better with my choice of words.

Him being sad… it’s not right. It’s unnatural, a crime against humanity, I dunno, _something_. Something that I definitely do not like. How do I make him happy again? Make him smile the Marco-smile, and laugh at pictures of my face in the hallway, and smack me over the head with pillows mercilessly.

I feel like I want to tell him that he doesn’t _deserve_ to feel sad like this, because I know him, and I _know_ he’s the kindest person I’ve ever met, and I _know_ he can listen to me complain all day without batting an eyelid, and I _know_ I would entrust anything to him, because that’s just the sort of guy he is. I want to tell him he’s stupidly perfect, because of the laughter lines that crease up the corners of his eyes, or the way his face lights up around his sister, or how my grandma would call his constellations of freckles _baisers des anges_ , and that would just be _so fucking right_.

I want to tell him I don’t regret a single second of getting in this deep. And I don’t go deep. I’m Jean Kirschtein. I’m goddamn scared of _water_. Deep is a nightmare.

With a horrifically inappropriate chuckle, I breathe out some of that word-puke.

“This is ridiculous. We’re too fucking _young_ to be this sad.”

He looks up at that.

“You’re sad?” he asks. Great. I didn’t want to make this about me _again_. Fuck. I’m a pathetic friend.

“No. Yes. Doesn’t matter,” I say quickly, running a nervous hand through my hair repeatedly. It really _doesn’t_ matter. I’m just perpetually kinda sad. It’s not much of a change. Save for one thing. “You’re sad, so I’m sad. If that’s not, like, a… weird thing… to say?”

“You’re _nuts_ , that’s what you are,” he sighs. He untangles one hand from his knees, and grabs the wrist of the hand that I’m running sporadically through my hair. There’s fire in my veins, as he laces our fingers together, and rests our joined palms on the roof between us.

_Why…?_

“Sorry,” he says, nodding to our hands. “Didn’t mean to freak you out.” Obviously my face is a picture, but he doesn’t relinquish his grip. In fact, it feels like he tightens it.

“It’s… just been a tough couple of days, huh?” I say, echoing the words he once said to me before. Marco’s smile is sad, but grateful. He squeezes my hand again. For once, there’s no even an ounce of embarrassed colour in his cheeks… makes me feel like he’s determined, strong. He’s strong.

Sitting on a rooftop holding hands with your best guy friend is probably a great big fucking mess all over the wrong side of straight. But I’ll make the exception for Marco. I’ve realised I’ll always make the exception for Marco.

“How do I… make it better, Marco?” I venture to say, voicing the thoughts in my head. I can’t do this by myself. _You gotta tell me. I’m useless_.

“Just… be you,” he almost whispers. His voice is very breathy. “Just be you, Jean.”

 _Just be me? Why would he want that_?

 

* * *

 

We sit like that for a while, because that’s what he wants. My butt is going hella numb, and I know that my palm has gotta be so gross and sweaty, but I try to suck it up. _Must. Stay. Strong_.

He begins picking at my fingers eventually, curling and uncurling them curiously, having relinquished my palm. He’s like a kid. (A good kid, not a needy, tantrum-throwing kid like me.) It makes my entire arm tingle.

“You know what,” I say. He looks up at me expectantly, and I’m relieved to see more of himself seeping back into his expression. “I’ve got your present in my room. Want me to grab it?”

“I told you, you didn’t need to—”

“I _will_ push you off this goddamn roof if you say another word, you know. I _wanted_ to get something, okay.”

I slide down the gable on my butt inelegantly, and I can feel Marco boring holes of concern in my back as I get increasingly close to the edge and the twenty-odd foot drop onto the patio. That _would_ be an unfortunate end to all this. I just about manage to scramble in through my open window without sending any roof tiles flying, but I do successfully stub my toes on a mislaid pile of textbooks, and let out a string of loud curses.

“Fuck, shit, fuck, goddamn it!” Rest in peace, toes. It was nice knowing you. _Fuck_. I hobble across my room and grab Marco’s CD from the pile of crap on my desk, a buzz flooding through my system as my fingers curl around the clear plastic.

I have to tuck it between my teeth (it’s that, or down my pants, and I think that’s _definitely_ pushing the boundaries too far), because I need both hands to pull myself back out onto the roof. Marco’s looking at the cigarette packet I’d left in my space, eyeing the label warily. I fear he might very well have lobbed them into the pool had I not come back at that moment.

“Hurghumph,” I mumble, over the plastic case. I plonk myself back on my ass on the roof, wipe my spit off the side of the CD with my shirt, and then hand the thing to him, suddenly feeling pretty bashful. “Here.”

He flips it over a couple times in his hands, admiring my collection of doodles (most of them ended up with freckles), and the smile that appears on his face has no tinge of grief.

“’S a mixtape,” I explain, scratching the back of my neck sheepishly, as I can see him about to ask me what it is. “Well, it’s not actually a tape, but… yeah, so, I just filled it with some good music I thought you’d like. Look.” He opens the case, where on the CD itself I’ve scrawled a track list in very small, very messy writing.

“We’ll have to listen to this together,” he says softly with a tender smile, and _ugh, you’re killing me here, Marco_. He needs to stop pulling that dumb face ASAP because I’m going to have a fucking stroke at this rate. “Thank you, Jean.”

I hope, I really do, that his words resonate deeper than just a thank you for a present. I raise my hand, and squeeze him lightly on the shoulder.

“No worries, man.”

 

* * *

 

“So, Wednesday, right? For real this time?”

“Yes. For real.”

I kinda want to bring up the fact that I’m finished college for the year, so we’re not just limited to Wednesdays or Saturdays. That, you know, I don’t want our friendship to be limited to a two days a week kind of thing.

Marco seems happy enough with the promise of Wednesday though, for now, so I don’t push it.

I walk with him out to his van (I won’t go into how we got off the roof, because that’s an experience I’m _never_ gonna encourage him to repeat, believe me), and I drag my heels. I want him to stay longer, but I guess whatever’s been going on the last few days doesn’t just go away in the space of an afternoon. I’m sure he has stuff to do, or mull over, at least. I just wish I could be there with him a bit longer.

“So, uh… you’ve got my number…” I stammer.

“You know I do.”

“And, like… you know you can c-call me or anything, if, you know, you wanna talk. About stuff.”

He takes a step towards me, and draws me into a hug, right there, on the sidewalk. It must be like hugging a plank, because that’s how cooperative I am. He wraps both arms around my shoulders, and pulls me into his chest. He’s solid too, but a good sort of solid.

 _Ba-dump_.

He chuckles next to my ear, and that _feels really weird_. I don’t really know where I’m meant to look – like, it’s not really a man-hug if you bury your face into the other person’s shoulder, right? So I just sort of stare awkwardly at how many chewing-gum pats are splatted on the sidewalk. There’s only three.

“Thank you, Jean,” he says breathily – and I have to wonder _why_? I haven’t done anything other than sit awkwardly on the roof and crave a cigarette. I haven’t offered him any words of advice, or consolations, or… or…

But maybe, just maybe – and this is only coming from personal experience – seeing someone’s face can make that difference. Maybe it’s my face. I find myself hoping it’s my face that makes a difference.

Everything smells like camomile detergent now – there’s not a hint of chlorine. I’m not going to forget this moment easily.

I decide to embrace the moment (pun intended). I give him a tiny, reassuring squeeze, before he lets go. His eyes crease up into crescent moons, and fuck, if I could, like, _absorb_ that smile of his, I would.

I think trying to ask him again what’s going on would spoil the moment. Is that selfish of me? Probably. I’m a selfish bastard.

I put my faith in him telling me when he’s ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been the longest chapter to date, at 15.5k words. Holy moly.
> 
> I apologise for the fact this chapter feels a little clumsy ... sometimes the fact we don't have Marco's POV really limits the story telling. I promise the writing will be significantly better over the next few chapters. Jean's mindset is difficult at the moment, as we're making the first steps between friends and maybe-not-friends. As for Marco's story, the hints are there, but it'll remain in the dark for a little while. And then things are gonna get heavy.
> 
> Next time will be back to some very indulgent fluff. (With a smattering of more angst, because it's me.) We also get the first half of this party. It's gonna be wild.
> 
> Thank you to all my readers - especially to the bunch of you who talk to me throughout the writing process, and engage with my procrastinating! You know you who all are!
> 
> Please keep up with your feedback, because it genuinely fuels me to keep writing. I love hearing back from you all - so drop me a comments with what you like, or dislike, or what you hope to happen! I love you all.


	10. Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who takes the time to be kind is beautiful.

Funny how things start with phones.

Maybe it’s kinda ironic – because whenever the house phone rings I will always wince, the possibility, each time, that it’s a blonde ditz at the other end of the line, weighs heavily on my mind. I guess that explains why I never pick up the phone when Connie or Sash ring or text. A bizarre sort of adherence I’ve developed over the last few years … since whenever this thing with my dad started. I just don’t like phones.

So when, exactly, did I become basically _super glued_ to the screen of my Samsung?

I’m lying in bed awake – tonight’s insomnia is a classic bout, because every time I try to close my eyes, I’m just replaying the roof scene in my head, over and over again. And it’s not like I’m even remembering the important bits – like what Marco said, or what I _should’ve_ said – I’m just remembering what colour the fucking sky was over our heads, or how my cigarette packet felt, digging into my thigh every time my leg twitched nervously, or how the bottom hem on Marco’s shorts was coming down in places. Like, _why_? Seriously.

I roll over onto my side, and stare angrily at the vague shape of my alarm clock on my night stand, trying to focus on its constant _tic-tic-tic_. It takes about twenty _tics_ of the second hand for me to realise that it’s just fucking _annoying_. I’m literally about to grab the spare pillow from my bed and pull it over my ears – with the hope of, I dunno, _suffocating_ myself to sleep – when the orange-dark in my room is lit up by blue light, and vibrations against wood.

I clamber for my phone on the side table, knocking over my alarm clock and a whole bunch of other stuff onto the floor with a wincing racket. It continues to _bzzt_ in my hand as I squint to make out words on the genuinely _blindingly_ bright screen.

 _Marco-Polo, calling_.

The number of times he’s texted me at stupid o’clock in the morning before shouldn’t make me that surprised. I guess we both have horrifically destroyed sleeping patterns. I don’t think much of hitting the accept button, and squishing my phone between my ear and the pillow. Maybe I should. Considering what happened today and all. Don’t really have much time to dwell on it though, because Marco doesn’t even _pause_ for breath when I pick up.

“So I really like the Fleetwood Mac songs. I didn’t think I would, because they’re a bit different to what I usually listen to, but I really, _really_ like them.  Really, really,” he gushes into my ear. Not even a _hello_. Marco, you’ve lost your touch.

“… Uh, y-yeah?” If I could translate my thought process into words, it would literally just be a whole line of question marks right now.

“Mhm. I think my favourite is, uh… let’s see. Yep. Number twenty-one,” he says, obviously reading off my poorly scribbled track list on the front of the CD I gave him. “ _Dreams_. That’s it. I really like that one.”

“S-Stevie Nicks is good, right?” I laugh – well, it’s more of a gravelly sort of half-asleep grunt that probably doesn’t translate well over the phone line – but the intention is there, I promise. Marco’s tone changes in an instant, becoming suspicious.

“… I just woke you up, didn’t I?”

I laugh again, and this time it sounds a lot more human. Marco makes some sort of self-depreciating noise on his end.

“’S alright man,” I say. It _is_ alright. I told him he could phone me. (Well, maybe not at two in the morning, but I can roll with it.) “Wasn’t asleep yet.” _Couldn’t_ sleep, more like.

“I didn’t realise how late it was,” he says, and I hear scrambling on the line as, I guess, he searches for something. A clock, or something, I figure. “Ah—oh, _shit_ , Jean, you should’ve said how late it was. It’s past two!”

That’s the first time I think I’ve ever heard him swear – like, genuinely, and not him just _mocking me_ – and it makes me laugh even more. I end up grabbing that second pillow from over my shoulder and using it to attempt to muffle the noise. What I must look like, God only knows.

“Are you laughing at me?” he stage-whispers down the line, and I just snort.

“You just swore, man. I’ve never heard you swear,” I smirk, rolling over onto my back on my mattress. I splurge out into the starfish position, resting one hand on my stomach, and sorta hunch my shoulder to keep my phone balanced there. “It’s _unnatural_ ,” I add teasingly. “Makes me think that the world’s comin’ to an end or something.”

“It’s _your_ bad influence,” he says straight back. Eh, probably can’t argue with that.

“Did you call me _just_ to insult me, Marco?” The grin on my face probably ruins the attempt at severity in my voice.

“Of course not,” he keens. I can practically hear the pout. “I, uh…”

“So just to talk about the CD then?”

“No… uh, _well_ … yes,” he admits sheepishly. “Sorry, I know I said earlier that I’d like to listen to it together, but… hmm, I just stuck it on when I got home after seeing you, and I’ve been listening to it all evening.”

Hmm. Is it me, or is it hot in here? Nope, he’s just making me blush like a loser again. Marco’s making this one hell of a habit of his.

“So you ruined my sleep pattern just for that?” I snigger, earning a whine of protest from Marco. “Nah, man, nah. I’m just messing with you. I made that CD _for you_.”

“And I _really_ like it.”

“Yeah, I gathered that.”

His enthusiasm is great, but also… kinda _weird_. Especially when you compare it to the Marco who I was sitting on my roof with about twelve hours ago.

“… You doing okay, man?”

“Huh? Uh, y-yes. I’m… okay,” he stammers, and yeah, I’ve blown his cover now. I take a deep breath, and swallow determinedly.

“It’s cool if, you know, you wanna say you’re calling for other reasons. Like not _just_ to thank me for some CD. Like… _you know_.”  
  
 _So eloquent, Jean. You should know you suck at all forms of communication. Speaking is difficult for you, remember._ _You have the articulation of a potato with eyes_.

“L-like what?” Marco falters.

“Like: _you know_.”

“I-I _don’t_ know.”

Ugh, don’t make me spit it out. Jesus.

“Well, uh… if you just wanted to, uh… call me to, uh…”

“To feel better?” he finishes for me.

“… Yeah.” _That_. I can hope, right?

There’s a silence across the line, save for some more shuffling on Marco’s end again. I awkwardly wriggle around a bit as well, switching shoulders for my phone. The stream from car headlights dips through the crack in my curtains and splays across my ceiling, growing longer and longer, and then suddenly paler, before evidently disappearing beyond the scope of my window.

“You usually cringe if I say stuff like that, Jean,” Marco muses quietly – shyly? “You’d call me out for being _too corny_ or something.”

“How do you _know_ I’m cringing right now though, huh?”

“I know you, Jean. _Too_ well, apparently.” He chuckles to himself at that. But he doesn’t deny the fact he’s calling for some cheering up. From _me_. He’s trusting _me_ to do that.

“Huh,” I breathe. “Well take my word that I’m totally _not_ cringing. In fact, I’m the furthest away from cringing I’ve ever been in my _life_. I am one-hundred percent stony-faced. I am basically _Spock_ right now.” Like hell. My face is on fire, and I’m chewing my lip to stop the dumb-ass smile that wants to force its way out.

“Your sarcasm gives Mina a run for her money, you know.”

“I’d like to see her try to out- _jerk_ me. Wait … that doesn’t sound right.”

“Oh my God … _Jean_.”

 

* * *

 

There’s something to be said about talking on the phone at two in the morning. You kinda – or at least, _I_ kinda find that’s it’s the same sort of sensation as being drunk. There’s less of a filter. Just instead of every word being punctuated by hiccups, there’re yawns instead.

I begin to wonder what Marco’s doing – besides talking to me, obviously – like, where in his house is he? Is he in his room? What’s his room like? Has he been lying in the dark like me, plugged into the CD for the best part of the night? I realise there’s still a lot of stuff I don’t know. I make a mental pact with myself to start checking off the little, mundane sorta facts.

We talk about music for a while. He tells about which other tracks he liked on the CD – because of their lyrics mainly. That’s something that he likes. _Lyrics_. He’s not like me – I just need a good guitar rift to get behind and I’m sold.

He tells me that he should give his stuff a shot sometime (even if he does admit to my taste being superior). Eventually though, he’s yawning more than he’s getting out words.

“Go to bed, man,” I say adamantly. “You’re obviously tired.”

“I’m not—” He yawns loudly. “— tired.”

“You so totally are. You’re a shit liar.”

“Yawning doesn’t help my case, does it?”

“Not one bit,” I scoff.

There’s a moment of silence – a thoughtful sort of silence – before Marco speaks again.

“Are you going to go to bed as well?”

“Yeah, I guess.” I might be able to achieve some semblance of sleep by now. Here’s hoping. Marco makes a noise of acknowledgement. “Hey, you doing anything tomorrow, Marco?”

“I’ve got work,” he admonishes. “Sorry, Jean.”

“What about Tuesday?”

“Also work.”

“Even in the evening?”

He chuckles an endearing, laughing apology in my ear. The hairs on my arms seem to bristle, because his voice suddenly sounds so close.

“I’ve taken on some extra shifts at the bar I work at,” he says with a sigh. “And I’ve got some of Levi’s appointments to cover this week, to make up for the time I took off. I could really use the money right now.”

I forget, sometimes, that he works two jobs, and that to him, the money he earns is a necessity, and not a luxury. That’s my privilege. My stuff, and my car, and my house must sometimes seem so fucking ridiculous to him. He works hard to make ends meet, and what does my dad do for his cushy life? Take an inordinate number of _business trips_ , apparently.

I can’t see much in the dark, save for some fuzzy shapes illuminated by the general semi-orange glow of streetlamps that clips my curtains. I can just about make out the dimmest of reflections on the TV my dad brought home for me the other day, to replace the older, shittier one I used to have. I hadn’t batted an eyelid at the time. It was compensation for laying into me about my exams, in my mind. But now I just feel guilty staring at it. I didn’t _need_ it.

“Wednesday, Jean. I promise,” Marco says, slipping through my thoughts. “I only have two appointments, and yours is the last. So I can stay around a little longer than usual… if that’s okay, of course.”

_Of course it’s okay, stupid._

 

* * *

 

Dad comes home on Monday afternoon. Pretty unusual to see him during the week lately, but he’s only back to pack for his trip.

I run into him in the kitchen, where he’s talking to our house-keeper about his dry cleaning. (Suddenly I’m not so thirsty for a Coke anymore, and I consider back-tracking quietly out of the room and back up the stairs.)

“Jean,” he calls, barring my rueful escape plan. He beckons to me with one hand, but doesn’t actually look in my direction. That irks me for some reason. “I want to talk to you before I go.”

I haven’t exchanged a word with the old man since the dinner incident the other week. I’d made avoiding him a top priority (just like _he_ makes avoiding his _family_ a top priority). I don’t even try to conceal the brutal scowl on my face as I consider just legging it – but I somehow persuade myself to stalk across the kitchen towards him. Our housekeeper looks pretty terrified by my expression – or maybe she just knows better than to get involved with my dad’s conversations with me – so she scuttles off to the utility room, and busies herself with unloading the dryer, judging from what I can see.

I stop on the other side of the island counter to my dad, and make myself look – or at least _feel_ – nonchalant by searching for a glass in one of the cupboards above the stove. It makes me feel tall. Taller than him. That’s what matters.

“What?” I ask brashly, letting him know that I’m not in for … whatever he feels he has to tell me. He frowns, beady, little eyes beneath bushy eyebrows.

“When are you results out?”

I shrug, and inspect the inside of the glass I choose for dirt. Pretty clean, it turns out.

“Couple weeks,” I say. “Why?”

He folds his arms across his broad chest and protruding stomach.

“I want to make sure I’m around for the date,” he shoots back. That takes me off guard for approximately a millisecond, before I’m quickly brought rattling back down to earth with just one look at his face. To even think the thought crossed my mind that he’d be interested in his son _for the sake of his son_. No. He’s interested in numbers and letters only. Grades.

“We need to make sure you choose wisely for next year with your subject choices, son.”

“I don’t think there’s any _we_ in it.” I can’t believe I ever let there be a _we_.

“ _Jean_.”

“What?”

“We’re not having this discussion again.” This is not a discussion. This is an _argument_. “I’m going to make sure you make the right choice for _your_ future. I’m not going to have you throwing away your career.”

He glances down at his wristwatch then – his stupid, thirteen-thousand-dollar watch – and apparently that means he’s now too busy to have this conversation anymore. I can’t help but think, with the way the phrase _your future_ rolls off his deceit filled tongue, that I’m in some chick-flick movie. I’m meant to be the hero, who finally turns to his dad and says something along the lines of: _it’s not my dream I’m throwing away, it’s yours_ , and then storms out, leaving his father too stunned for words. I can practically see how the scene would play out in my head.

Of course, that’s never gonna happen.

“I’ve got a car waiting outside,” he says sternly. “When I get back, I expect you to have sorted your priorities out, Jean. I mean it.”

He picks up the two drying cleaning bags from the counter, and then he’s gone. When the sound of the front door slamming reaches my ears, I realise that I’ve got both hands curled around the edge of the counter in front of me, and my knuckles are chalk-white. Fuck.

I don’t know how I used to manage. But maybe I’ve just reached a tipping point somewhere within me, where his _bullshit_ has suddenly just become too much for me to deal with. The thoughts of being chained to a computer all day, of glass prisons and concrete floors, of the nine-till-five … shit, how did I push it all back before? ‘Cus now I know there’s nothing I would hate more in the world than working for his _company_.

I don’t want that. I don’t want to be a corporate office drone. I don’t want to be the man who resorts to taking _business trips_ to escape from a loveless marriage. I don’t want to become like him.

I hope this is the trip he just never comes back from. Go on. Run off with your twenty-year-old bit on the side. See if I care. (I won’t.)

 

* * *

 

It’s 2AM when I feel like texting Marco, and not being frustrated with every single menial thing. I guess 2AM is now our thing. I know he’ll still be awake (and even if he isn’t, he’s the sort of person to sleep with his phone right by his ear, I figure).

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
do u ever just wanna curl up into a ball and not think about the future ever again

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
All the time.

 

* * *

 

It’s Wednesday, I think. Maybe? Yeah, it is.

 _Tip-tip-tip. Tip-tip-tip_.

I wince behind my eyelids, and roll over out of the stream of sunlight hitting me square in the face. I really need to get better at closing my curtains every night. I press my nose into my pillow, and groan as I roll my shoulders and they crack satisfyingly.

 _Tip-tip-tip_.

Lie-ins sure are great (and definitely needed). Monday I slept in till two (and should’ve stayed in bed longer, if it meant avoiding dad), and Tuesday till twelve (only because my mom insisted it was, quote, _obscene_ sleeping into the afternoon for two days in a row). My bed is so comfy. She doesn’t understand. I worked hard all year for the sole purpose of having some non-guilt tripped lie-ins. I muffle a satisfactory _mmmph_ into my pillow, and curl my feet back up in my duvet nest.

 _Tip-tip-tip_.

What’s that noise? Sorta sounds like someone knocking on the door. It can’t be that late already. I can definitely sleep in for… a few more hours…

 _Tip-tip-tip_.

Wait, no. Noise not coming from direction of door. Noise coming from… window? I reluctantly blink one eye open, the other firmly smooshed into my pillow. My room is grey, save for the single streak of sunlight. Something’s definitely tapping on my window.

 _Dumbass birds. Don’t they know I’m on fucking vacation_?

I pull myself upright, my arms almost collapsing under my body weight (because, I guess, sometimes staying up till 3AM playing Xbox isn’t the best of ideas). Everything about me feels heavy, bleary, and pretty confusing. I throw off the covers, and haul my legs over the edge of the bed – the wooden floor sticks to the soles of my feet. It’s gonna be another hot one today. Joy of joys.

_Tip-tip-tip._

I rub my palms into my eye sockets sleepily, and tug down my shirt where it’s rucked up from sleeping. The floor boards creak beneath my weight as I pad across my room, only by some miracle avoiding stubbing my toes yet again on my discarded piles of textbooks. Not entirely sure how, because I’m still very much asleep in the brain, and the bright light in my face makes everything look real fuzzy.

I duck my head under the curtains, holding the limp fabric up over my shoulder, and squint hard. No birds. But there is something – someone – _significantly_ better.

Funny, really, that I slept in after all the talking on the phone on Sunday night, huh?

I heave open the window, which is a helluva lot heavier than I remember. Marco greets me from down in the yard with a massive smile, leant against his pool net in the middle of the lawn.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” he grins. “I guessed you’d be asleep.”

 _Huh_?

I scrub my eyes a bit more forcefully with the heels of my palms, trying to rub the haze out of them. Shit. Yeah, it’s Wednesday. Despite everything, I actually went and _slept in_. Wow.

“Mmm, wha’ time is it?” I mumble, my voice groggy and raspy. I cough to clear my throat.

“Gone twelve,” Marco laughs. Sometimes I genuinely wonder if he’s on something to make him always so chipper in the mornings. Not that it’s technically the morning. But you get what I mean.

“Were you throwin’ stuff at my window?”

He cards his fingers through his hair, and looks up at me with a sheepish sort of expression.

“Stones. Sorry,” he admits. “You really _were_ asleep, weren’t you?”

Damn, what eighties movie did I just wake up in? Who knew John Hughes directed my life. I blink steadily, and try harder to focus my gaze more. Nope. He’s definitely Marco, and not John Cusack holding a boom box.

“M’yeah,” I murmur, leaning my weight onto the window sill. I very genuinely almost fall straight back to sleep, but I jolt awake again before I fall on my ass. “Huh! Shit, I mean… right! I’ll be right down! Hang on.”

“Sure,” Marco replies. His smile is warm, but there’s something I’d call _fragile_ about it. Still. Better than no smile at all, right?

I drop the curtain back over my head, and make a dive for a pair of jeans strewn on my floor. Yeah, they’re a bit grimy. I toss them towards my hamper, and try another pair of abandoned jeans, pressing them to my nose. Hmm, no. No good. I repeat this for approximately six other pairs of pants and four shirts I’ve hung up unceremoniously in my _floordrobe_ (as my mom would call it). I try my closet instead – because at least I know my Ramones shirt is _definitely_ clean and wearable.

I peel off my ratty bed shirt – pretty gross how it’s already sticking to my skin, and I’ve only been up, what, _five_ minutes max? Summer’s good for sleeping and stuff, sure, but I am definitely, one-hundred-percent done with this weather already. And we’ve got at least another three months of this sweaty hell.

Mistakenly, I catch my reflection in the mirror as I’m tugging my Ramones shirt on over my head. Wow, someone (looking at you, _Marco_ ) sure coulda told me that my bed hair is a spectacle to behold. Cowlick game very strong this morning. I lick my fingers and try to smooth down some of the worst offenders, but… no such luck.

Looks even better with the dark circles beneath my eyes, I’ve gotta add.

After finding a pair of pants that I’m pretty sure are clean (and not just re-stuffed back into my closet by a lazier-version of me), I stagger downstairs, still not entirely in control of my own legs, I decide, as I almost miss the bottom step entirely. I continue to attempt to flatten down the sentient being that has chosen today to inhabit my hair, but I’m not gonna win this losing battle any time soon. I give up just as I slip-slide into the kitchen.

Marco’s leant against one of the patio chairs outside, toying with the fixings at the top of his net, but he looks up when he notices me there, and moves to greet me as I kick open the back door. Ugh. _Sunlight_. My nemesis.

“You still look half asleep,” he chuckles, and I sort of just… _grunt_ in reply. “What time did you go to be last night?”

“I’unno,” I mumble, forcefully rubbing my cheeks and the skin under my eyes, to try and dislodge the general sleepy haze. “Like four, maybe?”

“ _Four_ ,” Marco repeats, with a despairing sort of shake of his head. He turns to walk back towards the pool, but I don’t quite have it in me to follow him. He notices pretty quickly. “Are you okay, Jean?”

“Uh, y-yeah,” I say, finding myself wringing the fingers of one hand in the other, awkwardly. “It’s just, uh, you know… _the pool_ … and I, uh… ” It’s difficult ‘cus, without the pretence of revision, my usual practice of sitting on the pool shed steps feels a hell of a lot closer to the water’s edge than I would normally have liked. Tie into that the fact that I haven’t actually been within six feet of the pool since… well, you know.

“Oh,” Marco says, his mouth forming a round o-shape. I guess it’d slipped his mind – and I wouldn’t blame him, to be honest, ‘cus I’m sure whatever’s going on in his head lately has been way more important than some stupid-ass nuance of mine. “Why don’t you sit on the pool shed steps? That’s not too close, right?”

I open my mouth to speak, but close it just as quick, biting down into my lower lip. Jesus. He makes it sound as easy as it _should_ be. But I just make it as pathetic as it _actually_ is.

‘Course I know it’s stupid. That I’m over-reacting. Seriously, how could anything even _remotely_ happen, if I were to just sit there like normal? That’s right: it can’t. It won’t. No-one’s going to splash me. No-one’s going to push me in. Doesn’t stop the jitters though.

Marco takes one step back towards me, and I see him consider extending a hand. (He doesn’t.) He forces a smile – but it’s either sad, or insincere, and I’m not sure I can tell the difference.

“You can do it, Jean.”

I do it. Not because I’ve suddenly had an epiphany and overcome this dumb fear. I wish that was the case. I do it, because giving him yet another thing to worry about is not part of my game plan.

I swallow hard, and I walk over the pool shed. I try to keep my shoulders square.

The top step is just about out of the sun, so the concrete is not quite the temperature of the depths of hell – so it’s the obvious choice. I scoot back, until my shoulders rest against the wooden boards.

Marco doesn’t look convinced. He hesitates, stares at me some, unwilling to get to work.

“Maybe you should have a drink or something to eat, Jean?” he suggests. I shake my head, pressing my lips together in a tight line. There are knots forming in my stomach already.

He sighs out his nose, and turns away from me, kicking off his flip-flops, before dunking his net into the pool. He swirls it around in a figure of eight shape, his toes curled over the edge of the concrete side. With his back to me, my right leg feels like this is an appropriate time to start shaking like mad. Like, you know that nervous jitter you sometimes get when you’ve had too much sugar, or caffeine, or something? It’s like that. Just ten times worse, coupled with the way it feels like someone’s gone and poured quick-dry cement into every vein in my body.

_Don’t let it control you. Come on, breathe. Stop making such a big fucking deal out of nothing. You don’t have the right to be scared. Breathe._

Marco pulls the net out of the pool, and fishes out the two or three leaves from the hedge he’d managed to catch. Just before he dips it back into the water, he glances back over his shoulder – maybe to tell me something, maybe just to check that I haven’t keeled over dead. His expression instantly changes; his face seems to open up. Empathy? Sympathy? Please don’t make me feel any more pathetic than I already am.

I try to school myself out of the general trembling as he drops his net on the grass, and comes to fucking _kneel_ in front of me on the concrete steps. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe this really _is_ an eighties movie.

Marco puts both his hands on my knees, and looks me directly in the eye. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s pushed every ounce of his own worries out of his expression, and he feels _strong_. Just through a look. I wish I could do that.

My legs still jitter under his hands, and _fuck_ , I’m willing them to stop, but all I can manage is turning my knuckles white by clenching my fingers around the edge of the stair I’m sitting on. I don’t blink. Nor does he.

“Jean,” he says calmly. Nice to know one of us is calm. I feel like a deer in headlights. “You know it’s _okay_ to feel scared, right?”

I swallow loudly, and nod, although internally I’m shaking my head fiercely. I guess Marco’s got telepathic powers of some sort, because he doesn’t seem convinced.

“It’s okay to feel scared,” he repeats. “Don’t hate yourself for it. Embrace it, and overcome it. It’ll take time, but you’re doing _so well_ already. It won’t just go away immediately, but that doesn’t make you… _less_ , alright?”

 _Damn you, Marco Bodt_.

I want to tell him how this _stupid_ fear is all I know. How it builds my world, imprisons me, teaches me how to eat, drink, _breathe_. How the fear exists just under every thought – because I _don’t_ have to always dwell on it, but I _am_ always aware of it there – how I have to watch myself around the smallest of things, like washing my hands, or shaving in the mornings. I know that if I splash myself by surprise, I’m going to have to stop everything and focus solely on my breathing for five minutes. It’s _always_ there. It’s like when you’re on a camping trip, and it’s really fucking cold, so you put on extra socks, or an extra sweater, but you can never really get warm. The coldness – the fear – it’s ingrained in your bones.

“I meant what I said before. I’m going to help you get through this, Jean.”

He taps his hands on my knees, and tilts his head. He’s ridiculous. But him being _ridiculous_ reduces my shaking down to only the smallest of tremors. Even _I_ can barely feel them now.

He says these things – these fucking selfless things – because he thinks they’re gonna make me feel better. In a way: _of course_ they do. How can you _not_ feel better when an earnest expression like that is staring you straight in the face? But at the same time… I’m reminded of that fact that I don’t know how to offer him the same thing in return.

He pushes himself upright, using my knees as leverage, and gives my feet a nudge with his toes. I roll my eyes at him, and try to force a smile. (It probably looks more like a wince.)

He goes back to cleaning then, but he keeps me talking – of course, to keep me from thinking about other things – and doesn’t turn his back on me when he doesn’t have to. I’m not entirely sure what we _do_ talk about: first, because we _all_ know which elephant in the room _I’m_ interested in discussing, and second, because _that very thing_ keeps me focused on the wistful, spaced-out stares he gives the water when conversation lapses. He’s thinking about _it_. His problem. Whatever the hell _it_ is.

But before I know it, we’ve been talking hours.

“Marco,” I say. My voice falters a little, and I resent myself for that. I take a breath, and steel myself. I look at _him_ , and not at the water, as he turns to look at me, questioningly. “We should hang out some more. Before Saturday.”

“I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but … I’m busy,” he smiles apologetically. “I really am.” I can tell by his face that this is probably not the same sort of busy as before – not _work busy_ , but more … _well_. Dealing with stuff. By himself. Dammit.

I huff, but not because I’m frustrated at being ditched. He obviously doesn’t gather that.

“Your other friends deserve your time too,” he offers, “I’m pretty sure you don’t want to spend the _entire_ summer hanging out with your pool guy.”

 _Uhm. Hell yes I do. Around you I can be entirely myself_. _That’s important_.

“Ha,” I scoff, “Have you _met_ Connie and Sasha? I can manage like… thirty minutes at a time around them before I have the overwhelming need to crawl under my duvet – or a car – for the foreseeable future. Either works.”

“They’re not that bad,” Marco chuckles, “I thought they seemed quite fun.”

“Uh huh. Well, you come talk to me _after_ Saturday when you’ve seen them combined with alcohol,” I retort. “Besides. You’re wrong. I, uh… I wouldn’t mind…”

“You wouldn’t mind what?”

“… Hanging out with you all summer.”

I watch his face contort into an internal: “oh”. And then he turns very, very red.

Marco’s lucky, because that’s when mom – with her ever impeccable timing – arrives home, and puts a stop to the jibes I was about to throw his way.

“Marco!” she croons. “You’re back!” She teeters across the grass towards us, and Marco fights hard to repress the _delight_ in his face. I’m being sarcastic, of course. I’m not so good at holding it back. I guess my expression must look somewhere between a slapped backside, and Katniss Everdeen in that one scene in the elevator in _Catching Fire_. You know the one.

“Hi Mrs Kirschtein,” Marco smiles pleasantly, “How’re you?”

Mom’s got her bug-eyed sunglasses resting on the top of her head, and her handbag still slung over the crook of her elbow, so I guess she’s literally just got home. I shoot a very intense, internal frown her way, and berate her mentally for interrupting a… _moment_.

“Oh, I’m great, sweetie,” my mom practically _sparkles_. “I’m so glad you’re back. We missed you around here!”

_Do actually mean Marco, or do you actually mean just having someone to ogle, mom?_

“I’m sorry for not letting you know,” Marco apologises, glancing briefly at me mid-sentence. He doesn’t need to be sorry. Not really. His problem was more important than my _moping_. “A family problem came up without warning, and I had to take emergency time off.”

“Sweetheart, don’t worry,” mom carols, patting Marco on the bicep affectionately. It’s hard to discern if she means anything by that. (If she’s being _predatory_ or not.) “It happens to everyone, so don’t you feel like you have to apologise to us. Well…” She looks down at me then, and I arch an eyebrow expectantly. “Well, maybe to Jean. I’ve never seen him mope around the house so much before.”

“Mom!”

Of course she decides to fucking run with it.

“ _Entirely_ dependent on his phone, you know,” she continues, not relinquishing her hand on Marco. He doesn’t look that uncomfortable, because he’s focused on me, as I’m currently dying from cringing way too fucking hard. “He was attached at the hand to it for days. I couldn’t get it off him, not even at dinner time.”

“Oh, really?” _Marco. Marco no. Come on now. Let’s not encourage her_.

“I’m so glad he’s out of his flunk,” mom chimes. She makes a move with her free hand to reach out and ruffle my hair, but I lean as far backwards as I can physically manage out of her reach. Nope. She makes a _tch_ noise from between her bright red lips. “I’d hoped he’d grown out of his _teenage_ phase.”

“ _Mom_!”

“You know, Marco, it reminds me of this one time when he was, what? Twelve or thirteen, I suppose, and I’d refused to—”

“Mom, _enough_! I’m pretty sure I’ve suffered enough embarrassment to last the _rest of my life_ , so please… please just _stop already_.”

Mom laughs, and turns her attention back to Freckles.

“Do you see what I mean? So moody! Oh, but speaking of moody…”

She starts rattling off about her interaction with Marco’s colleague – the Levi guy – complaining about his rudeness, and again, how she’s _so glad_ to have Marco back in place of “such a horrible little man with such an angry face”.

Marco pulls his _help me get away from your mom_ face, but, hey, you know what? Not this time. Nope. _You encouraged her, Marco. So I’m gonna let you live this out_. _Totally your fault_.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few days, I find myself – when I’m not, you know, sleeping at every possible moment – filling up my sketch books. It’s been a while since I’ve felt motivated enough to pick up a pencil or whatever, but it becomes a good way to pass the time.

It’s easier to draw Marco now. Not that it wasn’t _easy_ before, of course, but I feel like I know the way his face moves, so the lines spread like instinct across the page. It hurts a bit when I pull from memory his expression from the rooftop the other day, but I find myself with a need to get it down, just in case I forget. There’s things to be said about the way a sketch of sad Marco is the most realistic thing I’ve ever done.

By Friday, I’ve filled up every inch of blank space in every sketch book I can find buried in my room. I flick back through the graphite-smeared pages, and it actually surprises me how long it’s been since I’ve drawn anything but Marco. It’s been months since the last evidence of Mikasa, and looking at that, and looking at what I’m drawing now … well, it makes me cringe that I actually ever thought about showing this old stuff to anyone. (Makes me cringe even more that Marco saw it all, one of those first times he came over.)

There’s one doodle-scribble I find that I really like though. It’s got a whole page to itself (I haven’t cluttered up the white space with mini-headshots or things like that) – I’d drawn Marco leant against the hood of his van, from the time he meant me after my Chemistry exam. I’d drawn it that night, when I’d got home, because there was something about the concern on his face over whatever he was reading on his phone that stayed with me.

I don’t usually do full-body drawings – mainly because feet and I aren’t on the best of terms – but this is an exception. The lines are smooth, and not roughly hatched. It feels like I’ve managed to grab a glimpse of the real Marco, and for that, I’m kinda proud. It could use a bit of colour, though. Maybe I should…?

It doesn’t take long before I’m cross-legged on the one-patch of floor space in my room, sifting through all the years’ worth of crap under my bed, knowing, somewhere buried beneath the _Scalextric_ set I had when I was ten, and the odd, unwashed sock, I know I have some paints.

Three different sneakers from three different pairs later, and my fingers curl around a plastic case, and – _bingo_!

The case is crusted shut with old paint, so I have to wrestle to open it, and when it does finally give, the tubes of paint go flying every which way. Ugh.

Painting’s a lot harder than I remember. Doesn’t help matters that the paint does the thing old paint does, and comes out clumpy and streaky on the paper, which just makes me progressively angrier and angrier.

 

* * *

 

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
Hey! Just wondering if there’s anything you need me to bring over tomorrow? Do I need a sleeping bag? Food? Something to drink?

One of my paintbrushes almost rolls off the edge of my desk before I lunge to save it, and I notice the unread mail icon on the corner of my phone screen. It’s just gone seven. Whoops. I totally didn’t hear that message come in. All of a sudden I’ve been painting six hours. When did that happen?

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
sorry for not replying i was painting  
  
 **To: Marco-Polo**  
u dont need to bring anything though  
  
 **From: Marco-Polo  
** What are you painting? :D

My desk chair creaks loudly as I lean back, and stretch my arms above my head with a satiating crack. I inspect my work so far. It’s… not bad, I guess, for a first shot at this _stupidly complicated way of doing exactly what I could’ve done with pencils._

I debate the subjective homoerotic undertones of replying to Marco: _you, of course_. Probably erring on the wrong side of horrifically uncomfortable if I did.

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
just messing with some colours  
  
 **To: Marco-Polo**  
it is WAY hard

A Skype notification pings up in the top corner of my laptop screen, and I minimise my permanently open Facebook tab to open up a new chat window.

 **Robodt:**  
>> _Can I see it? :D_

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _i can turn on my camera for u_  
>> _if u like_  
  
 **Robodt:**  
>> _Can you? I’d like that! :o_

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _yeah_  
>> _but im not gonna do it on call cus itll be hella embarrassing when u see what im drawing_

 **Robodt:**  
>> _It’s not pornographic is it, because my sister is in the house somewhere_.

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _no_  
>> _jesus marco_

I do a quick primping of my hair – ‘cus yet again I haven’t stuck a comb through it today, and a bird might as well be nesting in it judging by what it looks like in the reflection in my screen.

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _ok_ _here_  
>> _dont laugh_  
>> _and no sappy comments_

 _Or else_ , I think. I hit the video call button, double – triple – checking that my sound is off, and wait for Marco to accept, mentally – and actually, psychically – cringing. Here, Marco, meet… _Marco_. He appears on my screen, dressed down in a plain t-shirt, and a towel draped around his neck, beads of water trapped in his dark hair. I baulk, and, looking away from camera, hold my sketchpad up to the webcam. I don’t look at Marco’s expression, watching as the orange rectangle pops back up at the screen corner, and I stare at it incredulously, cheeks burning.

 **Robodt:**  
>> _Jean! It looks really good! :D_  
>> _(Can I say that about my own face though?)_

 _I’ll forgive you_ , I muse, setting the pad down quickly, feeling a little bit relieved. I grant myself a short glance at his face, and he’s positively beaming, his freckles standing out on his cheeks like tiny stars. I can’t deny there’s a swell of pride growing in my chest, but I bite back that smile that threatens to bludgeon its way onto my face, steeling my focus on picking up the right brush instead. Marco’s messages keep popping up, so I give them a cursory glance when they appear, in between brush strokes.

 **Robodt:**  
>> _You and Mina have a lot in common, you know. She really likes drawing too!_  
>> _I’m sure if I could draw, she’d like me a whole lot more hahaha :D  
_ >> _Sadly I’m a crappy big brother with zero artistic talent to speak of.  
_ >> _Hey Jean, are you sure I can’t call you? D:  
_ >> _I want to talk to you whilst you’re drawing!_

I finishing laying down the highlights on the car that my drawn-Marco is leaning against, before I decide I probably should reply to that last bit. His face on the camera feed is pleading, and he bites his lip in hope. I glare at him, and shake my head.

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _no_  
>> _i mean_  
>> _im drawing u, i dont wanna talk to u at the same time because ….._  
>> _well im embarrassed as it is ok_

 **Robodt:**  
>> _Why are you embarrassed? D: it’s a really good painting so far!_

I’m never gonna get this thing remotely finished if he keeps distracting me like this. Well, I’m partly to blame as well, I guess. _Letting myself_ be constantly distracted.

The Skype call bar appears in the middle of my screen, along with the horrific incoming call jingle. I scowl, and defiantly hit the red hang-up button.

 **Robodt:**  
>> _D:_  
  
 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _no_

 **Robodt:**  
>> _What if I beg?_

Ah… _oh_. Someone please _throw me_ in the pool, because the mental image that appears in my head is not PG-13 in the slightest. Oh God. Why did I just think that? Marco… _on his knees_ … _begging_ … I stupidly glance up… aaaaand he’s pouting. Lower lip stuck right out.  
  
 _Think straight thoughts, think straight thoughts_.

I could definitely win an award for being constantly overwhelmed. Here’s the reason, Marco, why we are not using sound right now. Because apparently I have absolutely zero fucking control of rampant gay thoughts, Jesus _fucking_ Christ. The choked noise I make is absolutely shameful, and I bury my head in my hands.

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _id rather u didnt_

There’s a soft knock on my bedroom door which startles me enough out of my vortex of inappropriately gay thoughts; I spin ‘round in my chair as mom slips through the door.

“Hi sweetheart,” she smiles, apparently glancing over the way I’m gripping the seat of my chair as if the world fucking depends on it. “I’m just about to leave, so I thought I’d check—” Her eyes flick over my shoulder to my laptop screen, and then the paint set and sketchpad sprawled out over my desk, and she halts mid-sentence. That is enough to force me into action, and I quickly lean back and slam the lid shut with probably more force than is healthy, and attempt to cover my painting with the closest leafs of paper I can grab.

 _Shit. Fuck_.

“What was that you were doing, honey?”

“Nothing,” I retort sharply, staring at the floorboards at her feet. “It was nothing.”

Mom waltzes across my room, magically avoiding the death-trap piles of clothes and books absolutely everywhere (I will eventually tidy up, okay), and comes to stand beside my desk, tapping the pile of paper with one finger.

“Jean, come on. Let me see.”

_What does she think it is? Porn?! Why would I be drawing porn? Hell, I think I’d probably prefer if it was fucking porn._

I let out a low groan, but she doesn’t budge. _Well, fuck_.

I peel off the sheets of paper from my drawing; some of the wet paint prints to the underside, but fortunately (though who really cares about fortunately right now – not me) it doesn’t smudge.

“Uh…”

“Jean,” she says, “Did you do this?”

_Oh God. Here we go. This was gonna happen sooner or later. Goodbye any dream of doing art in the future. It was sure nice knowing you while it lasted._

“…Yeah.”

“Why haven’t you shown me this before?”

 _Wait, what_?

“Huh?”

Mom leans closer to the sketchpad, and inspects the drawing. I’m just in a general state of shock. Hooray.

“This is meant to be Marco, right?” she asks, “Jean, honey, this is _amazing_. Did you draw this from scratch?”

“Y-you _like_ it?”

My heart hammers inside my chest, and the sound of blood pumping in my ears is loud enough to almost block out mom’s words. H-o-l-y shit.

“Of course I like it,” mom gushes, “I just would like to know why this is the first time I’m seeing this, Jean! Do you have any more?”

“I, uh— fuck, I mean, uh, yeah! Sorry! I have loads more!”

“I’d love to see them.” She smiles broadly, and I’m almost about to return it (if a little shakily and generally be-fucking-wildered), when her cell phone starts ringing. “Ah!” she says, glancing at the number as she plucks it from her back pocket. “Shoot, that’ll be my taxi. I’ve got to run, honey, but show me more when I get back, alright?”

“Uh… sure.”

She bends down and plants a gross, sloppy kiss on my forehead (I want to remind her that I’m nineteen, and not five or whatever, but my brain has probably turned to mush and is most likely leaking out my ears).

“I’ll send you a text when I land,” she says, “Be good. Have fun. Ring grandma’s house if you need anything, okay?”

“… Sure, mom. H-have a good trip.”

I’m not entirely sure how long it takes for cognitive brain function to return, but when it does, I practically deflate in my chair, letting out the heavy breath I’ve been holding. Did that just happen? Without me… _being disowned_? No, but seriously. Did that actually _go well_?

I pull up my Skype conversation with Marco, and check the unread messages that have piled up in the corner. The web cam feed obviously went dead when I slammed my laptop shut.

 **Robodt:**  
>> _Hey, the video just went black?_  
>> _Everything alright?_  
>> _You still there?_

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _sorry_  
>> _something really surreal just happened_  
>> _i think it broke my brain_

 **Robodt:**  
>> _What happened? :o_  
>> _Everything ok?_

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _my mom just walked in_  
>> _and saw that i was drawing_  
>> _and she was cool with it???????_

For the second time this evening, I get an incoming Skype call. I sigh, and tap the volume-up key on my keyboard, before hitting the accept-a-call. Marco’s voice immediately fills up the room. I decide to keep the video off this time.

“See, I _told_ you!” he chimes. “I told you to give your mom a chance with it!”

“Alright, alright,” I find myself laughing – relieved, breathy laughter. “No need to rub it in, Freckles.”

“But this is really great, Jean! I’m so happy for you,” he continues, and I’m super glad he can’t see my face right now. “Maybe you’ll be able to talk to her about switching majors next year, huh?”

“Ha, let’s not get ahead of ourselves now…”

 

* * *

 

Saturday morning is the reason why I regret ever volunteering my house to Connie’s shenanigans. It starts with having to get up obscenely early (and that’s enough in my books to decide I hate everyone and everything for the rest of eternity), and set about hiding all the stuff that I’m sure would get me disowned if it was broken by the drunken monkeys I call friends. This mainly involves moving a lot of the photo frames off the mantelpiece in the living room – and I take the opportunity to remove some of the ones hanging in the stairwell as well, because hey, if Ymir or Eren sees them, they will not be as polite about three-year-old me as Marco was.

By the time Marco arrives to clean the pool, I’m running around like a headless-fucking-chicken trying to tidy up, pouring assorted snacks into bowls (‘cus that’s what you’re meant to do, right?), and trying to find the coolest spot in the house to store my beer. I’m dragging a pile of blankets down the stairs (which is actually pretty difficult, because I trip over my feet more than once and almost fall head first ten feet onto a wooden floor), to the living room, when I notice Marco’s taken up residence in the kitchen, swivelling back and forth on one of the bar stools.

“Yo,” I say, dumping the blankets in a heap in the doorway to the living room, and detouring to the kitchen. Marco jumps a little, but a grin quickly replaces the surprise.

“Hey,” he smiles, “Sorry, I let myself in! I’m, uh… done with the pool.”

“Nah, it’s cool man.” I stroll past him under the pretext of getting us drinks from the fridge, but pause when I realise what he’s wearing instead of his usual penchant for khaki shorts. “…Why are you wearing swimming trunks?”

He chuckles sheepishly, and scratches the back of his undercut, purposely avoiding looking at me for once. Doesn’t bode particularly well. (Has he been taking lessons from Sasha behind my back?)

“I, well… I thought we could try something,” he says. “If you’re not busy anymore, of course.”

I’m not sure why I agree to follow him outside, but I do – I guess it’s something to do with the feeling I get when I look back at the pile of bedding in the hallway, and decide I really can’t be assed to deal with that anymore.

Marco heads purposely towards the shallow end of the fucking _pool_ , and I genuinely question whether he’s completely fucking lost it now. I stop halfway across the lawn, and fold my arms, drumming my fingers against my biceps. He wades into the pool, down to the third or fourth step, where the water laps up against his knees, and then turns back to face me.

“Come here, Jean.”

“Yeah, _no_ ,” I shake my head. “Dunno what you had for breakfast, but it’s obviously affected your brain.”

“Jean,” he sighs. He rests both hands on his hips, but condescending doesn’t look good on him. “Just humour me for five minutes. Come over here.”

I don’t really have enough time to consider my reluctance before I feel my feet moving across the grass without even consulting me. I stop at the top of the pool steps, and stare down at Marco, willing him, _please, enlighten me what crazy scheme you’re about to involve me in that more than likely involves me getting into the pool_. ‘Cus it ain’t gonna fucking happen.

“If you’re about to start spouting crap,” I say, “… about keeping some dumb-ass promise to help me… _deal_ with certain things, then it’s okay, _Calypso, I release you from your human bonds_ , or however the quote goes. I’m not going any closer.”

“Jean, I just want you to try it.”

“Nope. Not trying it. Whatever _it_ is. Nope.”

Marco climbs one step, the water dropping to mid-calf height on his legs. Droplets glisten on his freckled knees. _Ugh_. I’m still just about taller than him, but our eye line is now almost matched.

He holds out both his hands, and gestures to me to take a step towards him. If I could, you know, just block out the whole _pool situation_ going on around him, behind him, _in front of me_ , yeah, no problem. _But…_

“Do you remember that article I read to you over the phone?” he asks, “We have to take small steps. It recommended trying putting your feet in the water to start with. I think we can manage that.”

It’s like all the bravado in my system is flushed out in one instant, and instead of being confidently defiant and deploring of his suggestion, I suddenly feel the ever too familiar wave of coldness that accompanies panic.

“You know I can’t,” I murmur quietly, unable to hide the start of a tremor tickling my voice, “C’mon, I’ve gotta finish preparing for—”

No time to finish, because Marco reaches forward and takes _both_ my hands in his, wrapping my fingers in his palms. He doesn’t pull me forward – hell, he knows better than that – so he just holds me there in place.

“One step. You can do it,” he smiles – the smile that, for the briefest, stupidest moment makes _nothing_ seem impossible. “And then we can go and pour chips into bowls to your heart’s content.”

My nails are digging into his palms by this point, and Jesus, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s left with crescent shaped marks for the rest of eternity.

One step. That’s all he wants. _Just take one step forward_.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Marco adds, “You know I wouldn’t let that happen.”

My legs shake, but I lift one foot off the concrete of the pool side, and do something I never thought I’d ever do.

I step down, into the pool.

“Ha!” I laugh in shaky disbelief, bringing my other foot down to join the first, submerged up to the ankle on the top step. The water is cold, the way it laps against my ankle-bones literally the most disgusting thing I’ve ever felt – but Marco. The way he beams up at me, man. The way he fucking _beams_.

He tightens his grip on my hands between us, and I focus on the squeezing sensation, how I can feel his bubbling energy practically flowing into my fingers. Look at him. He’s so fucking _happy_.

My heart is going a mile a minute, drugged up on adrenaline, euphoria, absolute fucking _dread_ , along with everything else you could possibly feel, all mangled into one messy, _amazing_ moment.

“You’re… not as much… of a saint as I thought… you were,” I breathe, the noises still hitching in my throat with nerves. “Secret… freckled bastard buried under all that… gushy crap.” _Coming ‘round under the pretext of cleaning my pool to actually find new ways to t-torture me._

“I knew you could do it,” he grins, swinging our hands in the space between us. It’s so cheesy. So ridiculous. So perfect. “You want to try one more step?”

I glance down at the water around my feet, and something inside my stomach churns. The next step is deeper, and that makes the back of my neck flush with slick heat. I clench my jaw and swallow, _hard_.

“M-maybe some other time.”

“That’s okay. You’ve already done amazingly today, Jean.”

I scoff.

“… I can’t believe you came here in your f-fucking swim trunks. Fucking planning all along to drag me into the p-pool.”

He would’ve done his nervous quirk – scratching the back of his neck – if my hands weren’t securely clenched in his. So he just kinda rocks an unattractive, sheepish expression, and looks at our feet. It’s my general shivering that finally brings him back to reality, and he suggests we get out of the pool. He holds onto my hands a little longer than necessary.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, how many blankets did I bring down there?” I shout down the stairs, from half inside the airing closet on the landing. I manage to find a fistful of pillow stuffed somewhere behind the water heater, and haul it out, chucking it over my head to join the pile of other pillows I’ve collected from around the house so far.

“Uh, five or six, I think?” Marco calls back, “Oh, and one sleeping bag!”

“Mmm, that’s probably enough then,” I muse, mainly to myself, crawling back out of the closet, just barely knocking my head on the shelf above me. “I’m gonna throw some pillows down, okay?”

I grab an armful of what I can carry, and kick the rest to the top of the stairs. Looking over the bannisters, Marco’s positioned below, beaming up. Damn, his face is stupid.

“Why are you smiling like that, you dork,” I growl, dropping one of the pillows directly onto his face – it hits its target with a muffled _oomph_.

“Hey,” he pouts, scrunching his freckled nose, “That was definitely uncalled for. I’m supposed to be your guest!”

I throw another pillow for good measure, but he catches this attack in mid-air.

“Your dorky face is making me wanna puke.”

“Oh well, I’ll try harder not to be happy for you in the future then,” he smirks. I consider my options for approximately one second, before I dump the entire armful of pillows onto his face from over the bannister.

 

* * *

 

It turns out Marco _isn’t_ planning on rocking the swim trunks and work polo shirt look for the rest of the evening (thankfully). Once I’ve finished using him as slave labour, he sneaks back to his van, and returns with a small black holdall slung over one shoulder.

“You mind if I get changed, Jean?”

It’s only just gone three, but I’ve decided to crack open a beer already. I think I’m gonna need it before the night is out. I lick my lips of the faint beer moustache going on, and then gesture vaguely in the direction of the stairs.

“Nah, go ahead,” I say. “Dump your stuff in my room. It’ll probably be _safer_ there.”

He gives me a smile, and then wanders upstairs – I listen to the familiar creaks of the floorboards from my room through the ceiling of the kitchen, before taking another swig. Hmm. It’s still at the gross stage of: _this beer tastes like shit, so I better have a few_ more _beers to stop it tasting like shit_. I grab another can from my crate for Marco, prop it on the kitchen counter, and then nudge the rest of my stock back into one of the cupboards for _safer_ keeping. (Probably not much point, because Connie and Sasha are like literal _blood hounds_ when it comes to sniffing out hidden alcohol.)

The doorbell rings, and it’s like, _speak of the devil_ s. I can hear the commotion from the front porch before I even step out into the hallway and see the silhouettes of my two _favourite_ people through the glass. 

With a deliberately excessive sigh, I open the door to a pair of grinning faces.

“Jean!” Sasha squeals, practically flinging herself into my arms. I dance out of the way to prevent the contents of my beer can going absolutely everywhere. “Are you ready to partaaaaaaaay?!”

“Please tell me you’re not already drunk,” I groan, side-stepping out of the doorway to let them in. “How much has she had?”

“Nothing,” Connie chimes, setting down the backpack slung over his shoulder with a loud clunk (I guess it’s full of booze and not much else). “Well, unless you count two cans of cat piss, then, actually yeah.”

“And you didn’t think about having to deal with her for the rest of the afternoon before everyone else gets here?”

“Uh… no.”

“Well then.”

I drag them both into the kitchen, where Sasha sets about spinning ‘round and ‘round in circles on one of the bar stools, and Connie starts unloading his haul onto the counter. He’s brought enough to inebriate a small army, _shit_ , but he also brought a whole stack of plastic cups, so I think I can forgive him, ‘cus he’s come prepared.

I inspect one of the frosted glass bottles, turning it around in my free hand to read the alcohol content. My eyes baulk a bit at the stamped _forty-four percent_ on the label.

“Shit, is this just straight ethanol or something?”

“You’ll probably go blind if you drink it,” Connie grins.

“That’s the intention!” Sasha quips, making a long arm for the bottle in my hand – white rum of some fucking disgusting sort, it turns out – but I quickly swipe it away from her.

“Uh, no way Sash. You are not starting on the spirits at three in the afternoon, _Jesus Christ_.” She grumbles a little at that, but her mind is taken off it as Connie hands her a plastic cup, and pours her out half a can of Bud Light, keeping the other share for himself.

“So when’s everyone else getting here?” Connie asks, taking a probably overzealous gulp of a beer that I’ve likened to the taste of vomit more than once in my life.

“Later,” I say. “Told ya’ you shouldn’t have come ‘round so early.” I hear creaking on the stairs, and for some reason feel a l’il bit warm in the face. “Oh, but, uh… _Marco’s here_.”

Freckles rounds the corner at that moment, and stops in surprise when he sees the kitchen’s filled up a bit since he went upstairs. He’s ditched the pool-boy combo for a pair of tan chinos and a white button-up, and _fuck you, Marco_ , do you have to constantly remind me how _attractive_ you are, and how _scrawny_ I am? I frown at him over the top of my beer can as I take another – albeit grumpier – sip.

“Sexy pool guy!” Sasha screeches, pitching off of the stool in Marco’s direction. Bless him, _the idiot_ , because he actually puts his hands out to steady her, instead of letting her trip over her feet like she definitely deserves.

“Uh… hi!” Marco laughs awkwardly, looking over at me as if to say: _what am I supposed to do with this definitely not sober person, Jean_? I just give him a cheeky shrug.

Connie snatches Sasha’s beer from her hands, and chugs the whole cup back, before sliding over to the sink and refilling it with water. He hands it back to his girlfriend with not an ounce of sympathy (and she actually drinks it, which is a feat in itself).

“You scrub up well, dude,” Connie then says, tipping his can towards Marco. “Don’t ya’ think, Jean?”

“Tryin’ to make the rest of us look shit,” I concur, though it takes every inch of my self-control not to stutter, because Marco’s gone very red, yet again. And then I feel myself going red as well. And it’s just one big awkwardly flustered staring contest across the island-counter between us. Connie coughs into his hand.

“So, uh, when’s Ymir getting here with all her shitty beer?”

 

* * *

 

Ymir and her shitty beer arrive at precisely six, and by that time, Sasha’s both sobered up, and got equally drunk all over again. It’s amusing enough to watch her try to disastrously converse with Marco – and his panicky attempts to diffuse it. He looks the most relieved I’ve ever seen him when he’s literally _saved by the bell_ , and Sasha’s ears perk up (I told you she has a sixth sense for alcohol).

“It’s Ymiiiirrrrr!” she sings, grabbing Connie by the hand to go and answer the door. Marco breathes a heavy sigh of relief, and sinks down onto the bar stool he’s perched on with a shaky laugh.

“You alright, man?” I grin, nudging him in the calf with my foot.

“You were right … about them being _intense_ ,” he admits. “I’m exhausted already.”

“Heh. Just you wait ‘till they really get going.” I snake my arm through the forest of Connie’s bottles on the counter, and grab the can of my beer I’d put out earlier for Marco. “You want a drink?”

I drop it into his hands without him really agreeing to anything – as it is, I’m on my third can, so things are slowly slipping into Jean-only world. He sort of juggles the can around in his hands clumsily.

“I-it’s only six?” he asks tentatively, “Isn’t it a bit… uh, early still?”

I scoff, and gesture to all the empty cans the rest of us have already ploughed through. But something then clicks.

“Wait. Lay this to me straight, Marco. Have you ever been drunk before?”

He looks a little sheepish at that, and pops the tab on his can without looking me in the eyes. I give him another nudge-kick.

“T-technically… _no_.”

“Technically no,” I repeat, feeling a smirk peeling up the corners of my lips. “What does that mean exactly?”

“W-well, does tipsy at my cousin’s wedding count?” he says, but then quickly tries to cover himself. “I-I mean, uh… well, my mom… and, uh… _no_. Sorry, no. I haven’t.” He bites his lip. It doesn’t really surprise me, if I’m honest. He’s exactly the type of person who’d wait ‘till he was twenty-one to even consider the notion of getting absolutely shit-faced. But, still…

“So, let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you’re friends with Reiner-fucking-Braun, and you’ve never, ever been bullied – at the threat of a headlock – to get plastered? Not even _a little_?”

“No? I’ve never… drunk with Reiner, actually.”

“You’re in for a wild ride then,” I smirk, leaning towards him, and tipping the end of his can up with my fingers, forcing him to take a drink. He gulps it down with a wince. “It’ll get better the more you drink,” I promise slyly. “Hell, if that’s Ymir, you’ll be _wanting_ to get shit-faced ASAP, so you don’t have’ta deal with her shitty conversation. Believe me, that’s what I’m planning on doing.”

“I heard that, Kirschtein!” comes Ymir’s bellow from the hall way. “I’m going to kick your scrawny ass to fucking Jupiter once I dump all this beer!”

Ymir stalks into the kitchen, a stack of three twelve-packs in her arms, which she unloads all over one of the still-free counters with a massive groan, and a click of her back. Historia’s following her, pack-horse to both their overnight bags, which she abandons – more elegantly – by the door. (Connie and Sasha are giggling out in the corridor still, judging by what I can hear.)

“I hope you like drinking cat piss, Marco,” I chide, to which Marco laughs politely.

“I hope you like the feel of my foot up your ass,” Ymir shoots back, cuffing me in the arm with definitely more murderous intent that necessary. Fucking ouch. “Shitty beer is the best beer, you beer snob.”

“We also brought some mixers,” Historia pipes up, smiling prettily. She obviously notices Marco’s apparent discomfort at the levels of aggression and general insanity clear in my choice of friends. (They really _do_ all need therapy, I don’t blame him.) “Just in case you _don’t_ like beer.” She sidles up to Marco, slips onto the stool next to him, and stage whispers: “It’s okay, _I don’t like her beer either_.”

Ymir growls, and gives me – _why me_ – another thump for good measure.

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that ‘cus you’re cute,” she says over her shoulder to her girlfriend. “Jean, unfortunately, is _not_.”

“ _I’m hurt_ ,” I pout.

“Oh, shut it.”

Connie and Sasha return to the kitchen then, eagerly anticipating the opening of Ymir’s offering to their alcoholic tendencies (despite the fact they’ve brought enough of their own crap with them, so I don’t exactly understand). This distracts Ymir long enough for me to slip out of harm’s way, and join the conversation between Historia and Marco.

“So you must be Marco, then?” she says, offering him a hand to shake. (Perfect, _perfect_ Historia, God bless your entire, _normal_ existence.) Marco – who is definitely sitting on this side of wary and slightly alarmed – shakes her hand with his best polite smile.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he says. “I don’t think I—”

“Historia,” she chimes, “And that’s Ymir, if you didn’t catch it. I promise she’s nice most of the time. She just gets freakishly possessive of her choice in beer. I apologise in advance for everything she does over the next few hours.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” I butt in. “If my mom comes home to _no house_ , I know _exactly_ where I’m sending the damage claim.”

I’m not sure if Marco’s genuinely freaked out, or just still a bit overwhelmed by everyone (read: Ymir and Sasha) – he takes a long sip of his beer, and seems grateful for it now.

 

* * *

 

When Eren, Mikasa and Armin arrive, I’m definitely starting to notice that maybe it’s just that Marco’s a bit socially nervous. He smiles politely when someone talks to him – and he quickly finds good company in Armin, despite the fact he quickly pools Eren with the rest of the crazy drunks (I can see that in his eyes) – but he mainly loiters by my side, as I move around, trying to prevent anything ridiculously stupid happening before it even gets dark.

He's not necessarily the only one, though. Eren and I exchange the semblance of a nod as a greeting, but it doesn't really go beyond that. I don't know if it should. I don't exactly know where we stand right now - he said those things, about being _cool_ , and forgiving me for the broken bones - but ... how he can just ditch it all like that? I can't. There are still nights when I remember ... back then. And I wake in a sweat and a gasp, and have to console myself that _it wasn't as bad as my fucking messed up brain makes it out to be_ , that Eren didn't know what he was doing, that he's just impulsive, that he couldn't have known that I'd spook. It wasn't his fault. But still ... it kinda was. I was so scared. I'm still so scared.   
  
That's why I don't know what to do. So we dance around each other for the moment, avoiding direct conversation, apologising quietly to each other if we get in each other's way in the kitchen. It works for now. It's a wound that's still healing.

Eren's happy enough having fun with the others though. Me too. We both pushed them away, in the end. 

Sasha sets up some sort of card game in the living room, which is a good excuse for me to escape back to the kitchen to try and restore some semblance of order to the hurricane caused by Ymir and Springles (‘cus Connie’s boarded the train to squiffy town now, too), that’s already passed through here.

I sweep a few armfuls of cans off the counter and into a waiting trash bag, when Marco appears at my side, and sinks down onto the bar stool right next to me. He pulls his feet up onto the rest bar, and rests his hands in his lap, shoulders slouched. This time, I’m more sympathetic to his plight.

“Need a breather, huh?” I ask, inspecting a bottle of vodka that’s already been breached. “Tell me about it. Not even eight and I’m already feeling like hiding under my bed for the rest of the evening.”

Marco hums something in agreement, running a hand through his tousled hair. He’s rolled up his shirt sleeves, and is looking a bit flushed.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “It’s, uh… just a bit awkward being the only person who doesn’t know everyone. It’s a… a bit hard to keep up with the conversation at times.”

“Believe me, I stopped trying years ago. Just nod whenever Sasha talks to you, and you’re fine.” That makes Marco grin, and therefore, I grin as well. “You want something else to drink?” He’s long since ditched his first can (despite the fact I drunk two in the space of his one). Before he can answer, there’s a loud knock on the front door, which can only really be one person (I mean, who else do we know who can make the whole fucking house rock just by knocking, geez). “Hey, that sounds like Reiner and co.”

“I’ll get it!” Armin calls into the kitchen as he passes from the living room to the hall, and I’m grateful to know that not all host duties have landed on me.

“Thanks, Ar!” I yell back, hoping he can hear me over the din of laughter elsewhere in the house. I turn back to Marco. “Did you pick something?”

“Uh… I don’t really… uh, whatever you’re having, I guess?”

Sasha glides into the kitchen on her socked feet, and all but collides with the island counter. I don’t envy her hangover tomorrow by the way she makes up a new drink, half-and-half with vodka and fruit juice. She takes a gulp when she’s finished, pulls a horrified face, but takes another mouthful none the less.

“You guys wanna try?” she says, noticing my singularly unimpressed face. She holds out her plastic cup to Marco. “Try some, try some!”

I slide my hand between the offered cup and Marco’s face, and push it back towards Sash.

“Yeah, no. I don’t think so.”

“Aw, Jean, you’re no fun!”

“Well I don’t want him dead on the floor before ten, okay!”

I grab the now-almost-finished bottle of vodka, and use the cap to make singles for both me and Marco, diluting them up with some Coke. I consider the dredge of vodka left at the bottom of the bottle, and before Sasha has chance to neck it, I shrug, and pour the rest into my glass.

Yeah, a bit too strong now. _Feel the buuuurn_.

Marco takes a hesitant sniff (which makes me snort) of the drink I’ve handed him, before tasting it. The expression that appears on his face is pleasantly surprised.

“Oh… it’s good!”

 

* * *

 

Marco settles into the swing of things after that – I guess it’s thanks to the familiar faces of Bert and Reiner, who put him at ease (and give him someone besides me who he actually _knows_ ). Annie, their slightly scary neighbour, munches away at a bowl of chips she managed, somehow, to get away from Sasha, whilst engaging in some quiet conversation with Mikasa (scary attracts scary, maybe?).

Once the heat of the day dies down, I suggest we take it outside – mainly because I want to get my increasingly drunk friends away from my expensive television – but it’s actually a helluva lot nicer to be sitting in a circle on the grass, squished between Marco on one side, and Ymir on the other.

The sky is that nice, pinky-blue colour that you only ever see mid-summer at sunset, the kind that makes you feel calm all the way down to your bones … except all that doesn’t _actually_ matter, when Sasha _loudly_ proclaims that shots are a thing that _must_ happen. Still, the breeze is refreshing, and the grass is cool under my hands as I lean back, craning my neck to look up at the wisps of pale orange cloud. It’s easy enough to zone out now, the evidence being the pyramid of _empty beer cans_ Marco’s been working on piling up between us. (Sadly, the bulldozer known as Eren knocks it over when he lunges across the circle to grab something from Ymir, and Marco pouts.)

The more Marco drinks, the more he loosens up, and starts talking to everyone else. I’m happy enough just to watch, noting the flush rising in his cheeks, and the way his laugh gets continually louder and bubblier. When Armin, who’s on Marco’s other side, says something which, apparently, is side-splittingly funny, Marco’s giggle almost sends his keeling over backwards, if I didn’t press my hand firmly into the small of his back to keep him upright.

“Woah, watch it,” I breathe, as he whips his head around to look at me, almost smashing our foreheads together. “ _Damn son_ , you’re definitely half-way to tipsy town.”

“I-I’m not!” he stutters, and I can only roll my eyes. “Am I?”

“ _Oh yeah_ ,” I grin. Reiner starts dolling out shots around the circle (not trusting of Sasha’s ability to pour _anything_ ), but I shake my head at the one that gets offered to me by Historia, around the back of Ymir. “C’mon,” I say to Marco, “You should have a water whilst you can still walk.”

I haul Marco to his feet by his arm, and he doesn’t complain. He wobbles a bit on the first two steps, but summons the concentration to manage the walk back into the house, despite having to use me as a reluctant crutch. I deposit him against one of the kitchen counters, and scoot over to the sink, and run the faucet cold.

“Are you okay?” I ask, watching him inspect the grain in the countertop very curiously. “Uh, Marco?”

“Ah, no! No, you’re fine… I mean, _I’m fine_. I’m not drunk? Definitely… maybe. _Shit_.” He seems appalled at himself, especially when I snort loudly at his cursing. “Oh God…”

I shove the water into his hand with a self-satisfied grin. Pitifully, he looks up at me, freckles flushed away by the redness in his face. _Dork_.

“How come you’re _not_ drunk?”

“’Cus I know what’s still to come. Been pacing myself,” I smirk, retrieving another few cans of beer for myself. “Plus someone has to haul your drunk ass inside later. Not sure Armin could carry you.”

“I d-don’t want to… stop you having fun.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, man. This is _hella_ fun.” _Watching you get hammered. It’s great_.

It turns out that Marco can put shots away with impressive ease. Or maybe he’s just really good at keeping himself upright when he’s sloshed. Who knows. I watch him down three successive shots of God-only-knows when we take our places back in the circle, and everyone cheers. Ymir tries to stuff one into my hands, but before I can even say no, Historia whips it out of her girlfriend’s fingers, and throws it down her own throat. Who’d have thought. _Amazing_.

I stick to my beer, which is tasting good now, and the buzz in my head is good, and everything is just… _good_. So good. Eren challenges Ymir to see who can drink the shots of tabasco sauce he’s just poured out. Good? Reiner finishes the remnants of Connie’s white-rum, and then plants a big, sloppy kiss on Bert’s face. Good (but also kinda gross, not gonna lie). Mikasa, still chatting away amicably with Annie, flashes a rare, but amazing smile at something the small, scary blonde says. Good. (Her smile is amazing as _fuck_.) Marco leans back against my shoulder, and his laugh rumbles through his system. Extra good.

The breeze rustles through the hedge and across the shallow-cut grass, and it brings with it the only feeling that I ever like about summer. It’s refreshing. And calming. Makes everything seem right in the world.

So maybe I’m not as sober as I thought. I can’t complain. The warm haze in my head is like a blanket over my thoughts, and I feel, for once in my life, at ease. It’s been a while.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I hear Sasha’s voice beg, and I realise I’m zoned out so much that I’ve closed my eyes. I blink one open, relieved to see it’s not me she’s pestering, but Connie, tugging on his sleeve. “We should play _never have I ever_!”

Well. This is about to get brutal.

“We’ll just end up discovering things we never wanted to know about Bert and Reiner’s sex life,” Eren complains, “ _Again_!”

“What, too afraid of the big, wide, _gay_ world, Jaeger?” Reiner bellows, and Bert looks like he’s wishing the ground could swallow him up right about now. “Afraid you might learn something?”

Apparently that settles it (how or why, don’t ask me). Drinks are refilled – with me dutifully informing an increasingly aggressive Ymir that _yes, there’s plenty beer left in my can, now fuck off_. Eren starts the round, with a he’s-going-straight to hell “never have I ever had sex with an inanimate object”. Everyone’s seemingly appalled with the fact that Reiner doesn’t drink – he’s the usual go-to for all things toe-curlingly disturbing. Marco presses against my shoulder a little harder, and whispers into my ear.

“H-hey Jean, I don’t know how to play.” His breathe is laced with the sticky-sweet smell of beer-breath, or technically _vodka breath_ , if that’s even a thing. He’s lost all qualms for personal space, but I find myself… _really not minding_.

“You gotta drink when someone says something that you’ve done,” I whisper back. At the same time, the game moves ‘round to Mikasa, on the other side to Eren.

“Never have I ever… cheated on a test or exam,” she says. A couple people roll their eyes, but a couple _more_ people drink to that, including me. I take a quick swig of beer, and then focus back on Marco.

“Like that. You drink if you’ve cheated.”

“O-oh, I get it,” he says, “… But that means you’ve _cheated_?”

I elbow him roughly in the ribs, and he grins mischievously, letting himself be jostled.

“Don’t start playing freckled Jesus with me, you little shit.”

The game passes over Bert, and then Reiner (albeit painfully, and I think I might want to go wash my ears out with soap after that), and then Connie, Sasha, Historia, before landing on Ymir. In the space of around ten minutes, I’ve managed to learn that Connie was once fined for indecent exposure (somehow doesn’t surprise me), Bert got a poison ivy rash from doing the do in a park (a strangely specific question…), and the dirtiest thing Marco’s ever done in his perfect, angelic existence is use someone else’s toothbrush. Fortunately for everyone in the circle, Ymir’s so far gone that whatever comes out her mouth is one giant slur, so there’s a communal agreement to pass over her (and whatever downright dangerous accusations she could make), to me.

“Never have I even puked on someone I was kissing at the same time,” I say, without missing a beat. Sophomore year of highschool replays vividly, and messily, in my mind. 

“That was one time!” Eren and Reiner both shout in unison, before turning to each other in shock “Wait, _what_?!”

The others roar with laughter, and in between Bert gently consoling Reiner, and Eren shrieking something along the lines of “I told you that in confidence!”, I quickly scramble to my feet, and announce I’m going for a piss (mainly before Eren decides he genuinely wants to kill me).

“Aw, throwing up already, huh?” he carols, so I flip him the bird as I head back towards the house. It's odd - really odd - because for a moment, there's the smidgeon of a taste of the old dynamic between us. I think I feel Marco’s eyes on me (and I mentally apologise for leaving him alone), but it sounds like it doesn’t last long, before people start pestering him for his question.

I sober up in the bathroom, thanks to taking the longest piss ever known to man, and splashing my face with cold water from the faucet when I notice how red with alcohol I’ve gotten. The buzz in my forehead is still there, just duller, and my thoughts less yellow and cloudy.

I grab and chug a cup of water on my way out the kitchen, crumpling the paper cup in my fist before the others can call me out for being a light weight. Eren’s voice is still pretty clear (despite how much I’ve seen him put away).

“You’re too good for him, Marco. _Run_. Whilst you still have a chance,” he proclaims wildly, attempting to jab Marco in the chest, but kinda just pitching forward, almost face-planting in the grass.

Marco laughs awkwardly, and I watch him scratch the back of his neck, as usual, folding his stretched-out legs under himself.

“Hey, are you just quoting Scott Pilgrim, or are you _genuinely a dick_ , Jager?” I bark across the lawn, a few heads twisting around, more than one eagerly - and hesitantly -  anticipating my reaction. They don't need to worry (at least, I hope). But I’m actually more interested in what was being said whilst I was using the little boy’s room; Marco looks like he’s just seen his grandma naked, judging by the colour of his face.

Historia tries to diffuse the situation with a squeak of “come on guys, it’s Armin’s turn!” I’m amazed how she’s still functioning, because Ymir’s making increasingly sloppy passes at her, and keeps grumbling every time Historia has to smoosh her face away. Drunk Ymir is not only angry Ymir, but also obscenely _horny_ Ymir. This is enough to distract my slightly sloppy brain from targeting Marco with probing questions.

Armin’s not so good at _never have I ever_. Probably doesn’t help that Connie and Sasha are attempting to force a probably poisonous concoction down Bert’s throat, but end up spilling the whole thing down his front. He’s not happy. Reiner just laughs.

“Guys, shut the fuck up!” Eren yells, before nudging Armin, probably way to hard, in the ribs. “Go on, Ar, make it a good one!”

“I... c-can’t think of a good one! C-come back to me in a bit,” Armin says, but Eren’s having none of it. He leans in, and whispers something in Armin’s ear that makes him turn instant tomato.

“E-Eren! Isn’t that a bit…?”

“No! Go on, say it!”

Everyone’s looking at Armin expectantly now (well, those who can still manage _sentient brain function_ …).

“N-never have I ever… thought about anyone in this circle… naked.” Eren mutters something about that being _not what I said_ , but the others seem more amused with Armin’s reaction than the actual question. I roll my eyes and take a drink, just as Reiner forces Bert to clink cups with him, before they both down whatever they’re drinking.

Mikasa is my guilty not-so-secret here.

 _And, well, if you care to remember the one incident where you pushed Marco in the pool… that kinda counts too_ , my internal monologue adds, sarcastically. _Considering the bonerific consequences and all._ I try to hide my vehement shame behind the lip of my beer can, as I take another sip for Marco.

Connie and Sasha both drink shamelessly, Historia too, with a knowing smile (and I guess Ymir would too, if she could pull herself off her girlfriend’s shoulder and hold her drink without fear of dropping it), and so does—

 _Wait a minute_.

Marco just drank. _Marco just drank_?

No-one seems to _notice_ that Marco just _drank_ , ‘cus they’re all suddenly very excited over the fact Annie just took a swig of her mixer, and is now shrugging it off nonchalantly. _But Marco just drank_.

“Woah, Annie! There’s _definitely_ something you’re not telling us!”

“C’mon, c’mon, you gotta spill!”

“Wait, I don’t wanna know if it’s about me!”

“Why would she think about you, you bald monkey!”

All this goes in one ear and out the other really, ‘cus I’m just stuck in some stare (or drunken stupor – could be both), my eyes fixed on Marco. He’s not looking at me, but _Jesus fuck_ are his cheeks red, and he’s trying subtly to hide it all behind his glass, and he thinks he’s been subtle, the little—

I’m drunk enough to be able to lean in a bit too close to his ear, and he immediately jolts when he feels my breath on his neck – but he doesn’t pull away. Actually, he kinda… leans into it.

“I saw that,” I murmur, and I can literally smell the beer on my breath, it’s so strong. My vision’s not swimming though – which is probably a good thing, ‘cus I probably woulda just head-butted him instead. “Don’t think _for a second_ I didn’t see you drink that, Freckles.”

He turns his head a little more – and I’ve basically got my chin resting on his shoulder now (when did that happen?), and we come very close to knocking our faces together.

He tries his best not to stutter – or slur. Yeah, probably slur.

“S-so what?”

“So who have you been perving on, _Marco_?” I hum, as he slowly dissolves into a breathy, flushing mess right beside me. “It better not be Eren.”

“… What if it was?”

I’m taken a back. Wait no. That’s not how it’s meant to be. Eren’s all— And more importantly, Marco deserves— I’m not drunk enough for—

_I don’t want him thinking about—_

The taught, serious line he’s pressed his mouth into disintegrates into peals of laughter, and he twists away from me, burying his face in his hands. It takes a second or two of his hiccupping giggles before my brain catches up. I thump him on the arm.

“I’m not drunk enough for your cheeky shit!” I hiss, but I can’t help the way my lips quirk up into a grin. _Like hell I believe that… fuck_! Marco shoots me a wobbly grin, and bites his lip coyly. He still looks like a strawberry – what with the way his freckles pepper their way through his blush, and hell, it’s actually kinda cu—

“My turn!” Eren sing-songs, and I come crashing back to the present, keeling away from Marco. I’ve never sat up straighter in my life, and that’s a real challenge right now, because there’s definitely a throbbing in my temples starting to come along, and I’m feeling pretty warm, and _Marco_. Fucking hell… _Marco_.

The round gets messier after that, because Ymir’s passed out, and Bert decides he wants to change out of his shirt now sticky with spilt beer, and Eren starts getting increasingly angry about the fact he can’t build a good beer can pyramid. It’s getting dark, and the light from the kitchen strikes everyone’s faces up white and yellow – the backs of their heads orange with the glow of the streetlamps from over the hedge. The questions fly back and forth across the circle, and it’s quickly too insane to see who’s drinking to what, with everyone taking the piss out of the blackmail material they have on each other.

“Never have I ever received a blow job behind the back of the swimming pool of our middle school,” Sasha crows loudly, gesturing too wildly, splattering Connie with vodka-and-coke.

I have to drink to that, obviously, ‘cus it’s cruelly aimed at me. It was like, _one fucking time_.

“Fuck you, Sash!” I snap, gracelessly wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. She cackles with evil laughter. “Well, never have I ever _given_ a blow job in the back of Connie’s pick up!”

“Hey, that’s too specific!” she wails, but chucks it back anyway. “Never have I ever—”

“Hey, hey, hey!” That’s Reiner’s booming interruption. “You’ve had a go, potato girl! How about this: never have I ever skinny dipped in a pool!”

“Whaaaaat?” Sasha and Connie both cry simultaneously. “Never ever?!”

“Nope!” Reiner grins, apparently proud that there’s one risqué thing out there that he _hasn’t_ actually participated in. “So drink up, you two!”

They both take quick gulps, but are back on Reiner’s case like a fucking pack of hyenas.

“Hey Reiner, you realise what has to happen now, right?” Sasha grins, waggling her eyebrows mischievously. I know the demon sparkle in her eyes (I’m just glad I’m not on the other end of it this time). Reiner glances over to the pool, and back to Sasha, but judging by his face, he’s more than happy to be egged on into some stupid-ass dare.

“Youuuuu gottaaaaa striiippppp!” Connie vaunts, triumphantly. He then starts chanting. “Strip! Strip! Strip!”

I’m not entirely sure anyone wants to see Reiner strip (I don’t, for sure) – but strip he does. Connie and Sasha cheer voraciously, Annie rolls her eyes, and Bert – coming back from the house with his change of shirt – stops dead in his tracks and looks like he might faint. (It must be a tough gig being Reiner’s caretaker… I mean, _boyfriend_.) Marco’s got the giggles beside me – some real crazy giggles that have him pitching forward into his lap, and his whole frame vibrating with laughter.

“I’m not jumping in by myself!” Reiner bellows, once he’s down to his far-too tighty-whities. “You guys gotta do it too!”

Connie and Sasha don’t need telling twice. I think they need to re-evaluate their callings in life judging by how quick they’re down to their underwear (especially amazing considering their current hand-eye coordination) – and the three of them are then racing across the grass, still clutching beer cans and paper cups and all, launching into the pool with loud, slurry cries of “cannonball!”. Water splatters up over the sides, drenching the concrete and the grass.

“Come on you guys!” Sasha squeals when she surfaces, flailing her arms and yelping when Connie tries to dunk her. Somewhere in the back of my head, I’m thinking: _alcohol plus pool does not a good idea make_ , but all that’s really hazy, especially when Annie decides to pull Mikasa to her feet, and drag her towards the pool as well, with Eren, Bert and even Armin chasing quickly after them.

“Jeanbo, Marco, come on!” Reiner hollers, churning up a massive tidal wave with his arms as Bert takes the plunge into the deep end, his fingers pinching his nose shut. Marco’s still chuckling to himself, cross-legged on the grass, so I guess he’s too far gone. I’m not quite.

However drunk I am, this is always the situation I hate the most.

“I-I’ll pass!” I shout back, toasting them with my beer can. “I actually kinda like this shirt!”

“So take it off!” Sasha squawks, hanging off the edge of the pool, a Bud Light miraculously still in her hand. “Striiiiiiip!”

I swallow, and for one, not-sober second, does Eren look back at me with sympathy? It’s ‘cus he knows. Why does Eren have to be the only one of my damn friends to _know_. I swallow difficultly, and with that, suck away the atmosphere I’d been so carelessly enjoying until this moment.

“Come on Jean!”

“Stop being a grumpy shit and come join us!”

“You obviously haven’t drunk enough, Jeanbo!”

A weight collapses into my arm, a face burrowing into my shoulder that catches me one-hundred percent off guard. I drop my can in surprise, and beer drains out into the grass.

“Jesus fuck, Marco!”

I loop my arm around his back to stop him completely flopping over into my lap. He grins up at me dopily, before twisting awkwardly to look at the guys in the pool.

“Sorry guys, we’re gonna sit this one out!” Not sure how he says that without slurring, but he does, and I’m impressed, and so, so, _so_ fucking grateful. Sasha and Connie take Marco’s words with a roll of their eyes and Cheshire cat grins, before plunging back into the water, pouncing on unsuspecting Bert.

“There,” Marco breathes, suitably satisfied with himself. The way he says that catches in my chest, makes something flounder. I try to hoist him up a little higher in my arms, propping him back up against my shoulder as best I can. “Muuuuch better.”

“You’re so fucking drunk,” I say, giving him a bit of a squeeze with my arm. It makes him hiccup, which surprises him, as if he’s never heard the sound come out his mouth before in his life. Dork.

“And you’re so… you’re so…” It’s a real struggle in Marco-land.

“So _what_?” And I’m grinning.

He just replies with an incoherent mumble, and presses his face back into my shoulder. I laugh, but that doesn’t hide the way my ears burn. At least everyone else is too distracted to notice this PDA going on. (And if they were looking for PDAs, the way Ymir is basically eating Historia’s face over there will outshine Marco’s cuddling any day of the fucking week.)

I keep my arm wrapped around his middle – mainly ‘cus I really do need to keep him upright, but also, I guess, it feels good, and he feels warm, and I feel… well, I dunno. Something. I feel something.

“Hey Marco?”

“Nnn?” comes a noise from my sleeve.

“You had a good night so far?”

He struggles to raise his head, but just about succeeds in looking up at me through glazed, heavily lidded eyes. All the blood previously in my face shoots away down south at exactly that moment. Shit. Can we _not_ do that now, little Jean!

“Yeah,” he manages, quietly, “Yeah… even though…” He trails off, maybe forgetting where he was going. I heave my shoulder a little bit, to try and get him to keep going.

“… Even though what?”

He makes a noise of protest, and drops his head again, smooshing his cheek into my bicep.

“Even though I felt guilty…” he mumbles, “… having fun.” The heat rushes out of my system in an instant.

 _Oh_. Okay. It’s not surprising he was putting those shots away like he did. No-one really drinks a bottle of vodka for fun. I guess it’s too much to ask for the sad stuff to just… _not bother us_ for a little while. And to think all this crap’s been weighing on his mind all evening.

I don’t really know what to say – the same as always really, because being a dunce with words is my speciality. Even more so when I’ve got beer on the brain, and Freckles squished up against my arm.

“Are you, uh… feeling like that… now?”

“Mmm, no…” he hums. His breath tickles the hairs on my arms, and he slouches a bit more. “I decided… ‘s okay to be a l’il bit… _selfish_.” Not sure what he’s pointing at, exactly, but I can run with it.

“Yeah?”

“’Cus… you’re here, _Jean_ …”

I can’t hold him up anymore when he flops backwards, and takes me with him. My head hits the grass with a muffled sort of _whoomph_ , my arm awkwardly trapped under Marco’s weight. We’re both laying on our backs, side by side – me slightly more like a beached turtle.

He laughs – I guess that’s the sort of drunk he is: everything is hilarious to him – but I’m not complaining because his giggles open us his face like I’ve never seen before. There’s a moment there, when it feels like there’s just the two of us – without the din from the pool, the splashing, the shouting – a moment where I’m looking at him, and he’s looking at the sky. It’s very almost dreamlike.

The sky is black, and pitted with stars – Trost nights are never dark, especially in the summer. Marco raises his hand, his finger extended, and it looks as if he’s tracing lines between the constellations – and it’s so pretentious that I fucking _love_ it. But as he points at the moon – the moon, the colour of a light in a window when you’re looking in from the outside – I realise I’m looking only at his hand. I feel small, but I guess, so are stars, from a distance. I fucking love stars. They remind me of his freckles, and—

And in my drunken state, those stars look like a sparkling plethora of _what ifs_. What if—

“Jean?”

“Yeah man?”

“I think I’m gonna puke.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter ... sorry for the delay. I've been intensely making cosplay, and so I'm here posting this at 2AM in the morning at my friend's house after a long day grafting SNK bondage gear hahahaha
> 
> Again, not 100% happy; chapter feels a little clumpsy, and not very... well, progressive, but it was fun to write! Something's definitely brewing, even if it's not helped by Jean being a pretentious drunk and waxing philosophical about stars. What a loser.
> 
> Also way to go Marco.
> 
> The rest of the party will continuer next chapter, where it gets fluffier and I abuse more tropes to my heart's content.
> 
> As always, thank you so so so much for all the fan art from last chapter; they were some of the most beautiful yet! I genuinely cried ...
> 
> I love to hear from everyone, so comments are much appreciated and welcome, on here, or on my Tumblr. Let me know what you like, or dislike (concrit is welcomed!), and what you hope to happen. It makes my day, without fail.


	11. Medicine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is your [re]birth.

“I think I’m gonna puke.”

Any and all potential _what ifs_ , weighing somewhere at the back of my mind, disappear down my mental drain in a split second.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never moved so fast in my _life_. Marco tries to roll onto his side, away from me, pressing the back of his wrist to his mouth, but my arm is still under his back – I’m able to haul his freckled ass upright, before something stupid happens (like choking on your own vomit).

“First casualty of the night!” I hear someone call out, but I’m not really listening, looping Marco’s arm around my neck, and staggering to my feet – easier said than done really, because I’m not exactly _stable_ myself, and Marco is a big guy, and I can barely carry my _Philosophy textbooks_ around on a good day, let alone one hundred and sixty odd pounds of _pool guy_.

Not entirely sure how we make it to the bathroom – but props to him for not spewing beer and vodka all over the kitchen floor. I literally shove him into the narrow closet that is our downstairs toilet, and not a second too soon, because his entire body _wretches_ over the basin.

I lean against the door frame, entirely unsure what I’m supposed to be doing here – am I meant to pat his back, soothe him as he pukes up his guts? He’s got no long hair to hold back out the way. Am I meant to get him a glass of water? Hell, _I_ need a glass of water.

Marco lets out a pathetic little whine between convulsions. His back arches, spine rippling, with each lurch. Beads of sweat form on the back of his neck, just below the slope of his undercut; he groans again, and hangs his head in prayer over the toilet bowl. There’s another splattering of yellow bile into the water that makes me shudder, the thought, singularly, making the dull ache in my forehead throb. I sigh despairingly, and drop to my knees, shuffling forward in the small space, to rest my hand – supposedly supportingly – between Marco’s shoulder blades. He’s radiating a fuck load of heat.

“You’re okay,” I murmur, testing the water by moving my hand in small circles on his back. He lets out a deep and shaky breath. “Just let it all out, it’s okay.”

“I’m really—” He tries to talk, but is broken off by another heave that twists his insides. When he’s spent, he turns his head a little to try and catch my expression. His eyes are watering, and I’m pretty sure he’s the closest I’ve ever been to describing someone as _green_. “I’m really sorry, J-Jean.”

“’S alright. Happens to the best of us,” I figure, with a shrug of my shoulders. Marco twists back around, and rests his cheek against the cool porcelain. “At least you made it to the toilet. This one time, Sasha thought it’d be smart to—”

Marco violently retches again, and I decide it’s probably better _not_ to regale him with stories of Sasha’s legendary chundering. I pat him on the back when he begins to cough, but he doesn’t bring anything else back up.

I lean across him and flush the toilet, before grabbing a wad of paper towels to wipe off his face. He slumps back against the wall, drawing his legs up to his chest, and focuses on breathing deeply. I hope that’s the end of that. I’m pretty sure there’s no way one person could produce any _more_ vomit than I’ve just seen.

“Hang on like, two seconds, alright?” I say, patting him lightly on the shoulder as I lever myself upright again. I stride purposely back towards the kitchen – maybe, or maybe not, knocking my hip on the side of a counter I don’t quite see, in my mildly, non-sober state, which rips up my side in a burst of fucking _excruciating_ pain – to find a clean dish towel that I can run under the faucet. Armin’s edging through the back door when I finally find a cloth that doesn’t look too grimy to put on Marco’s face.

“Is he okay?” he asks, and I almost don’t register him against the general thrumming in my ears. “Jean?”

“H-huh? Oh, yeah!” I startle, hand paused just next to the cold tap. “Shouldn’t have let him drink that much. He puked his guts up.”

Armin looks sympathetic, pursing his lips into a straight line. Beyond him, through the open kitchen door, I see the raucous in the pool – pretty sure there’s Bert, somehow, balanced on Reiner’s shoulders, clinging onto his boyfriend’s head for dear life, facing off against Annie, on Mikasa’s shoulders. Armin’s doubtless looking to escape the chaos.

“I think I’ll uh… you know, put him to bed,” I say, “He’s probably done for the night.”

Armin nods.

“I think Ymir will go that way as well.” He spares a look over his shoulder, back towards the garden. I can’t see Ymir, or Historia, from this angle, but if earlier was anything to go by…

“Bagsee leaving _that_ mess for Historia to clean up,” I muse.

Armin meanders ‘round me to get a fresh plastic cup from the dwindling stack on the counter, and then queues up next to me to use the sink. Oh. Right.

I find myself staring at the faucet with a pretty damn intense glare. My fingers are twisted around the cold water tap, but I find myself unable to turn it.

“Jean?”

“Oh! S-sorry!” I give it a little twist, and the water splutters out into the sink. Some splatters up against my arms – cold, wet and gross, and I can’t help the tremor that shoots through my nervous system. I clench the dish towel under the stream, and soak it, before dancing out the way for Armin. I try not to notice if he gives me a weird look or not, and I announce over my shoulder that I’ll be back once I’ve sorted Marco out.

I slink back into the bathroom as best I can; Marco’s slumped a little bit lower, and has his head craned back, probably relishing the coolness of the tile against his skull. He opens a slither of one eye when he hears me return.

“Here,” I say, holding out the wet towel to him. He doesn’t really try to move. “Uh, I mean… _hang on_.” I manoeuvre myself into the space next to him, between him and the sink, awkwardly squashing one of my knees between his legs. Normally I’d fluster at the proximity, but … this is most _undesirable_ situation you could put yourself in, really. Stuck in a closet of a room that stinks of vomit and sweat, with an uncompliant corpse of a man. I press the cloth against his forehead. He sighs gratefully, even when one droplet of water seeps out of the checked fabric, and rolls down the crease between his eyebrows, all the way to the end of his nose.

“Mmm,” he mumbles, and I lean a little closer to try and hear what he’s saying. “You’re a … good guy… Jean.”

Oh. Still drunk. Woulda thought he’d have sobered up a bit after all that puking. I should’ve paid more attention to how much he was drinking. He must’ve polished off a good chunk of my beer, and at least half a bottle of vodka, by himself. I hope he’s not expecting to rely on his liver anytime soon.

“I’m doing what anyone else would do,” I reply, turning the cloth over in my hand to press the cooler side back against his forehead. I’m not sure I fit the _caring friend bill_ all too well, but hey, here I am. He weakly tries to swat my hand away, but fails miserably.

“I’m sorry I’m so … r-r-rubbish,” he slurs. “I’m sorry I … and that I …” He huffs, instead of finishing his sentence. He’s frustrated by his lack of control over his words, I figure, judging by the way he knits his eyebrows together, and pouts.

“You weren’t rubbish,” I say, unable to stop myself from grinning slightly. I lean back on my haunches, my back hitting the tiles on the opposite wall, and ring out the excess water on the towel into the toilet basin. I try not to focus on the way the water spurts out over my hands. _Don’t think about it_. “You were actually kinda funny. You think everything’s hilarious. Best sort of drunk.”

He doesn’t reply, only reaching out to take the cloth from my hand, and press it, himself, back against his hairline. His eyes fall closed again.

“You should go back … to the others,” he croaks. “I can be miserable by myself, Jean. I’ll be just … uh, fine. Fine here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I retort, with a scoff, maybe a bit too eagerly. “Look, man, for starters, you can’t pass out in the bathroom. You’ll regret it when Ymir turns up to chunder all over the floor. And _you’re_ the floor right now. You should go lay down.”

I scramble over his legs, and pull myself up with the help of the sink.

“Think you can stand?” I say. His eyes flick open reluctantly – trust me, Marco, I know _exactly_ what it’s like to want nothing more than to pass out on a nice, _cold_ floor – but he seems to consider my proposition for a drunken moment, before shaking his head wearily. I sigh theatrically. “Well then, you owe me for this. I’ll have to think of a favour I need doing some time.”

He just sorta mumbles something incoherent, and I just about pick out something that sounds like my name in the midst of it, as I awkwardly sling and arm around his waist and manhandle him upright. His knees twitch violently, and he has to grab the rim of the sink to stop himself keeling over forward and cracking his nose on the tiles. I readjust my hold on him, the hand wrapped around his side taking a fierce fistful of his shirt, whilst heaving one of his arms up around my neck, tugging it over my shoulders. (I evaluate the usefulness of a certain, mega-stacked football player in a situation like this … and curse the fact he drinks like a fucking fish.)

It’s slow going, and that’s a gross overstatement, as it is. It takes what seems like hours to even make it to the bottom of the stairs, and avoiding walls is actually a hell of a lot harder than I’d anticipated, what with the general lack of hand-eye coordination across the pair of us. I shoulda grabbed a glass of water when I had the chance. The ability to walk in a straight line would be hella useful right about now. Instead I’m unable to trust myself not to walk into furniture, and drop Marco in the process.

After the climatic struggle that is the staircase, I manage to drag Marco into my room, and all but _throw_ him down onto my bed. He toes off his shoes – even when drunk off his face, he has that much courtesy – and faceplants into one of my pillows with a muffled, borderline pornographic moan of relief.

I grab the bin from under my desk and scoot it over to the side of my bed, near enough to the headboard so that he can grab it if need be. (I also nudge away a small pile of books out of projectile vomit range – even if they are Philosophy related – just to be safe.)

“Marco,” I say – I don’t get a response. I try again louder. “Marco. I’m gonna get you some water, alright?” I give him a nudge in the ribcage, and he wriggles in protest, pathetically raising his head from the pillow.

“Mmm,” he manages. (So eloquent.) He’s barely speaking English, I swear, just a garbled form of drunken sounds. “You’re a swee’heart, Jean.”

“R-right.” _Time to get that water_.

By the time I return (after taking a few minutes to school myself in the bathroom mirror, and wipe my face with a cold flannel because looking so damn rattled ain’t really so attractive), Marco’s passed out like a light. His gentle snoring fills my room, and I can only roll my eyes, placing the glass of water on the bedside table. He’s going to feel grim when he wakes up – the taste of the night before’s vomit is not something I’d recommend, and passing out in clothes always leaves me feeling a little stiff – but I don’t want to wake him. I settle for dragging the comforter up over his body, doing my best job at tucking in the edges without stirring him. (Wouldn’t matter anyway, because he’s essentially dead to the world.)

I can’t help but sigh dramatically. And then I realise that standing in the middle of my room, watching someone sleep, is bordering on the Edward Cullen level of creepy. (Even worse is that fact that I can use that as a reference. Ugh.)

I try not to think how good the peaceful expression of sleep looks on his freckled face. (But boy, it looks _really_ good.)

 

* * *

 

I almost regret leaving the relative peace of my room when I return to the party, which can only be described as manic. Music and obnoxious shrieking fills the yard, and I’m really surprised the neighbours haven’t called the cops with a noise complaint yet. It’s a damn shame that I can’t stomach the thought of another beer, because heaven knows I still need it. Sasha comes skipping across the grass towards me, bangs plastered to her forehead with pool water (but thankfully having regained her dry clothes).

“How’s the patient?” she chirrups, hanging off my arm as I stalk back towards what remains of our circle, marked by strewn cans and plastic cups, and a pair of horny lesbians locked at the lips. Still.

“Asleep,” I say, plopping down onto the grass. Sasha joins me. She seems less of a mess than earlier – she’s somewhere in her happy drunk phase, rather than her obscenely irritating, or her touchy-feely stage. Or her pukey stage. (That may still be to come.) Her happy stage seems to consist of her petting my hair affectionately, and nuzzling my arm with her head.

I refrain from telling her exactly _where_ I’ve let him pass out, but apparently, the thoughts are rampant enough inside her head. I wouldn’t expect otherwise, to be honest.

“Did you get a good night kiiiiiiss?” she croons, burrowing her head only into the crook of my shoulder. I attempt to push her away, but she’s a persistent little shit.

“Piss off, Sasha,” I say – the intention to snap at her, like normal, is replaced, weirdly, by the fact I have a grin, albeit a despairing one, plastered across my face. I watch as her tongue flicks across her canines as she smirks back at me, mischievously – or just drunkenly. “I was, you know, being that thing called a _good friend_ , and making sure he didn’t pass out half way up the fucking stairs. Instead of wanting to _get into his pants_. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

She doesn’t care in the slightest about any of my good intentions.

“Do you want some of the freckled butt, Jean?” she sing-songs. I give her another rough shove, but it just makes her laugh manically. “You want some fre~ckled butt?”

“Nothing wrong with a freckled butt!” Historia pipes up, from the other side of the circle. Ymir’s got her face pressed into the crook of her girlfriend’s neck – it’s hard to tell whether she’s passed out or just slobbering wet kisses. That sets Sasha cackling even louder, which attracts a wild Connie over from the poolside, where he’s been umpiring whatever crazy battle is going on between Reiner-Bert and Mikasa-Annie. Oh, and Eren and the pool dolphin. He’s beating the shit out of that thing.

“Beauty’s in the eye of the… _beer holder_ ,” he smirks gleefully, squatting down beside Sasha and I, searching through some of the discarded bottles and cans to find one not entirely empty.

“… Pretty sure that’s _not_ how the saying goes,” I murmur, but I don’t think either of them hears me. Or care to hear me. Connie can probably only manage one train of thought at a time at this stage, and at the moment, that’s searching for alcohol. Sasha doesn’t give up in her pursuit of blackmail material, however.

“But you guys were being sooooo cuddly,” she chortles, nuzzling my arm again. “And I have money r-r… _riding_ on you getting on that, Jean! Mooooney!”  She exaggerates every sound that throws itself out of her mouth. “Oh! Maybe it’s _Marco_ who wants skinny, white boy butt?”

“You are _drunk as fuck_ , Sash.” _And we are not going to have this conversation_.

“I know! Isn’t it greeaaaat?”

We’re interrupted by Armin’s cry from the other side of the pool.

“Eren! Eren, no! You’re going to _burst_ it!”

If Sasha’s reached the happy stage of her drunkenness, Eren’s flown straight into: _having a great need to beat up any inanimate object he so happens to come across_. I feel sorry for the pool dolphin. She doesn't deserve this life.

 

* * *

 

The heat doesn’t break that night – or maybe we’re all just about drunk enough not to feel the night chill. The air is dry, cast orange from the street lamps, and the heat radiating from Sasha’s body as she squishes up against my shoulder, dozing, is enough to counteract my increasing sobriety. The music from Ymir’s iPod seems louder (the slow beat of the dubstep somewhat therapeutic), the air seems stiller, and I find myself with a desire to lean back and star gaze for a while. The scene sets itself like one that would inspire some beatnik indie song about summer nights, but everyone knows I’m a secret sucker for all things pretentious. So I don’t mind so much. Imagining myself in a music video is kinda fun.

I begin ripping out handfuls of grass from the lawn and sprinkling them on Sasha’s lap, and nothing screams summer more than that.

Ymir and Historia have snuck away – I really hope they _don’t_ end up staggering into my room on their quest to find somewhere private to… well, I’d prefer _not_ to think about what they’re probably doing to the sheets on a bed _somewhere_ in my house.

The guys in the pool look like they’re tiring out; Bert falls off Reiner’s shoulders with a tidal splosh, and Mikasa and Annie high five in their victory. Armin looks like he’s just about had enough of life … or babysitting Eren, and the carcass of the dolphin, at least.

Connie’s sprawled out on the grass on the other side of Sasha, arms and legs splayed wide as he balances a beer can on his steadily rising chest. I guess his batteries have run out too. Just looking at him makes me yawn, and I wonder how long we’ve been out here, and how much time I’ve lost in semi-drunkenness.  I’m not sure if it’s my eyes playing tricks on me, or the skies just getting lighter – slipping from pin-pricked black to a deep, blanketing navy blue. I wonder if I’ll be able to watch the sunrise.

 _I wonder if I could wake Marco up to watch it with me. Or is that just kinda cruel? Yeah, probably_.

I yawn again, and wonder who I can rope in to help me drag thing one and thing two inside.

 

* * *

 

Bert, it turns out, isn’t as drunk as I thought he was, so comes in supremely handy when he, Armin and I make the collective decision to put our drunk friends to bed. Annie and Mikasa, still in possession of their ability to walk, bagsee the couch in the living room, which is probably their right, seeing as they’re not, well… unconscious, a mess, or uncooperative lumps. Bert, with Reiner’s arm slung over his shoulder, who’s babbling nonsense about _how nice his ass looks_ in his ear, dumps his boyfriend in a heap by the coffee table, and proceeds to cover him in spare blankets. Eren takes the loveseat, far too tall for its length by any means, so he’s going to wake up with numb feet – but I really can’t find it within me to care. He drags Armin down with him, and I guess that’s them sorted.

Bert returns back to the garden to fetch Connie as I set about lowering an obstinate Sasha onto the floor, who’s doing all she can to cling onto my pant leg like a fucking cat.

“Sash. Let go.”

“I don’t waaaaanna,” she mewls, as I shake my foot to try and get rid of her. “I don’t wanna sleeeeeeep. I wanna stay up with Jeeeaaaaan.”

I crouch down to try and ply her iron grip, and press her down by the shoulders into the dark-wood floor. With her sweaty palms, she reaches up between my arms, and sandwiches her hands either side of my face, squishing my cheeks.

“My Jean-y boy,” she crows, “I’m so haaaappy you’re happy again.”

“I will stuff you in a sleeping bag and zip you up _myself_ if you don’t let go, _potato girl_.”

When Bert dumps Connie’s quietly zizzing body onto the floorboards next to Sasha, my problem is solved when she immediately moves to suction onto the bald monkey’s arm, gabbling something about how if brain’s were dynamite, I wouldn’t be able to blow my nose. Whatever.

Bert and I shroud them in blankets and shoehorn pillows under their thick skulls; Reiner’s already snoring, and I am insanely impressed with how Bert puts up with living with a train like that. He asks me if I need any help with anything – but I shake my head. I’m not gonna start cleaning up now. (Not when I could acquire slave labour from unknowing friends instead tomorrow morning.) I chuck him a blanket, which he catches clumsily, and then take the last spare for myself, draping it round my shoulders like a cape as I offer him a goodnight.

I flick the lights in the living room and in the kitchen, darting quickly out into the yard (which is not so friendly-feeling without the chaos of other people at god-knows-what o’clock in the morning) to snatch up Ymir’s iPod and speakers.

They’re still blaring some sort of soft-core dubstep anthem; the sort with a heavy rift that resonates strangely deep within your chest. (Or maybe it’s just me.) The lyrics punctuate the streetlamp-lit semi-quiet. The electronic lilt paints the sky with pale blues and pinks, as sunrise creeps up on us.

_“Pick it up, pick it all up. And start again. You've got a second chance, you could go home.”_

I check everything’s locked up, before heading upstairs. The door to the spare room is ajar, so I distinctly avoid going anywhere near that shit (and it’s significantly better than them having crashed into my room and landed on poor, defenceless Marco).

Speaking of Marco.

I slip into my room and he’s still asleep like a log, curled up on the far side of my bed with his back against the wall, legs drawn up to his chest. My foot comes down on one of the awkward floorboards and it creaks rudely – but doesn’t even stir Freckles in the slightest. Standing at the side of the bed, I reach to procure the unused pillow, and reluctantly remove my blanket-cape, intending to make some poor excuse of a nest on the floor.

Marco mumbles something when I first clench my fingers around a fistful of pillow. I pause. I look at his face. That slit in my curtains lets through just enough near-dawn light to illuminate the way his expression is contorted into something pained.

Is he dreaming? He’s as still as a leaf, but jeez, he’s holding on to the ratty ends of my comforter like his life depends on it. His knuckles are practically white – or maybe that’s just the colour of the light seeping into my room. He’s hurting, somewhere. I know it’s not just in his sleep. My head seems to spin.

I realise I’ve sat down on the edge of my bed now – blanket cape discarded on the floor, and pillow still in my grip, and I’m just stuck, watching him intently. The scowl doesn’t suit him.

 _If he wakes up now, you’re so totally in the deep end, Jean_.

I bring my legs up to join the rest of me on the mattress, folding myself up till I’m cross-legged, hugging the pillow on my lap. I lean a little closer. _This is not creepy at all_.

“Hey, Marco.” My own voice surprises me – barely a whisper, so quiet that the sounds catch in my throat, and the words come out sounding, and feeling, rough and clumsy. “You should tell me what’s up. Tell me why you’re feeling guilty.”

Closer still. My hands are crossed across the pillow, and as I lean, my chin comes to rest on the backs of my wrists. I’m already prickling. I need to shave. So does Marco, apparently, because there’s the faint shadow on the side of his jaw. I’m so close to him now, I could count the individual hairs on his chin. Or his freckles. I could count his freckles.

“Hey … that face doesn’t suit you, you know. So you should stop it.”

Not sure why I’m saying this. Any nosy-ass friend with their ear pressed up against my door would think I’ve well and truly lost it – or, alternatively, they’ll have blackmail on me (and Marco) for the rest of my life … neither situation is great.  

Marco’s face doesn’t change, of course, but his hands unclench and relax around his hold on the duvet. He sighs out through his nose in his sleep.

The mattress springs complain as I shift my body weight – away, now, from him. I reach over the side of the bed and grab the discarded blanket, throwing it over my legs (not that I think I’ll need it with the combination of _this_ heat and _these_ jeans); I plump the pillow a little, patting the feathers even, before stuffing it back in the rightful place. And then I commit to laying down. Next to him. Just for a bit. To wait for that expression to go away.

 _You keep telling yourself that, Jean_.

 

* * *

 

Turns out I drifted off. But not for long. I wake up bleary, with a full stream of sunlight in my face, and can’t roll over quick enough to be out of its death glare.

I strain one eye open – it’s far too fucking bright – and I feel even worse when I see the clock on my bedside table read only six-thirty. I’ve been asleep for just over two hours. I feel like I’ve been shat on by an elephant. The only silver lining on how gross I feel – what with my t-shirt basically painted onto my skin – is the brevity of my hangover. There’s only a slight, twitching ache when I move. For that I’m insanely grateful.

I want to take my shirt off – it’s just trapping heat in my sweat as it is – but how weird would that, you know, make… _this_? The whole, accidentally sharing a bed with your entirely, one-hundred-percent platonic best friend. One-hundred percent. _One-hundred percent_.

 _It’s only weird if you make it weird, Jean_.

I roll onto my back once more, and crane my head to look at Marco, still sleeping soundly, on my other side. His face has softened, and he’s shuffled a little closer over the course of a couple hours. His dark hair has fallen over his forehead in the process. Hmm. This seems like a scene straight out of a chick-flick. That’s what I’m meant to do, right? Swipe away his hair from his eyes? And then he’d wake up just at the most intrusive moment, and we’d have a second of awkward, sexual-tension, before—

Yeah, no. Thinking too much into that.

I raise myself up onto one elbow, leaning my cheek on my knuckles. The block of sunlight falls over his face now, too, and he stirs. It starts with him scrunching his nose, and if that isn’t the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen – and yes, I know how that sounds, _shut up_ – I’ll be fucking damned.

He groans, because of the sun, I guess, and blinks open the eye that isn’t smooshed into the pillow. I watch his gaze focus, his pupil constricts as he tries to overcome the glaze of sleep, and it darts around a little, roaming, before settling on me. His face lights up into a dumb-ass smile. He looks so God-damn dopey.

“Hey,” I say, simply.  Marco’s fixed stare doesn’t waver, and it makes me abruptly self-conscious. Way too aware of the way I’m lying.

“Hi.” Just one word, but it’s real soft. I kinda wonder if he’s still drunk. That’s happened to me more than once before. Doing a Chemistry lab when still half off your face is an experience, to say the least.

He yawns loudly, lazily pressing the back of his hand to his mouth to cover it. He wets his lips with his tongue. Blinks sleepily. 

“S-sleep good?” Why am I stammering? “Uh, I mean… you… did you sleep _well_?”

I think he mumbles a _yes_ – well, he mumbles _something_ for sure, but his eyes flicker shut again, and he noses his way deeper into the pillow. There’s a lazy blush dusted across his cheeks, accompanied, still, by the most content smile I’ve ever seen him sport. I’m acutely aware of the way his hand is sprawled in the space between us on the mattress.

Somewhere, on the cusp of sleep, he murmurs: “Your pillow… smells of chocolate Axe.” And then, I swear to god, he passes _the fuck_ out. Amazing.

I stare at him – in awe, in fucking _disbelief_ , ‘cus that’s some Connie level shit right there. His light snores reverberate in my ears once again.

I wriggle onto my back again (cramp may or may not be forming in the crook of my elbow, and pins and needles in my wrist), and rest my hands on my stomach. I stare blankly at the ceiling, wishing for sleep to come as quickly. No such luck. Marco’s steady breathing is calming, relaxing sure, but my brain feels too high wired for before-seven in the morning.

I probably lay in a dumb stupor for an hour or two, but eventually I doze off, because there’s really only so much staring at the paint-job on my roof I can take. (And for _some_ reason, tipping my head just that little bit to watch Marco dream doesn’t seem like the appropriate thing to do.)

 

* * *

 

It seems, as soon as I let my eyes sink closed, into beautiful darkness, I’m awoken again by shuffling up against my left shoulder, and I jolt out of my daze. The clock now reads five-past-ten. Oh.

One of my hands has slipped off my stomach, and now rests – squished – in the gap between Marco and me. That gap sure has shrunk. And the temperature has rocketed. I make a mess of kicking off the blanket from last night (well, earlier this morning), the pale pink fleece tangling around my feet before I manage to knock it off the end of my bed. I regret going to bed in jeans, oh boy. It’s like I’m living in Satan’s butt crack, for starters. And I desperately need a shower. Beer sweat is the worst.

The shuffling is Marco, his nose squished against my shoulder – can’t be comfy, not compared to my pillow. Turns out it isn’t, because a long, disgruntled groan slips out between his lips, before he twists onto his back, throwing a hand across his face to shield his eyes against the light of the room.

“My heeeeaaaad,” he moans, to no one in particular. I wonder if he even remembers waking up earlier. I suppose this is when I try to explain that I’m lying here _totally innocently_ , and absolutely _nothing_ happened that was weird. Which is true. _Nothing_ weird happened. “Ow. This is _not_ cool.”

“Feels like shit, huh?” I scoff lightly, pulling myself up against the headboard of my bed. My t-shirt sticks to my skin in awkward places, but I try my best to ignore the grossness. Marco practically leaps out of his skin at the sound of my voice so close – but just as quickly regrets moving so suddenly. He clutches his head, in pain.

“J-Jean!” he squeaks, albeit pretty pathetically. He scrambles to the side of my bed, pressing his back up against the wall. I raise my eyebrows, and watch as he tries to piece things together. I guess he really _can’t_ remember much.

His eyes dart around the room – which he obviously realises is _my_ room – he studies my bed and the tangle of sheets, and then he looks at me, and sees I’m still wearing exactly what I was wearing the night before, and so is he. That seems to calm the wild look across his face.

“Sorry,” I say, with as casual a shrug as I can muster. “The floor seemed hella uncomfy, and you were out cold. Hope you don’t mind.”

Marco looks appalled at some of that information, and I’m worried for a split second. No need to be. It’s not the sharing a bed he has a problem with.

“O-out cold?” he manages weakly. He stiffly rubs the skin between his eyebrows, and then massages his temples. “I… c-can’t remember. I can’t … I didn’t do anything… _embarrassing_ , did I?”

I can’t help but smirk a little. Reminds me of _my_ first head-splitting hangover. Except I was sixteen, and I’m pretty sure I woke up sprawled on Connie’s drive way without a clue how I got there, nor a single recollection from the previous fifteen hours. That was a fun experience to explain to my mom.

“No,” I grin, and Marco relaxes, his shoulders dropping. I draw my knees up to my chest, and fold my arms on top of them. “Well. Besides puking your guts up in my bathroom.”

He pales significantly. I try to counter it.

“B-but you were cool. Nothing bad. You just laughed a lot.” _And told me you felt guilty about having fun with us. But you can’t remember saying that, can you?_ “Uh … Eren ended up bursting the pool dolphin, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Oh no. Poor Nessie,” he laughs dryly, still squinting at me against the light. “I hope she’s in a… _better place_.” I stretch one leg across the width of the mattress and kick him playfully in the shin. He doesn’t protest – he probably _can’t_ , in all honesty.

“You want some water?” I offer, and he nods feebly. “And an aspirin, I guess. I’ll be right back.”

I slide off the bed, picking at my t-shirt to try and get the air circulating around my stomach and lower back, slick with sweat.

There’s no noise in the rest of the house – nothing from the spare room, and nothing from downstairs. I guess no-one’s awake yet. ( _Good_.) The balls of my feet stick to the floorboards of the landing as I pad along, past a few closed doors, to the bathroom. There’re the dredges of a packet of ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet below the sink; maybe like, two or three capsules left. There might be more in mom’s ensuite, but I’ll deal with finding more later, if and when other friends fall victim to jack-hammer hangovers. I empty the cup I store my toothbrush and toothpaste in, and give it a sparing rinse, before filling it close to the brim with cold water.

Marco’s still sitting upright when I kick my door open again, but he’s got his head buried in my pillow in his lap. I scoot onto the mattress, trying my best (but failing) not to spill any of the water onto my sheets. None of it hits me. It’ll dry.

“It’s bad, huh?” I smirk, but he just whimpers, not raising his head. I press the packet of ibuprofen between my teeth, and use my free hand to pry one of his away from the pillow, raising his open palm face-up. I clumsily pop the pills out onto his hand, and give him a nudge in the right direction.

“Here, c’mon,” I instruct. “Eat up. It’ll take the edge off.” Deep creases form between his eyebrows when he looks up at me, wrinkling his nose in distaste (more at the firing range going on in his head right now, and not the drugs). I chuckle dryly at his expense. “You’re such a hangover virgin.”

_Admittedly, I probably shouldn’t have let him drink so much. But let’s not mention that._

He chucks back the pills, and reaches, wretchedly, for the glass of water in my hand to wash them down. I cross my legs, and scooch myself closer, until there’s a hairs breadth between my legs and his. His feet are all but tucked under my crossed calves. I press my fingers to the bottom of the cup as he tips the water down his throat, a bit like last night when I, uh… _helped_ him down a can or two of beer.

Marco splutters a bit after a few mouthfuls, feebly knocks my hands away and thrusts the glass back in my direction. He reburies his nose in the pillow in his arms with a pitiful mewl. I take a quick swig myself, relishing the sensation of the liquid against how rough my throat feels – not so good is how it brings up the taste of old beer and who knows what else. I lean backwards to prop the glass on my bedside table, out of harm’s way.

“Food’ll help,” I offer; I jab him on the knee with my index finger when he doesn’t reply with more than a suffocated noise. “You’re worse than me, you know.” I start absent-mindedly walking two fingers up and down his shin, pausing to jab him every so often. Just to remind him that I am _definitely_ an annoying shit at the best of times, even more so when he has a killer hangover. Feels okay to be this brazen when there’s safely just the two of us. “I mean, I know I’m a grumpy fuck even _without_ a hangover, but –”

“Can I grab a shower?”

“H-huh?”

“I’m really sorry, y-you’re talking to me, but I… I just feel _so bad_ , I’m sorry, I just can’t concentrate, and I think I… wouldn’t mind going to sleep _forever_ right about now, and...” He looks up again, wincing and apologetic. “Maybe if I grab a shower, I… will _make for better conversation_.”

I’m speechless for a second or two, before a breathy laugh escapes me, and I clench my forehead in my palm. _You’re ridiculous, Marco. Even with a hangover_. I’d have had someone’s head already, if I were the one being mentally run over by a tractor.

“You’re _unbelievable_ ,” I muse – more to myself than him, really. “Sure. _Sure._ That’s fine. You need a towel?”

‘Course he doesn’t. He thought ahead and packed one for himself – and naturally, I’m a good enough friend to go and fetch it for him from his overnight bag, tucked neatly under the foot of my bed. I toss it onto the sheets, it landing by his feet. He thanks me, and then asks if I could just bring his whole bag over, if it, quote, _wasn’t too much trouble_.

I mock a fed-up sort of sigh – my sarcasm obviously doesn’t register in his beer-fogged brain quite yet, because he looks briefly worried that he’s upset me by being so dependent. Dumb-ass. I reassure him with a stupid grin, and lob his bag at him.  

“Stop looking at me like that and go take a shower, idiot.”

 

* * *

 

I seize the opportunity of him being out the room to strip and throw something clean on – not before I’ve lain starfish on my bed for a few minutes, the general grogginess in my system finally dawning on me. I feel like I need to be put through a car wash (if, you know, that wasn’t an _inherently bad idea_ considering… well, me).

After lazing around for more minutes than necessary, listening to the gush of water through the pipes heading to the bathroom, I figure I’ve definitely had enough of the stickiness of my skin. I can’t move quick enough to peel my t-shirt off, over my head, and I fling it towards my hamper with piss-poor precision. It lands a mile off. (But I really couldn’t care less. It’s not like my room isn’t already a bomb site.)

I do the skinny-jeans dance to get my pants off, almost tripping out of the leg when my foot gets caught. I stumble across my room in my boxers to my closet, where I grab something fresh; turns out the first thing I lay my hand on is one of those preppy-ass Ralph Lauren polos, but hey, if I’m going to spend the day cleaning up everyone’s mess, I don’t want something I actually _like_ to get ruined. I tug that over my head, the single button catching and pulling on my hair. I select some non-descript pair of drainpipe jeans to go with it, shimmying into them in the most inelegant way possible.

There’s a knock on my door. I realise the water’s stopped running.

“Hey Jean, are you decent?” comes Marco’s voice from the other side.

I grunt in response, smoothing down the wrinkles on the polo shirt. It gathers weirdly around my stomach. Remind me not to rock this look again anytime soon. I hear the door creak open behind me.

“Oh, ah! Jean, I was wondering if I could borrow a razor if it’s not—”

He stops the moment his eyes meet my face; he takes in my expression. I take in his… _well_. I take in the skimpiest fucking towel I’ve ever laid eyes on. _I’m_ decent. He’s … _not_.

I take in the fact he’s got freckles on his thighs. Chest too. Dappled all the way down to his bellybutton, probably further, under where his towel hugs his… _chiselled hip bones_.

No. Not again. We’ve been through this _before_.

“J-Jean?” He’s suddenly self-conscious, his hand coming round to pull the towel a little tighter. “It’s okay if I … borrow one? A razor …?”

I leap into action, practically _leaping_ across my fucking room, to hurry him back out the door.

“Y-yeah! Yeah, go shave! Take whatever you need!” I painfully regret the octave my voice jumps to. It sounds like someone’s sharply yanked my balls. I don’t look at the droplets of water that glisten in his mused hair. I don’t look at the tan lines that stripe his biceps. I don’t look at the way he holds the towel up, _down there_. Nope.

Nope, nope, nope.

He looks completely bewildered , but I don’t pause for breath, shutting the door, just-this-side-of-slamming-it, in his face. Couldn’t be quick enough, really.

I am one-hundred-percent, most definitely at _half-mast_ in my pants. Well _fuck_. Fuck, fuck, fuckity-fucking fuck.

There’s a moment or two of baited silence – before I hear creaking on the floorboards away from my door.

“Why?” I whine, gesturing down at my crotch. _Why is this happening again?! I went through enough personal humiliation the last fucking time! I get it! I have a thing for nice hips!_

I pace back across my room, willing my boner to go _the fuck_ away. The scene is almost laughable. I’m standing in the centre of my bedroom, literally _shouting_ at my dick.

The zipper flap of my jeans is pitched, and this is literally the most shameful moment of my _life_. Most shameful _boner_ of my life. I could list one-hundred-and-one fucking reasons why it’s _not okay_ to go half chub when you run into your best fucking friend just out of the shower.

_Does he not own full sized towels at his house? Like, fuck! Could he not have— Fuck!_

My pants are so tight. I feel miserable. I damn my fucking cock all the way to hell for having a God-damn mind of its fucking own. Fuck!

_Marco, please, for the love of God, be shaving. If you walk back into this room right now I’m going to throw myself out the fucking window._

I stalk over to my bed, and flump onto the mattress, burying my head in my hands. Just think of that seventh-grade teacher. Think of Professor Pixis in frilly, pink underwear. Think of that moment in _Sharknado_ when the guy cuts open the flying shark with a chainsaw. Think of _Jesus_.

_Freckled Jesus?_

I let out a pitiful whinge. I am trash.

 

* * *

 

Ten or fifteen minutes of wallowing in misery and trying to summon the most disturbing mental images to mind as possible, and I’m not pitching such a tent. And I thought rampant teenage hormones were supposed to be a thing of the past. I didn’t sign up for _this shit_ in my adult life.

The second time Marco knocks on my door, it’s way softer and significantly more timid. I flinch.

“Yeah?” I call out, hoping my voice doesn’t really sound as pathetic as it does to my own ears. Marco’s head pops ‘round the door, his eyes briefly scanning the room, warily, before landing on me. He looks hesitant.

“Y-you okay?” he asks. He doesn’t try to come any further into my room. (Not surprising, really, because I just acted _really fucking weird_.) “C-can I come in?”

I try to school my face into a completely legit mask of: _I’m-totally-okay-what-are-you-talking-about-why-would-I-not-be-okay_. I like to think he’s fooled.

“’Course you can,” I say casually, with a dry scoff, waving him in. Safe to say my boner’s gone, I push myself to my feet, joints cracking as I do. “I’m not gonna _eat you_.”

Still reluctantly, he slides into my room, not daring to open the door too wide, or draw his gaze too far off the floor. He’s got his towel draped around his neck, but – thank God – has gained a pair of pants. He’s got last night’s clothes bundled up in his arms, alongside his wash kit. Hasn’t had the grace to acquire a shirt, though.

“Where’s your shirt?” I say, without thinking. He looks up, wildly, with the most furious of blushes on his cheeks.

“I… uh, well, you probably won’t _believe me_ , but—”

“You forgot to pack another shirt.”

“…Yeah.”

“And you’re _sure_ you’re not secretly trying it on with my mom?” Marco looks suitably appalled at the suggestion, and I crack a grin. I slip-slide across the floor towards my closet once more. “Y-you want to borrow something, then? Or, I mean, I’m sure the others – _Sasha, at least_ – would be cool with the, uh… _e-exhibitionism_.” Rambling again. I hope Marco doesn’t notice. I reach into my rack of clothes to find the shirt Marco borrowed last time, but when my fingers curl around the hanger, I stop, and I look down. And I remember that I’m literally wearing a carbon copy of the same polo shirt.

“You’re sure that’s okay?” Marco asks shyly, from somewhere over my shoulder, as he’s maintaining some distance. I turn to face him, and hold out the hanger and the shirt, gesturing, with my other hand to my own chest. “O-oh.” He can’t help the way the corners of his lips quirk up into a cheeky smile. The awkwardness dissolves in a split second.

“ _Oh_ is right,” I say. “I won’t hear the end of this.” _But equally, can’t be bothered to change, so…_

Marco takes the shirt from my hand, thanks me, and his stupid smile he’s trying so hard to repress is fucking infectious. He must be wondering what he did to end up with such a _dorky_ friend as Jean Kirschtein.

He slips the fabric over his head – and what a picture the pair of us are, in our God-damn matching Ralph Lauren polo shirts. Mom would love this.

“I th-think I heard some noise downstairs,” he says. “Some of the others might be … awake.”

Damn. And here’s hoping to a little while longer lounging around on my bed.

“You feel up to it?” I smirk, tapping on my temple with two fingers to gesture to the state of his hangover.

“I’m feeling distinctly more _human_ , if that’s what you mean,” he smiles gently, pushing his hands into the pockets of his pants. I dunno. He still looks a little fragile to me.

“Wanna go face the vultures downstairs then?” I nod my head towards the door. “Food?”

He just smiles plainly, and allows me to go first, maintaining a few paces behind me as we walk down the landing.

I almost turn to apologise that I had a crazy moment back then with the towel situation, just to placate the water between us (or maybe he’s used to my weird hang-ups). He beats me to it though.

“Hey Jean?”

We’re on the stairs by this point – him on the very top one, me maybe four or five lower. He has one hand clamped on the bannister, and his fingers flex around the wood. I twist around to look up at him, not liking the look he’s sporting right now.

“A-are you _sure_ I didn’t do anything to embarrass you last night?”

I quirk an eyebrow in his direction, and turn myself further to face him full-on. Why is he still worrying about _that_?

“Huh?”

He rubs one foot up the back of the other ankle, and bites his lip.

“Y-you know. Did I … you, uh, you acted _weird_ back there when I came to ask if … and uh, well, I thought maybe I’d done something and—”

“ _What_.” My best deadpan right there. For some bizarre reason, that makes him panic even more.

“I just really don’t want to cause trouble for you, Jean, and if I did something when I was drunk—”

“Marco.” I take a step back up, followed by another, so that I’m not craning up to him as much. I’d like to hope it reassures him too. “You’re an idiot.” I buff him on the arm gently with a clenched fist, and scoff. “An _idiot_.”

I almost want to tell him I got a hard-on for his freckled ass, if it’ll strip that expression off his face. _Almost_. Not quite.

“Like I said. You were fine,” I add, more softly now, “Best damn drunk I know.” _You even puked in the right place. You told me things you wouldn’t say if you were sober. Things I wouldn’t even_ know _how to get out of you, on a normal day._

His eyes soften, and he looks relieved – it’s that big a deal, apparently, to hear from my mouth that he didn’t cause me trouble. Like he ever could. Jeez. _I’m_ the troublemaker out of the pair of us.

“I’m sorry, Jean.”

“Don’t apologise.” _You worry too much, nerd_.

He doesn’t budge, so I reach up, and pinch the fabric of the shirt across his stomach, and give a little tug.

 _Come on. I’m hungry as fuck_.

 

* * *

 

It’s Armin and Mikasa who are awake, and the ones who Marco heard from upstairs. They’ve dragged bar stools over to the kitchen island counter, and are sitting opposite each other, sipping coffee diligently. Mikasa looks as positively radiant as ever, completely lacking in the hangover department, as she blows steam across the top of her mug with pert lips. Armin too, despite being tee-total last night as it was, is unnervingly chipper for this time of the morning. Or this time of whenever. Too chipper. Despicable.

Marco and I must sound like a racket – and look like a mess – as we pad into the kitchen. Armin offers a cheery smile, and Mikasa, looking over her shoulder, quirks an eyebrow at our matching shirts. Luckily she has the decency not to comment.

“Good morning,” Armin greets, hopping off his bar stool, to grab two extra coffee mugs from the cupboard on his side of the counter. “I just made coffee. Did you two sleep well?”

The way he phrases that makes me flush, despite myself, and the back of my neck grows uncomfortably hot. And this is without Armin knowing that I slept in the same bed at my pool guy last night, _totally platonically_. Which is exactly what it was. Platonic. And Armin’s not the sort of guy to bat an eyelid at that. (But you can’t be too careful about the _supersonic hearing_ that creatures like Connie and Sasha are blessed with …)

Marco answers before I’ve finished my mental gymnastics.

“Like a log,” he smiles, rubbing the back of his head. “But apparently I drunk so much that, uh… well, that’s not much of a surprise, is it?”

Armin laughs politely, and Mikasa smiles. I slide past them towards the smell of delicious coffee.

“You want me to sort that, Jean?” Armin asks; he and Marco must be related, because they both have saintly tendencies. He seems to look me up and down. “I get the impression you _didn’t_ sleep like a log.”

I shrug, and roll my shoulders with a satisfying crack. I dunno. It wasn’t all bad.

“I got a couple hours in,” I admit, “And no worries. I got this.” I sidle up to the coffee maker, and pour the drink of the Gods into both the mugs Armin’s procured for us. As it simmers, I pad over to the fridge, for the milk, and splash that into Marco’s designated mug, followed by two teaspoons of sugar. Don’t know how he can take it with all that crap in it. Give it to me black and bitter (like my soul) any day.

Marco rounds the counter, and pulls up the other two bar stools for the pair of us. He slips onto one as I push his coffee into his hands, and wrap my lips around the side of my mug. Perfect drinking temperature. Glorious.

“You know how I take my coffee?” he asks, surprised – I meet his eyes over the rim of my mug as I chuck a few gulps down my throat.

“Yeah. ‘Course.”

Mikasa and Armin lapse back into their gentle conversation whilst I refuel myself, and Marco, he – well, he seems to consider his drink very seriously for a while, before finally taking a sip. I hope he doesn’t think he’s hiding the little smile that blooms on his face, ‘cus he’s doing a shit job of it.

The bitterness of my coffee seems to clear up any remaining grogginess of beer and sleep inside my brain – it oils my gears, and I feel, as Marco said before, more human. I slurp the last few drops from the bottom of my mug, before leaning across the counter to drop it straight into the sink to be dealt with … later.

“You guys want some food then?” The three of them nod, and I return to the fridge, to have a look at what I can attempt to whip up with my limited cooking skills. We’ve got half a loaf of bread, so I can probably stretch to toast for first come first served, and I’m pretty sure there’s a stale box of Cookie Crisp stored somewhere that I’d been munching through the other week, and—

Marco’s face appears over my shoulder, one of his hands coming to gently rest between my shoulder blades, and I all but freeze up. He peers into the fridge.

“Are those eggs in date?” he asks, pointing at the large carton on the middle shelf. I reach forward and spin it ‘round to check the use-by date. “Oh, I could make us omelettes.”

“Omelettes sound good,” Armin pipes up, and Marco reaches over me to grab the eggs without another word. I try to inform him that he definitely _shouldn’t_ be doing the cooking because he’s a _guest_ , but nothing a part from a few strangled noises come out. He gives me a reassuring pat on the back.

“Great.” He already at the stove by the time I turn around. “I’ve been told I make a mean omelette.”

 

* * *

 

I don’t get out of breakfast scot free. Marco has me cutting vegetables, and dicing up some of the ham slices we also found buried in the fridge. I’m still just as bad at it as I was before, and Marco doesn’t hesitate to remind me of that fact, playfully threatening to jab me with a spatula more than once. It’s all painfully domestic. (And I’m not saying that I couldn’t get used to it, but … yeah, actually, I really could. I rather like cooking with Marco. Or _watching_ Marco cook, more like. He’s a natural in front of the stove; he looks like he’s in his element. He holds the spatula so gently, and looks so content. I could watch for hours, I swear.)

Armin and Mikasa get the first two omelettes out the frying pan, however much I try to pander and look hopeful at the chef. He nudges me with his hip, and tells me to get chopping.

The smell of cooking attracts hungry strays – in the forms of a murderous-looking Annie, a sleep-deprived Bert, and a very, _very_ hung-over Connie, who shuffles onto my bar stool and presses his forehead onto the cool marble surface with a tortured sigh.

“I want to die,” he mutters, and I can’t help but feel not a _single_ ounce of sympathy for him. He drank _himself_ under the table. I smirk as I dice the onions on the chopping board in front of me. Marco dishes out plates to Annie – perched on the bar stool Marco relinquished, next to Mikasa – and to Bert, who’s leant up against the counter, trying desperately to keep his eyes open. When a plate is slid down the counter to Connie, I swear he might cry; he looks so happy.

“ _Marry me_ , Marco,” he breathes, grabbing a fork from the cutlery pile Armin’s brought out, and shovelling literally half his portion of omelette into his trap in one mouthful. “ _Mmmrgh_! You were sent by God to make hangover food.”

“Find your own domestic goddess,” I find myself muttering, before I really have time to consider: _hey, Jean, why did you just say that out loud_? Fortune is obviously looking down on me, because Connie’s loudly munching, and the others are too polite, or too tired, to say anything, if they even heard. I sneak a glance sideways, and find Marco with a smug little smile as he continues cooking without a word. I puff out my cheeks, and force back the heat that bruises my face. 

Ymir and Historia are the next to stir, still basically super-glued together at the hip as they appear in the kitchen, Ymir with an expression caught between _cat-who-got-the-cream_ and _I’m-in-vicious-vicious-pain-so-please-don’t-talk-to-me_. She has her arm looped around her girlfriend’s shoulders – probably more for support than anything, because she looks hella wobbly on her feet – but Historia’s just beaming, like usual; she’s always been one of those lucky sods who never feel the _delights_ of a good, brain-obliterating hangover.                

Historia collects an omelette from the counter, but Ymir decides to make life difficult by asking Marco to put in extra mushrooms, but to lay off the ham, with hers. Marco obliges with a smile, ‘cus he’s a saint, but I grumble, as I have _even more_ veg to chop.

The conversation in the kitchen becomes louder, the others complaining about Reiner’s snoring throughout the night, and praising Bert for living with that foghorn. (But I’d say, judging by the purple-black bags beneath Bert’s eyes, he suffered just as much as everyone else.) Ymir and Historia, now perched on one of the free counters (why can’t they all disappear to the dining room, where there are actual _chairs_ , and leave me and Marco alone, I don’t know), inform us that the bed upstairs was _wonderfully_ comfortable. Over my shoulder, I watch Mikasa roll her eyes in Annie’s direction at Ymir’s more than smug smirk. Someone definitely got lucky last night.

Godzilla himself emerges next, stretching his arms so high they almost hit the doorframe between the kitchen and the hall. The glares he gets from Connie and Annie, alone, are comical enough, but it’s Bert’s one-hundred-percent _-done_ expression, when his boyfriend hooks an arm around his waist, that makes me snigger.

Reiner polishes off his breakfast in record speed – not sure I’ve ever seen someone basically _inhale_ omelette, but he does. He then starts asking if there’s any leftovers, but I tell him that he’ll have to fight Sasha for them when she eventually stirs. It’s getting crowded in the kitchen (Reiner’s bulk really doesn’t help), and I have to dip through bodies to get back to the fridge, to see if we have any more eggs. (We don’t.)

It’s a race to the finish between Sasha and Eren to see who gets the last omelette (Marco and I, thanks, mainly, to my persuasion, have put one aside for ourselves).

‘Course it’s Sasha. Maybe she has some telepathic ability to know these things. Her sixth sense to know when good food is on the line. I really wouldn’t put it past her. But she drags herself into the kitchen shortly after Reiner, her chestnut hair half fallen out of her ponytail, and the blanket I’d draped over her last night knotted in front of her collarbone, to make a sort of blanket-poncho. She follows her nose – like a dog, what with the way she sniffs the air – weaving through the throng of people in my kitchen who watch her intently. She bleary tries to blink open her eyes, which a crusted shut with sleep dust. She doesn’t say a word when a plate apparates in her hands – just devours it. Just like that. Gone in a flash. What can I say: she’s a girl of many talents. The principal one being _eating_.

The others are laughing – a great booming sound that fills up the room, brilliant and warming, that … I feel disconnected from. Atomised. I watch on, from the side lines, as Sasha pulls the blanket over her hair and her eyes, resigning herself to the look of an old woman as she tries to conceal her hungoverness from the blatant teasing. Connie is still lying face flush, against the counter top, with Annie poking him mercilessly; Reiner presses a sloppy kiss to Bert’s cheek; Armin’s giggling, and Mikasa’s smiling pleasantly, the softness in her grey eyes that would probably make high school me go weak at the knees (hell, maybe it does a little bit now, as well). It strikes me that it’s not been this way for a really long time. I’ve been resigned to being the empty shampoo bottle, in the shower of life, for as long as I can remember (useless, disposable and ignored), and this … all _this_ is a little overwhelming, if I’m honest.

We haven’t all been together like this in so long. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to not be ignored. A stinging sensation pricks the corners of my eyes.

Someone nudges my elbow – Marco. Stupid, _perfect_ Marco, with his stupid, perfect smile, who always knows _exactly_ when I need to be interrupted from my woeful inner monologue, without fail.

“Hungry?” he says, warmly. He holds out a plate between us, the thin parcel of omelette sliced into two, perfectly equal parts. I roll my eyes, but the corners of my lips twitch upwards. I take the plate from him without the need for any words.

We all pack into the living room, where Eren is still passed out on the loveseat, his stomach proudly on show, and both legs draped over the arm rest. Marco looks concerned that he’s missed out on a hot breakfast, but I reassure him in passing that he deserves it for _murdering_ my pool dolphin. We wriggle into a space between Armin and the pile that is Sasha and Connie on the main couch, as Reiner takes control of the remote, turning the TV to some mind-numbing, Sunday morning garbage, that only people like him (or maybe, _just him_ ) like to watch. I balance the plate on my knee, and Marco and I quickly demolish the omelette between us, both of us ravenous by this point; him making sure to lick every smudge off his fork, and me feeling suitably content with the feeling of good food in my belly.

Once I set the empty plate down on the floor, Sasha leaps at the opportunity to collapse into my lap, moaning about how _I’m her favourite person_ , and if I would just _be so kind as to let her sleep for a bit because she feels like she’s been run over by steamroller_. I give Marco a look, and he just bites back a teasing smirk, reaching behind Armin to grab a pillow to stuff under Sasha’s head, to save me from the fate of being head-butted in the crotch.

“Mm, you’re the best, Jean.” It takes one-hundred and fifty-seven seconds before she’s out like a light. Marco laughs as I pet the side her head, and Connie announces that he thinks he’s gonna puke. (Genuinely.)

 

* * *

 

Aunty Reiner – another one of the people who never seem to get hung-over despite drinking like a fish – takes charge of this one, after I insist that I’ve done my duty as chunder supervisor. He helps Connie to the bathroom, and sits with him whilst he brings up all his breakfast.

It’s not much of a surprise. I was beginning to think this party was far _too_ clean and uneventful. Especially after learning Ymir _had_ successfully managed to keep all her alcohol down last night. This will surely go down in the history books.

Bert and Reiner come to an agreement to take Connie and Sasha home en route to theirs – because neither of them is in a fit state to drive Connie’s truck right now, and Annie needs to get back to change for her afternoon shift at whatever place she said she worked at. I’m not too fussed having the pick-up parked on the driveway, seeing as mom and dad will both be gone for a few days more (or hopefully _longer_ , in the case of the latter), so I tell a sleepy Sasha that she or Con can bike over the collect it tomorrow. She just nods, without really registering what I’ve just told her, as I pass her on to Bert to hang on to.

After the five of them eventually leave, the house is so much quieter. Eren’s still fast asleep, so I decide it’s time to remedy that, by throwing the pillow in my lap at his face. Before I can even stop to consider that, fuck, _I just did that, are we cool enough to do that, what if he flips on me_ , he jolts upright, flinging off the blanket draped over his lap, shrieking.

“What the _fuck_ was that for!”

“I was trying to hit a fly,” I deadpan, and Eren fumes - genuinely angrily or not, I'm not sure for a moment, and my breath hitches - as he threatens to throw the pillow straight back at me. I prepare myself for the onslaught, but Mikasa interrupts, glancing at the screen of her phone.

“Eren, we should probably go,” she says sternly, causing Eren to perk up in her direction. She gets to her feet from the couch, and smooths out her skirt, gracefully. “The electrician is coming at two to fix the stove – did you forget?”

He looks instantly guilty, and rolls off the loveseat with as much elegance as a toad. The hangover obviously hits him the second his feet hit the floor, and he grimaces in pain. . Mikasa doesn’t really have to time for him, looking towards Armin.

“Do you want a lift, Armin?” she asks – I still don’t quite understand why the three of them don’t live together, considering how they’re constantly glued together at the hip. It’d save Armin the cost of living in dorms if he moved into Eren and Mikasa’s apartment.

“Historia and Ymir are going back to the dorms,” he replies, to which Historia, tied up in Ymir’s arms, nods diligently. “They said I could go back with them. Thanks though, Mika.”

Once Eren’s insisted on scrounging through my fridge, and then brushing his teeth (‘cus he’s not “gross like that”, he tells Mikasa, when she ushers him to leave), they head home; Ymir, and her growing collection of small blond people follow shortly behind, after the wrap of the TV show she’s found herself unequivocally involved in.

And then it’s just Marco and I. We both flop back onto the couch after seeing the others to the door, and grab a moment’s breather. This time, it’s me staring up at the ceiling, arms clasped around the back of my head, and him looking at me.

“Suddenly I’m feeling way more tired,” he admits, slouching into the couch cushions. He let his eyes droop closed, if just for a moment.

“I think I could nap for a year,” I agree. “Thinkin’ it’s about time that I go looking for some less exhausting friends.”

Marco elbows me gently in the ribs, and huffs.

“You don’t mean that. I thought they were great.”

I shoot him an expression that shows I was being sarcastic. He’s right. They are pretty damn _great_.

“I wish I had friends like them,” he adds, a little softer. I drop my hands from behind my head, and sit up straight. “I’m a little jealous.”

_Hell Marco, I’m pretty sure you’ve passed the Connie and Sasha initiation of being cool enough to hang with them, so consider yourself part of the loser crew._

“Reiner and Bert, though,” I point out, but Marco looks wistful. Huh. Well I guess it’s true that I don’t quite know the extent of the relationship between Bert and Marco, but … “And me. You’ve got _me_.”

The moment passes, apparently. Marco’s cheerful, enough, again.

“Yeah. I do.” A pause, and something wicked crosses his dark eyes. “And your mom’s always been … _friendly_.”

I pull myself to my feet, and turn to face him, standing, effectively, between his knees as I bear down on him.

“Hey, don’t _joke_ about my _mom_ ,” I tease, poorly, reaching for his arms to drag him up off the couch as well. “Not cool, man.”

“Sorry. I keep forgetting that my love affair with Céline is supposed to be a secret.”

 

* * *

 

I get the feeling Marco’s taking his time in leaving. He insists on helping me take all the empty bottles out for recycling, and then wipes down the counter tops for sticky, beer residue, whilst I dump all the used plates in the dishwasher. We don’t really talk much, but the silence is companionable, and comfortable, and when he forgets himself and starts humming along to songs in his head, I feel giddy (except when I recognise one of those songs as MCR, and have to throw the dishtowel at him to make him stop).

We share that half empty box of stale Cookie Crisp, and the leftover bread in the fridge for lunch, perched on bar stools across from each other; I flick through the mail that arrived this morning (all for dad, and none for me), whilst Marco checks his phone. Just barely, his breath catches in his throat as he scans over a text message. I don’t know if I’m meant to have noticed.

“Something up?” I set the envelopes in my hands down on the counter top.

“My mom just wants me home,” he sighs, tapping out a quick response, before pushing his phone back into his pocket. “Babysitting duties.”

“Ah.”

Marco tells me that one of his appointments for tomorrow cancelled on him this week, so he asks if it’s okay for him to come ‘round and … _deal_ with the state the pool has been left in after last night. (It’s probably filled more with shitty beer than water, at this point.)

He collects his stuff from my room, and then I walk him out to his van.

“You sure you’re okay driving?” I probe, as he searches for his keys. “I don’t mind giving you a lift to your place if you’re still feelin’ rough and all.”

He shakes his head before I’ve even finished talking, and finds his key ring at the same moment.

“I’m fine,” he assures me. “… Thanks though.”

We stand in awkward silence, him not getting into the cab of his van; he faces me like he wants to say something more. He hoists the strap of his hold-all higher on his shoulder, and stares at the sidewalk.

“… Marco?”

“Y-yeah?”

“Spill it.”

His eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline, and his freckles are immediately consumed by a dusting of pink across his cheeks. He bites his lip, scratches the back of his head, all of that usual stuff; I fold my arms, and stare him down. (Or up, I guess, seeing as he’s the taller one of us.)

Why do I get the sense that was he says next is _not_ what he was thinking?

“Just … thanks for inviting me, Jean. I had fun,” he offers. “It was a nice break from … reality.” He almost winces, maybe expecting me to start pestering him.

I don’t push him. I don’t push him for what he means in his crypticness, what his “reality” is, what he meant, last night, by his _guilt_. I don’t push him for what I know he actually meant to say.

That one little word seems to avoid me at all costs: _why_? _Why don’t I push him?_

I wish I had the damn courage just to ask: _what’s going on? You can tell me_.

We tell each other goodbye, that we’ll see each other tomorrow, and I wave him off from the curb, remaining on the sidewalk until his van disappears around the T-junction at the end of the street. And a while after that, too.

The reason I can’t ask why, I’ve got it. It’s the fear of probing too deep, learning too much, and him … him _pushing me away_ because of that. I know that’s what _I’d_ do. What I did. Eren and the others saw too much, and so I pushed them away. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of that. 

 _Is that selfish_?

Yeah, probably. I’m a capital A for asshole.

 

* * *

 

Mom phones from France that afternoon; she’s overtly worried that I’m not feeding myself properly (I inform her that I’m going to the store tomorrow morning), and if she remembered to post the cheque to the housekeeper (I tell her that she did it before she left).

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry honey, I’m just worried about you,” she gushes down the line; the static frazzles over the distance. I refrain from reminding her I’m a _perfectly_ capable, nineteen year old guy, and keeping myself alive and kicking isn’t _too_ much of a hassle. “Have you been up to much?”

“Nah,” I say, “Well, I had, uh … a couple friends round last night for an end of exams thing, I guess. Nothing big. House is still in one piece.”

“Did I hear you right, honey?” she crows. “Is that you finally acting your age and being _social_ for once? Gosh!”

“ _Mom_.”

Mom cackles in my ear, and I roll my eyes dramatically.

“ _Judas Priest_ , what on earth is next … you might actually do something totally drastic and _leave the house_!”

It doesn’t take me long after that to tell mom that I’m hanging up.

 

* * *

 

Monday comes around quickly, because I spend the rest of Sunday evening cleaning, saving the housekeeper from a heart attack the next time she comes over. I manage to gather up a small collection of things people left behind; a couple lone socks, someone’s cell phone, and a pair of panties stuffed down the side of the spare room bed, which is distinctly disturbing.

I catch up my sleep by crashing around ten, and managing to remain unconscious for a good thirteen (glorious) hours.

I roll into some semi-acceptable clothing when the neighbour’s dog starts yapping and wakes me up – but I’ve got to get the groceries before Marco pitches up, so I’m not too resentful of it today. (I still want to skin the damn thing, don’t get me wrong.)

I fill up on shitty instant noodles and microwave meals and cigarettes plastered with warnings of fatal lung disease at the convenience store (mom would have a heart attack … hell, so would Marco), and make it back to the house, unloading the brown paper bag in the kitchen, just as Marco walks through the back gate.

It’s business as usual with the cornflower blue polo shirt, and the hoses and buckets, and the headphones looped around his neck, and his smile when he spots me in the window. And strangeness in the atmosphere between me and him, from yesterday, has evaporated.

“Morning,” I say, slipping out the back door. The sky, for once, is punctuated by thick, fluffy cloud in places, which drift soporifically across the sun, much to my delight. The breeze is pleasant too, sifting through my flattened cowlicks and tickling the grass. It’s a nice day. I don’t usually get to say that.

“Good morning. How’d you sleep?”

“Like the fucking _dead_. It was amazing.”

Marco chuckles to himself, and sets about assembling his pool net – well, two pool nets, as it turns out, one of which he hands unsparingly to me once I reach his side. I stare at it like I’ve been handed a lightsaber or something. (Actually, hey, maybe it could make a pretty good lightsaber if—)

“Think you can help me fish out some of those beer cans?” Marco supplies me with answers to the question I haven’t quite got around to posing. “I can’t put the skimmer in until we’ve removed the, uh … debris.”

_More like poorly concealed plan to get me standing next to the pool; don’t think I can’t see straight through—_

“Jean?”

“H-huh?”

“You think you can do that?” It should be patronising, but it’s not. The way he says things like that is always the _furthest_ thing from patronising, and I really don’t know how he does it. He just cares too much for one person. (Or maybe he just cares enough for the both of us.)

I try to give my best, earnest nod, but standing on the edge of the pool gives me the heebie-jeebies the second I inch forward and my bare feet meet baked, concrete slabs. I’m not a particularly tall guy, but it feels a helluva long way down, staring into the gentle lapping blueness of the water. The old fear of being pushed in resurfaces, even though it’s one-hundred percent unwarranted with Marco here. I try to imagine his voice, and reaffirming words: _it’s okay to be scared. Just take it in your stride. You don’t have to be a slave to it_.

Still though. Every muscle in my body tenses up. My veins become both cemented in ice, and flooded with scorching, liquid fire. I wobble, suddenly light headed.

Hands appear on my elbows from behind to steady me, and Marco brings his chin to hover over my shoulder. My grip on the pool net only tenses tenfold.

“You’re fine.” His breath is hot, and fucking _close_ to my ear. “Want me to show you how to do it?”

It’s not exactly _dirty talk_ – and obviously, it’s _Marco_ , for God’s sake – but I’m stull surprised I don’t spring a boner then and there. It usually takes less than a touch to send my rampant teenage hormones into overdrive these days. I gulp loudly, and nod. I try to focus on his steadiness, and not his closeness.

Marco’s chest is pressed flush against my back – and it’s just Marco, he’s just being _friendly_ , and _helpful_ , and –

His hands snake around my torso, to take hold of the pool net, just above where I have my fingers wrapped around the metal pole. He starts to move it in my hands, swirling a figure of eight in the water. It’s not difficult. He doesn’t need to be this close. I’m not sure if I resent him for it or not.

“Just do it like this. You won’t fall in,” he hushes. “I promise.” The water becomes less daunting, for one giddy millisecond.  

Yeah, I dunno about that – I might throw myself in, to be honest. _Seeing as you get some evil pleasure from making me flustered. You’ve been taking pointers from thing one and thing two, haven’t you?_

There’s a tugging within my gut that pulls with it a genuine, sincere _feeling_ from the depths – don’t know what it is, don’t know where it came from, but for about four seconds, I feel like I’m on the verge of falling (and not into the pool). But it passes. It’s just a moment. It’s not significant.

Just as quickly as it appeared, his grip on me disappears, and the maybe, _actually_ pleasant warmness of his body is replaced by the gross heat of the sun. I maintain the rhythm of swirling the net in the pool, making sure to catch as many limp paper cups and empty beer cans as possible at once, my pulse absolutely fucking racing in my chest, as Marco saunters ‘round to the other side, to reach the stuff I can’t. I couldn’t be more rooted to the concrete if I tried.

We work in happy silence to clear out all the remnants of the party – which I’m glad of, because it’s quickly growing too damn _hot_ out here to talk, and I’m practically _sweating buckets_ as it is.

I grab a bin liner from the house to stash all the crap we collect out the pool, as Marco gets to work on the complicated, filtering stuff. (As much as a pool full of beer _could_ be appealing … it’s not.)

After I’ve hauled the bag to the trash out front, I plonk down in the shade of the pool shed, and disassemble the second net, for something to do with my hands. Marco seems absorbed in himself, and in his thoughts – maybe he forgets I’m there, because he’ll start humming, and then stop, only to stare blankly at the water for a moment or two, before regaining himself suddenly.

It’s not until he’s finished with the chlorination that he comes back down to earth. He turns on the skimmer, and sets it to work in the pool; it clumsily bumps against the mosaic a few times, like a disorientated bug trying to find the God-damn window, but eventually it finds its way. Marco looks satisfied, and resting his hands on his hips, he turns to me.

“Jean?”

The way he says my name instantly has me suspicious. Like he’s trying to hide the fact he’s either done something he shouldn’t have, or that he’s about to. Turns out it’s the latter.

“I’ve … uh, got something in my van that I brought over for you. Can I go get it?”

I refrain from making a comment about how I could compare him to the child catcher from _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_ with a line like that. Who knows. Maybe that’s his flaw. Maybe he stores small children in the back of his van. I give him a nod anyway. _Go on then. Show me your collection of kidnapped youngsters._

He scurries out the back gate, and I listen curiously to the sound of the side door of the van sliding open, and then closed again. He returns, sheepishly, a moment later, with something hidden behind his back. I cock an eyebrow.

“R-red or blue?” he asks, with a stutter.

“Red.”

“A-alrighty then.”

Before I can react, he throws red fabric straight at my face, and it’s all I can do not to fall over backwards on the pool shed steps, spluttering like a loser. You can’t blame me. Unexpected attack from player two. I was not prepared.

“What the—?” I say, recovering myself, and holding out the strange item of clothing in outstretched arms. Oh. Shit. I know what these are. _Swim trunks_.

I’m pretty sure I baulk. Marco looks worried that he might have just put the final nail in my coffin.

“I just … uh, well, I figured you wouldn’t have any,” he explains in a rush. There’s an identical, blue pair clenched in one of his fists. “And I thought you’d need some, seeing as … how well things are going.”

I blink, and swallow. Part of me wants to yell; how can he be that _presumptuous_? How can he think this is going fucking _well_ , when it’s all I can do not to _pass out_ when I’m standing on that top step of the pool, with my ankles _barely_ submerged? That I basically freeze in fear when I’m asked to stand on the freaking edge? Fuck that. I don’t want to swim. _Ever_.

But then, the other part of me, draws a separate conclusion, and that’s the one I end up acting upon.

“Did you buy these, Marco?”

He grins guiltily, and nods, probably still anticipating me freaking _the fuck out_ and chucking the trunks straight back in his face, before sprinting out the back gate and never coming back.

He’s an idiot. He works two jobs, for Christ’s sake. Why is he spending money on a _lost cause_ like me?

“You’re an idiot,” I grouch, “Why’d you spend your money on something I’m not gonna use?”

He face falls, for a split second, but then becomes determined, his eyebrows knitting together. Maybe I’ve pissed him off. Haven’t seen _that_ before.

“Jean.” I take it all back. He can very easily sound condescending if he tries. It’s clear to see what he wants me to do.

“No way, man. There’s no way in hell,” I snap, before adding, “I’ll have a fucking heart attack before I ever take one step in the water, and then you’ll have my _death_ on your conscience.”

That’s if I haven’t already had a heart attack. The sweats are starting up; already, the back of my neck, and my palms, are stupidly sticky with nerves. My fingers tingle, and I know this feeling. It makes me nauseous.

My stupid, debilitating, embarrassing _fear_.

There’s no way I’m getting in the fucking pool.

He crosses the space between us, and comes to stand in front of me. I have to crane my head up to look at him, shadowy against the sun.

“Putting them on doesn’t commit you to anything,” he says, firmly. “And if for one minute, you’re thinking about bailing on me, because of … whatever’s going on in your head, Jean, well … you … uh, I … well, you can _think again_.” He loses his cool on the lame threats. Not so smooth. ( _Being stern is probably too far out of his element_ , I muse.) “I made a _promise_ to you, remember.”

“It was a dumb promise.”

 _I’m not doing this. I can’t. He can’t make me_.

He kicks me abruptly in the shin, and I growl. A flicker of _oh-shit-I’ve-hurt-him_ crosses his face, but he controls it, and stays strong.

“No, it wasn’t.”

I scowl, and, of all the witty comebacks I could probably say, I resort to sticking my tongue out at him. He barks a very weird laugh, but apparently this is a battle I’ve lost. My shoulders fall, and so does something heavy within my chest. It sinks into my gut.

“… Do I have to do it now?”

“Yep.”

 

* * *

 

I haven’t worn swim trunks in years. And, standing in the middle of my bedroom, staring at myself in the mirror, I’m remembering why.

I’m skinny. Like a rake. Not an attractive skinny. Like a: _pasty, white skin, can practically see my bones_ type of skinny. My hip bones protrude, and not in a nice, chiselled way like Marco’s. I have zero abs to speak of. I’d probably blind anyone who looked directly at my chest. You could mistake me for a God-damn, sparkly ass _vampire_ , I’m so fucking pale, if it weren’t for the tiny beads of silver pierced into my clavicles.

This is what happens when you don’t go outside, and spend an entire year of your life moping around, ruled by anxiety and self-depreciation, I guess.

The swim trunks do fit, though. Marco has a good eye. That, I’m glad of. If they’d been too big, I wouldn’t be a far cry from a little kid playing dress up with their parents’ clothes.

I roll my shoulders, try to make myself stand taller, but … it’s hard. Marco’s tuneful whistling echoes through my open window; he’s swapped his khaki shorts for the blue pair of trunks, which are tighter on him than me, but _fuck_ , they still look better. Everything about him looks better. Stupid, tanned, freckled, _Greek God_ of a human being.

I tramp downstairs, shoulders hunched, grumbling to myself, my inner monologue dutifully informing me that I’m probably just going to _combust_ the second I step out into the sun without a shirt on, and …

Marco’s facing away when I slink out the kitchen door, kicking the skimmer away from the pool side with one leg. I cough, to get his attention, and he whips ‘round.

The sun must be strong today. He looks like he’s caught it, ‘cus he’s a dark red across the bridge of his nose, and the tops of his cheeks. I’m probably the same, if worse. His eyes flicker over my naked chest, and I _feel like shit_.

Marco scratches the back of his head. Why is _he_ nervous?

“I … didn’t think you’d go through with it,” he admits, all traces of his bravado from before now lost.

 _Nor did I. Hell, who knows if I even_ will _._

“Don’t you dare bail on me, Freckles,” I say, echoing earlier words, but my sarcasm is pained and dry. Cover up a sore situation with humour. It’s what I know. I wrap my arms around myself to try and grasp that feeling of _keeping it together_ , and walk towards him.

I don’t have time to ask, or even decline, because he takes one of my hands before I can even get one word out edgeways; his fingers twine tightly with mine. His smile is close to my face, the Marco smile, the one that can strip away the things I hate about myself, and melt the things I fear. Not all at once. There’s still a way to go. But it’s a start. I can hold onto that.

“Come on then.”

Edge of the pool now. My stomach does somersaults, but I squash it down. I compress the feeling trying to force its way up my throat and make me gag. Marco gives my hand a reassuring little squeeze, as he hops down the steps, wading into the water. I don’t budge, watching as his knees become submerged on the fourth step down.

A little tug. I’ve done this one before. I can do it again. My heart hammers in my chest, and I’m starting to breathe like a caged rabbit. Don’t let the panic set it. Don’t let it.

My feet meet the cool, lapping water of the top step. Deep breathes. Stay calm. _Marco’s got you_. That’s what consoles me the most, I realise.

He beams, but he’s got his sights set on one step further. He gives me another tug, and my nervous twitch looks like I’m shaking my head.

“You’ve got this,” he encourages. “No Sasha or Connie this time. No pressure. Take your time, Jean.”

My knees tremble, and I could almost laugh, I look so funny. But I take the step, with Marco’s guidance. The water comes up to mid-calf now. Marco’s hand is not enough, I need something more; I clamp my fingers around either of his shoulders, and he laughs, _musically_ , taking my elbows in his cupped palms.

“One more?” he dares to ask, and I surprise myself by nodding. It’s the adrenaline, surging through my system like a riptide. The sweat is beading on my forehead, it’s so cold, and so fucking _hot_ , all at the same time, but … _one more_. Come on. The water splashes against the underside of my knees. This is the furthest I’ve been in a long time. I could cry. I really _could_.

The lump in my throat grows, and pushes past the boundaries I’ve set; it’s difficult to swallow. My control lapses, and I think Marco feels the tremble reverberate into him. My vision swims.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He voice is so soothing. I try my hardest to cling to the way it feels, running, _gliding_ across my skin. “No more. It’s okay.”

I can’t help but whimper. It’s so pathetic, I cringe internally, I just … _fuck_. I’m an embarrassment, I … _but Marco doesn’t think so_. He holds firm.

“Jean,” he says, and fuck, can you fall in love with the way a person says your name? I think I can. He believes in me, without hesitation, without question, when no-one else does. He believes. “Think you can sit down on that step?” Always the constant, never the variable.

Sit down? In the _water_? I’m going to fucking die. Not _literally_ , but … the way my chest seizes up might as well be just as bad. It’s like my heart and lungs just forget how to work. He starts to slowly manoeuvre me, and I can _feel_ the tug of the out of body experience you get when –

My butt hits the cool mosaic. Oh.

“There we go.” He looks triumphant. I let go of his shoulders in a rush, moving to run my fingers fiercely through my hair, but I sort of just _flounder_ , hands flailing, unsure … unsure of everything. Hysteria … the hysteria’s coming. Gotta keep is quashed. Keep it quashed. My eyes flicker around, trying my best not to focus on the water; there are crescent shape indentations from my nail in Marco’s broad shoulders, and white, finger-shaped marks too. “Not so bad, is it?” Everything seems to stop.

I’m speechless, but I whip my head around from side to side, in complete disbelief. The water washes over my lap, but just barely. But, even if it’s at a fucking stretch and a half, I’m _in the pool_. _I’m in the fucking pool_! I snort loudly, and unattractively, out my nose.

“ _Fuck_.”

Marco fucking _sparkles_ like a proud parent as his child’s graduation. A smile so wide it must hurt, and his cheeks so emblazoned red, and _fuck_ , it’s not sun burn, it can’t be sun burn, it’s so obviously _not_ sun burn right now. He slips off the steps, wading backwards into the pool, until the water hits waist height, and then he sinks right down, until his head just bobs on the surface, his smile hidden by lazy waves. He’s trying to hide his glee. It’s fucking _adorable_.

I try something daring. I raise my foot, and make to splash him. The water splatters up into his face, and he pulls an exaggerated grimace, but his laugh _erupts_ like a spectacular firework as he pulls his arms out of the water to shield himself from the onslaught.

My grin makes me feel like I’m being reborn. Or maybe I’m just that light headed. Oh my God.

Marco falls back into the water, kicks his legs beneath the surface, and starts to move. I watch him, and he drifts gently, up the length of the pool, floating on his back, arms listless at his sides, and … _damn_. He was born to be in the water. He looks so at ease. He turns around when his head bonks the far side, and starts paddling back on his front, head always above the surface, his eyes fixed on mine. I find myself envious.

“Now you’re just showing off,” I chide, experimentally wafting my fingers through the water beside me. It doesn’t constrict, it doesn’t trap, or squeeze, or _threaten_ – the movement of my hands is fluid. It’s still not quite right, there’s still a knot of tension in my gut, but … I think … I _think_ I can get used to it. I start to realise that I’ve got a hold of this thing, this part of my life, and I can pull myself out the other side. I won’t let go now.

Marco paddles up to me like a puppy, dropping onto his knees on the pool floor at the shallowest point before the steps; the upper part of his chest is open to the air. He bites his lip. Droplets drip steadily from the strands of his dark hair.

“Can’t help it. I’m with _you_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How horrifically domestic! I hope it wasn't too boring ... but sometimes it's necessary to have a little breathing space now and again. There was a lot to be said, between the lines, about Marco this time around. Everything he says has meaning, and more often than not, a deeper meaning. 
> 
> I hope the fluff was good. I think Marco's been bit by the crush bug, but I'll leave that up to you to decide. Things will only go downhill for Marco from here on out. The angst is going to start building come next chapter, as we begin to approach the truth of the matter.
> 
> Other than that ... I can lay testament to the experience of doing a chem lab when drunk. That was not a fun five hours, oh my God.
> 
> Super thanks to the fan art from last chapter, and all the wonderful, wonderful messages from everyone! Reminder that you can always find me on Tumblr, and I track the tag fic: droplets, so please post stuff there for me to stalk!
> 
> As always, I am humbled by your feedback on here - and concrit is especially welcomed right now. I want to know how to improve my work. But, knowing what you liked, or want to happen, is much loved as well. I love you guys. You've made the last few months amazing for me.
> 
> Next time: [FURBY POWERS INTENSIFY]


	12. Where Is My Mind?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: homophobic slurs, violence, blood.

Because he cleaned the pool on Monday, Marco doesn’t come ‘round that Wednesday. The housekeeper makes an appearance though, and is thoroughly disgusted at the state of the house (what there’s to complain about, I don’t see, because Marco and I made a pretty good job of cleaning up after the party at the weekend) – I try my best to keep out of her tornado of a rampage with a feather duster, stealing away to my room with a bag of unopened Cool Ranch Doritos (the perfect drawing accompaniment).

I finish up the piece I was painting the other week (before mom’s interruption), but I get quickly frustrated in the way my mixed colours dry so quickly on my palette in the unyielding heat. I can never mix the same colour twice, so Marco’s shorts end up five different shades of brown. By four in the afternoon, I’m frustrated senseless with the mess I’ve made, so I decide to try my luck at something else. Marco usually goes straight from work to pick up Mina from school on a Wednesday; hopefully he’s home by now and available to chat.

I power up my laptop, and log on to Facebook, for a brief glance at my notifications, and my one unread message from Ymir, which I’ll deal with later. I’m literally just about to click on the Skype icon pinned to my toolbar, when a chat window from Connie pops up.

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> _!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_  
>> _JEAN_  
>> _MY SON_  
>> _u will never guess what the love of ur life the conman has gone and done_  
>> _!!!!!!_

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _oh pray do tell_

I rue the way my _overwhelming enthusiasm_ is probably lost over the internet to him. He’s always been a few fries short of a _Happy Meal_. He continues on, regardless.

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> _ok ok so it wasn’t necessarily me but_  
>> _ur gonna love me for this_  
>> _(more than u already do ofc)_

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _just spill it already  
_ >> _im kinda busy here_  
  
 **Connie Springer:**  
>> _calm ur tits son !!!!!!_  
>> _ive got a spare ticket for fridays titans game_  
>> _with ur name on it  
_ >> _(courtesy of our inside man reiner but sshh)_

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _….._  
>> _who else is going_

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> _bert and annie obvs_  
>> _also eren_  
>> _but that’s cool right ?????_  
>> _u guys are cool arent u  
_ >> _reiner can probs blag another ticket if u wanna bring pool guy i mean MARCO_  
>> _he was cool too_

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _…_   _ill go and ask him_

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> _is that A YES I HEAR?????_  
>> _YEAH BOI  
_ >> _GET IN THEEEEERREEEEEE !!!!!!  
_ >> _PICK U UP AT TEN ON FRIDAY DONT FORGET BEER_

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> _h8 u_  


I close that chat window just as Connie’s excessive: _LOVE U TOOOO JEANBO_ appears under his name and display pic. It’s been an age since I last went to a Titans’ game with Connie. I think I still have my ticket stub from the last game we saw, before … well, before shit hit the fan. Even then, I’d never had it in me to throw stuff like that away. It was o _ur thing_. Heh. Guess it still is.

Memories of really soggy nachos, and naff hotdogs, and the fact that I was never even _into_ football, before Connie bullied me into accompanying him when he got his season ticket (because Sasha downright refused), come pouring in. Makes me smile to myself.

I click on Skype, and notice the little yellow tick next to Marco’s screen name. If he’s anything like me, that’s just a ruse for avoiding annoying friends and/or relatives.

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _hey u there_

It only takes a moment before a reply blips up onto my screen.

 **Robodt:**  
>> _yeh_

 **KirschFINE:**  
>> _do u wanna video chat_

 **Robodt:** _  
_> > _yh sure_

I hit the green call button, without really noticing the sudden slip in his grammatical abilities. Probably _should’ve_ taken that into consideration, seeing as either Marco’s _turned into a little girl_ , or it’s _not actually Marco at all_ who I’m talking to, when the web cam feed pops up. Little girl, with gappy teeth, long, unruly hair, and a smattering of familiar freckles. I watch the surprise register on my face in the small window from my camera in the corner of the screen. I dumbly say the first thing that comes to mind.

“You’re … not Marco.”

Mina is kneeling on the computer chair, keening into the monitor with a scowl on her dotted face.

“Ew. It’s weird hair guy. I wanted it to be the teddy bear guy,” she says plainly, rocking back on her haunches and miming disgust. Gee. Nice to know I’m ever appreciated by the smallest member of clan Bodt.

I’m not usually one to pick fights with young children, but, without Marco to keep me in check … well. Maybe I’m slightly more ticked off than necessary.

“Wow, gee thanks, kid. Nice to see you too.” There’s no sign of Marco in the background: their dining room, it turns out – just the nine-year-old, hair-hating, mini-me of Marco. “Why are you on Marco’s computer?”

“It’s not _his_ computer,” she pouts, folding her gangly arms across her chest. “It’s the _family_ computer. Duh.” Oh right, _silly me_. This is why I dislike kids.

Then again, Marco kinda strikes me as the sorta guy to still have a _computer room_ in his house. Probably sits around playing Minesweeper or Spider Solitaire in his free time. Straight out of the early noughties, and all that.

“Marco doesn’t have a computer anymore,” Mina continues, barely pausing for breath. “He _sold_ it. He said he didn’t need it anyways.”

Huh. How about that. I think the truth might not be quite that simple, kid. I glance at my nine-hundred dollar gift-laptop from my dad, and feel instantly very guilty. It sounds like Marco’s that strapped for cash that he sold his computer. Jesus.

Stupid saintly prince not making his family worry. It’s gotta be dumb to be that selfless.

“So you’re allowed to go on this computer unsupervised, huh?”

“I’m nine and three quarters, not _five_. My mom says I’m _responsible for my age_.” She pokes her tongue out at me, so I do my best to mimic the gesture straight back. (Act your shoe size, not your age, right? Wait no, that’s meant to be the other way ‘round. Balls.)

“Speaking of which, where _is_ your brother? He around?”

“In the shower,” Mina retorts. “I can hear him singing. It’s _really_ bad.” Two guesses what song.

“I can imagine,” I murmur to myself, and it doesn’t register on the mic – that, or Mina’s just too busy ignoring me for whatever else she’s investigating on the computer. How am I meant to make small talk with a grade-schooler? They sure as hell didn’t teach me this at college.

“So, uh …” I begin awkwardly. “How was, uh, school?”

“It’s summer vacation,” she drolls, without missing a beat, nor sparing a glance at the web cam. Alright then. Probably shoulda realised that. It is July, after all. Has been for a few days. Schools have been out for a couple weeks already.

“O-oh yeah … s-so, you having a good … _vacation_ , then?” This is as painful as nails down a blackboard. I’m cringing. _Marco, where are you_?

She shrugs indifferently.

“I guess. I saw my dad today. That was good.” She puffs out her cheeks, and gets back to business without expanding on that. I’m left to contemplate what she means; the awkward silence dominates for a few moments, before I pique her interest again.

“Hey, weird hair guy?”

“It’s Jean.”

“ _Weird hair guy_ , can I ask you a question?”

I sigh, but nod. “Go on then.”

“ _Were you born with hair like that, or did someone do it to you_?”

I did not sign up for this abuse, _at all_.

“I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now,” I grumble, and am about to hit the hang-up button and try again later, when Mina is distracted by something in the background of her feed. She twists around in the chair, and is obviously listening to something I can’t quite hear.

“That’s Marco,” she says, slipping off the chair, “I better see what he wants. Mr Bubbles will keep you company, weird hair guy.”

Mr Bubbles? I’m pretty sure Marco said they didn’t have a pet. So what—

Mina squats down, and reaches for something off screen, before plunking it square in the centre of the desk. It’s a _Furby_. A pink and white spotted, black-eared, demon-eyed, _Furby_.

“You can talk to him while I’m gone,” she instructs, before proceeding to flounce away, tossing her long hair over her shoulders. I’m left along, agape, staring at a robotic murder machine. It stares back, unmoving. I think it’s judging me.

Stupidly, I roll with it, hoping that the kid will bring her brother with her when she comes back to the computer. Turns out to be the biggest mistake of my life. I should’ve logged off when I had the chance.

The Furby, without any warning, starts screaming. Fucking _screaming_. And by screaming, I mean _Metallica blaring out of Satan’s asshole_ , whilst at the same time, fucking _laughing_ in a high pitched screech, like it’s _possessed_ by some hexed _demon_ from the netherworld.

I fucking _fly_ out of my seat, and, by a hair’s breadth, manage to save myself from an early death, rescuing my chair from toppling over backwards onto the hard wood floor. The squeal that’s ripped from my lungs is positively shameful.

And then, after about twenty seconds of soul-sucking, the creature stops. Dead. Not another peep. As if nothing happened. It blinks slowly at me, just once. Am I … _dead_?

My heart is thumping in my ears, and I may or may not be clutching my fucking chest, trying to keep my soul stuffed inside myself, because I think I just had an encounter with the devil in _Furby_ form.

In the silence that follows, where I’m acutely aware of my own laboured breathing, Marco’s voice reverberates across the feed, from somewhere else within the house. It’s faint, but I can make it out. _Please, dear God, save me from probably imminent death, Marco_.

“Mina, mom told you to clean those up before dad comes home! Stop complaining – she shouldn’t have to be telling you twice, you know that.” There’s banging and clattering out in what, I guess, is the hallway. I hold my breath – listen, try to hope that I’m not about to be witness to my own murder by the small, plastic claws of a _Furby_. “And did you leave the computer on? We’re supposed to be saving electricity, Mina! Remember what mom said about the _bills_!”

“Nu-uh! I left it on ‘cus I was talking to the weird hair guy!” comes Mina’s ballsy reply.

“Weird hair guy?” Marco panders, sounding exasperated. There’s movement on the feed, as the door to the dining room creaks open, and Marco slips in; he’s facing the other way though, continuing to shout to his sister. He doesn’t see the current standoff going on via Skype. “Who on _earth_ is weird hair g— _Jean_! Mina, please tell me you haven’t been—”

He whips around and rushes over to the computer in an instant, looking aghast to see me on the monitor. I awkwardly raise a hand in greeting, and offer a sheepish, apologetic grin.

“Jean!”

“… Hi.”

“What are you doing on … on … _here_?”

Waiting for you, talking to your little shit of a sister, being possessed by the _Furby_ devil. It’s a growing list, really. I just chuckle awkwardly.

Marco glances down at the demon creature in front of his keyboard, and looks vexed.

“Do I even _want_ to know why Mr Bubbles is out?” he sighs, picking up the _Furby_. Of course, it doesn’t utter a word when he manhandles it. Just quietly allows itself to get stashed away in whatever depths of hell it came from. I breathe a quiet sigh of relief.

“I think your sister might have a death wish for me,” I mutter. Marco slides into the desk chair in front of his screen, and adjusts his webcam until it doesn’t clip the top of his head. He’s obviously just rolled straight out of the shower, because he’s thrown on a scrappy looking bed shirt and his hair is still wet and mused, sticking up in all directions.

“Sorry, did you say something, Jean?”

I shake my head. Maybe it’s better not to jinx things.

“I’m sorry if she was bugging you,” he admits, rubbing a finger under the end of his nose. “Did she call you? She’s been, uh … intervening a lot whenever I’m on Skype to Reiner or Bert, and Reiner’s actually become quite taken with her, I think. Lord only knows why. They’re thick as thieves lately.”

“Nah, man,” I say slowly, maybe feeling a little jaded that I’m not the only one he chooses to talk to so often. (Jealousy ain’t a great thing at the best of times … and being jealous of Reiner is probably worse.) “I … uh, it was me. I phoned here first.”

“Ah, I was in the shower,” he reasons. I nod. I know.

“Yeah. I gathered.”

A silence envelopes our conversation that’s mildly uncomfortable. It’s the same silence that had ended Marco’s visit on Monday – after his whole line about “oh, I’m with you, so I can’t help showing off”. Yeah, that made me blush like a school girl, and then he’d got all stuttery and apologetic, and it was just a real car crash after that. I mean, I’m used to the level of sap he sometimes comes out with, but his reaction had made that time so much more … awkward? Bashful? I don’t know. My chest had just felt so tight. I blamed it on the stress of being in the pool.

I tactlessly glance around my room, seeking inspiration for what to talk about. Marco apparently does the same, patting his ruffled hair down into that fifty-fifty parting of his, whilst the gears in his mind whir audibly. Fortunately for my own dignity, I remember Connie’s tirade of messages.

“So, uh … Connie’s managed to pick up a few tickets for the game on Friday,” I announce; Marco looks relieved. His chest deflates, and his shoulders drop.

“The game?” he asks innocently. Well, fuck me sideways with a chainsaw. He doesn’t know football. Should I really be surprised though? Marco plays Monopoly and Scrabble with his sister in his free time (or at least that’s the elaborate and totally reasonable picture I’ve painted in my head).

“Y-yeah. The Titans – the team Reiner plays for – they’re playing Friday. Connie was wondering if  – well, actually, _I_ was wondering if you wanted to go. But—” I scratch the nape of my neck; my undercut’s getting a bit shaggy. I need to get that sorted before mom comes home and calls me out for looking like an unkempt hobo. Marco’s eyes flicker to the movement of my hand. “… something tells me you aren’t a football fan.”

“I … I’m not, really,” he admonishes, looking guilty. “But I’d really like to go! Except …”

“Except what?”

“I’m looking after Mina on Friday,” he smiles gently, with a slight heave of his broad shoulders. “We’ve got chores to do. So I can’t. I’m sorry, Jean.”

I lean back in my chair, which squeaks in protest, and I rest my hands behind my head.

“Lame. I’m gonna be stuck with the sweaty prince, his demon neighbour, the monkey, and Eren all day. I hope you feel sorry for me.”

I’m not actually that fussed. Bert’s kinda cool, and I’m sure Annie has her graces, and Connie, despite all his glaring problems, is one of my best friends for a reason. And Eren and I are … fixing things. I’m not sure what I want Marco to feel sympathy for. I guess I just like making things about me. (I already know I’m capable of being a selfish ass when it’s called of me, don’t worry.) Or maybe I just want his attention. Who knows.

“Oh, how awful,” Marco smirks, leaning forward, chin resting in his palm. He tilts his head, shoots me a look, and he’s _totally sassing me_. “Having to spend quality time with your friends. I’m so, so sorry for you Jean. What a horrible predicament to find yourself in.”

“Oi. Sarcastic asshole is my job, not yours. Zip it, Freckles.”

We both laugh – his like music to my ears. It broadens the grin stretched shamelessly across my face.

 

* * *

 

Thursday brings everything crashing back down to earth. You would’ve hoped – with my dad out of the city, out of the state, out of the country even … I don’t actually know where he went, and I care even less – that I’d be free of his influence. But that’s hoping for too much, I guess.

The phone starts ringing when I’m lounging on the couch, spooning my way through a tub of half-melted ice cream, enjoying my rerun of the first season of _Game of Thrones_ (which is great, because everyone is happy, and no one is dead, and I don’t feel like the emotionless husk of a human being that the later seasons made me). The shrill dial tone makes me jump, and the spoon tumbles out of my hand, and clangs on the wooden floor. I pause Jon Snow’s kicked puppy expression, and roll over on the couch with a growl, straining for the handset on the table. Do people not respect the fact I’m trying to slob out here?

If it’s those fucking double-glazing salesmen again, I swear to God, I’ll—

The trill that rattles my brain cells is not welcomed.

“Hiiii, is Mr. Kirschtein there? It’s Charlotte, from the office.”

Probably worse than double-glazing bastards, if I’m honest. I don’t even try to bite back the sting in my tone. It’s been a long time since the last phone call. I’ve been complacent. Why do I ever think that shit like this will just _go away_ if I resent it hard enough?

“He’s on a business trip,” I seethe, through clenched teeth. I curl my fingers tight around the receiver. “Shouldn’t you know _something like that_.”

“Business trip?” the woman – the _girl_ – chirps. I hear the rustling of paper in the background. “Ah, nope. This says here that Robert’s on designated leave this week.”

_No, he’s definitely on a business trip, I saw him pack his God-damn suitcase. I got yelled at when he was collecting his suits. Believe me._

“Well then there’s been a _mistake_ ,” I growl, “He’s not here.” _If you’re that horny, you’re going to have to call him on his God-damn cell phone_.

“Oh. Well, that’s a little weird. Do you think you could be a dear and tell him to drop me a call when he gets back?” she continues brazenly, “Or come swing by at the office, that would be great too.” She says these things like she’s not the same age as me. Like she’s not some intern just out of college, or God forbid, high school. Like she’s not talking openly to the _son_ of the fat man sticking his dick into her. Resentment boils in my blood. The image in my mind is not pleasant.

“Or you could do us all a fucking favour and not encourage the bastard,” I spit out – I’m angry. That’s a given. But I can normally just let it simmer. Maybe I feel it more now, because I’m finally paying attention and not letting it slide –  what if she’s right. What if dad’s not on a business trip at all. What if he’s off gallivanting with some other _bit-on-the-side_ in some faraway place; maybe he’s lounging around on some Caribbean beach, sipping cocktails, banging some fucking _bimbo_ half the age of my mom, maybe even younger than this secretary of his, who’s so fucking eager for a booty call. Fuck. He’s not on a business trip, is he? Fucking, lying _bastard_.

My hands quake. I clench my jaw so hard it feels like it knots in place.

“When you see him next, you can tell him to go fuck himself,” I snap, “Maybe he’ll do that whilst he’s fucking _you_. Don’t call this fucking number again.” I slam the handset back into the cradle with so much force that I’m surprised I don’t splinter the plastic.

The anger rips through my system, turning my veins to shreds in its wake.

That man has the nerve. The God-damn, fucking _nerve_. I hate him. I hate him. _Hate him_. I want to spit foul names in his face. I want to grab him my the collar and make him grovel in front of my mom. I want to kick him out onto the god damn street, because why. Why _us_. Why _me_. I never asked to be dealt this hand in life – I don’t want to deal with this, I don’t, I _can’t_. The familiar crescendo of a wave of fury is building in my balled fists – I know it well, so well. It’s the same as that time with Eren. I tremble – because I’m suddenly holding so much pent up energy inside, and it feels like I might scream, explode, break something … I need to _break something_. That fact scares me.

How long has he been doing this? How long has he been balancing so many women – or throwing them sparingly to the side? I don’t understand. How long? Does mom know? She’s got to know. He can’t have gotten away with all this fucking _crap_ for this long.

I’m up the stairs before I know it, kicking the door into his study wide open. There’s gotta be something. Some incriminating evidence, somewhere, that I can find, that I can show mom and—

Make her leave him. She has to. We can’t stay like this any longer. _I_ can’t.

It’s all about me. I can’t. I can’t _deal_ with him anymore.

I thrash through the drawers of his desk, heaving piles of paper work out, over the sides, splaying the floor with documents, and records, and bills, and nothing. Nothing. Nothing that’s fucking _proof_. I try the filing cabinet, and the bookcase, and I God-damn rip the photos out of the frames to check behind them for something. There’s nothing.

One of the photo frames tips off the desk and crashes onto the floor with a sharp splintering of glass. The shards litter the scattered paper like glistening raindrops, and my burning anger vanishes. A hollow emptiness takes its place.

I can’t bring myself to pick that frame back up. I know what picture was in it. My fucking high school graduation. I think it deserves to be broken.

I hate this. I hate him. But above all, I hate myself. Because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.

 

* * *

 

There’s no 2AM text to Marco that night. I can’t bring myself to type anything, because when I do, it’s too angry, it’s too messed up, it’s too _selfish_. It’s not enough. So I delete.

I try and remember back, to before I was so angry with my dad. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t. When did I get this old? How do I not remember how I got from fifteen (fourteen, thirteen, twelve) to here, and at the same time, feel like fifteen is such a stranger? How did I manage to ignore it back then? I hate myself for letting this go on for so long without saying something.

Who am I kidding? I’m a poor excuse for an adult. I’m just a tall child, holding a beer in one hand, and a cigarette in the other, having a never ending conversation I just don’t understand.

How do I begin to explain this?

 

* * *

 

I’m half-way through combing the bird’s nest out of my hair when I hear the horn of Connie’s truck blare from the front of the house, 10AM, Friday morning. He’s bang on time. I feel like the dead.

Look, and move like it too, judging by the purple bags strung up like little hammocks under my eyes, and the way I can’t quite bring myself to lift my feet as I walk, resorting to a zombierific shuffle along the upstairs landing, and all the way to the front door, where I toe on my shoes with about as much grace as a salted slug.

I didn’t sleep well last night. Hell, I don’t know if I even slept at all, because by the time I finally felt the throws of sleep creeping up on my exhausted brain, I was suddenly being awoken by the drill of my alarm clock.

I drag myself to the kitchen, and scrawl a note for the housekeeper, apologising for the mess of paper and glass in the study; I leave her an extra fifty bucks for the trouble. I don’t ask her to keep it secret. Hell, if she brings it up with either of my parents, maybe it’ll be the kick up the ass I need to find the courage to confront them about this … mess. My brain’s not wired correctly enough to think much beyond that right now – especially with Connie’s apathetic horn blasting from the drive way. His truck really does sound like a strangled cat with every passing day. Just another thing I can be moderately pissed off with. Joy.

I pop a stick of gum into my mouth, but it will do nothing to quell the way my stomach growls for something more to eat. The fresh, minty taste at least does something about how human I feel.

Connie, himself, is like a jumping jack rabbit, when I slide into the cab of the pick-up; he’s springing up and down on the seat, voracious energy pouring out of him. It’s exhausting to even look at, but I suck it up. I don’t want to let my dad ruin this. Not _our thing_. I’ve been waiting so long to get _our thing_ back, God dammit. I can’t let this be one of those days where I just … don’t feel like talking. Or existing in general, for that matter.

“Something tells me you’re excited,” I chide, pulling the door to, as Connie wheels into reverse, and then tears off down the street. I’d fear for my life, if my driving wasn’t equally dodgy.

“I am freaking _boned_ , dude!” he cackles, and I realise how envious I am of him. He laughs loudly and unreservedly. He’s got it good in life. His parents are great, his girlfriend is great, his whole life is fucking _great_. And here I am, sitting in his shitty car, my feet nestled between empty McDonald’s wrappers, as we zoom along the freeway now, wishing I was Connie-fucking-Springer.

“This game is going to rock! The Giants are so going down … heck, Reiner could do it all by himself, he’s easily the best player of the Titans,” Connie continues, rambling away at full-speed. It’s a miracle my brain even manages to keep up. “We win this playoff, and we’re one step closer to the Super Bowl! This has gotta be our year! The stars are aligned, the planets are in position, my horoscope is great this week… I feel it in my bones!”

“The Giants?” I ask, grabbing onto that tail end of the conversation, compressing my cynicism down into the lowest twist of my gut. “As in, the Jinae Giants?” Truth be told, I hadn’t even looked up who the Titans are playing this afternoon. I’ve had … other things on my mind. But now I’m interested.

“The very same,” Connie grins wickedly, and then notices my expression. “Huh? What’s that face for, dude? Don’t tell me you’re thinking of committing _treason_ and hopping sides, because I will beat yo’ ass.”

I roll my eyes, and dip my head against the rackety window, the reverberations of the glass concussing my skull. The sun glares through the windshield, and I wince – I think my retinas might have caught fire. I think I would pay someone to extinguish the sun for me… what I wouldn’t give for just one freaking day of cloud cover. Or rain. Oh my God, I’ve almost forgotten what rain’s like.

Trost whips past us in an ugly, grey blur, and already, the looming walls of the SinaBank Superdome – affectionately: Sina, to regulars like Connie – appear over the slate rooftops of the city outskirts. It looks like a freaking space ship, straight out of some giant robo-movie, come to destroy the shithole of a city we call home; all wires and white scaffolds and plate, black glass, that reflects the sunlight like laser beams straight into my fucking face.

“Nah. ‘S just Marco’s from Jinae,” I shrug, folding down the sun shade. “Maybe it’s good he couldn’t make it today. Divided loyalties ‘n’ all that.”

“Ah, yes, Marco, of the attractive arms and ability to put away vodka shots like nobody’s business; my bitter rival for Sasha’s affections,” Connie quips sarcastically, with a barking laugh – he’s joking, of course, because we all know Sasha’s been smitten with him since middle school. Marco’s muscular arms pose no threat to her love of obnoxious, pot-smoking, death-trap-driving, buzz-cut monkeys; it’s okay. Plus, Sasha’s not _exactly_ Marco’s type. Too much boob, not enough dick. “How come he couldn’t make it?”

“Has to look after his sister,” I say. Connie takes the turning off the freeway that’s labelled for the Superdome, cutting off some douche in a red Toyota who flips us off. Connie doesn’t care – or even notice.  “His mom works long shifts, and they can’t afford a sitter. Plus, I think he gets his kicks from hanging out with that little toe-rag, I don’t know why. The little shit almost gave me a heart attack the other night when I was Skyping them. Oh, and Marco doesn’t know much about football either, so there’s that—”

Connie waggles his eyebrows as I ramble. Shit.

“W-what?” I deadpan, as best I can. I don’t like the look of his expression. “What’s your problem?”

“Problem? I don’t have a problem. I think _you_ have a problem. _A freckled one_.”

I have to stop myself from gawking at him and his accusations. I favour an exasperated sigh instead.

“Piss off. Look, we’re here.”

The parking lot is bustling, and it takes us a good ten minutes before we manage to find a slot that Connie reckons he can fit the truck into. (We pass three or four others that he thinks he can manage, but I don’t want to be liable for taking someone’s wing mirror off, thank you.)

Connie scrambles out of the truck, and I have to jog to keep up with him as he high-tails across the lot – very nearly getting run over a couple times; I spot a familiar figure waving by the entrance to D-stand, and have to grab my hasty friend by his shirt collar to stop him jetting off in the wrong direction. Connie makes a strangled gurgle as I tug a little too hard.

“Come on, you idiot. Eren’s over here.”

Sure enough, it _is_ Eren waving at us – Mikasa just dropped him off, he explains, as Connie starts gushing at him. It takes the pressure off me, having to listen to his incessant enthusiasm, and I’m relieved for that. Eren and I exchange a greeting that’s not cold, but still awkward and clumsy, neither of quite knowing what to say yet. Too often “forgive and forget” means “pretend it never happened”. We can’t do that – because it _did_ happen, and it hurt both of us. But time heals all wounds, right? The chasm between us feels like it’s slowly closing. That’s always good. It just makes Eren more subdued that usual – but Connie is oblivious, his boisterousness making up for more than all of us put together.

Connie has all our tickets – courtesy of Reiner and his gracious ability to doll out free passes to his friends – so once we’re stamped, we make our way up into the stands, and hell, I’m impressed. These are some good-ass seats. We’re about four or five rows above pitch-level, bang in the centre of the field, perfect viewing height for … well, everything. Bert and Annie are already there, at the far end of our row, talking quietly to one another, until Bert spots us approaching, and offers a timid wave.

Connie sidles in next to Annie, and engages Bert in immediate mindless chatter across her personal space, so I end up stuck, sandwiched between him and Eren, which is not ideal, but … here we are. It’s the least of my personal problems at the moment. The red plastic seat is hot and sticky already, and I watch Eren cringe with the way his legs adhere to the plastic – one of the many reasons why I will bare jeans over shorts, whatever the weather. Inside the stadium, the air is thick, heavy and muggy, and there’s no breeze – if I’m already feeling like I’m living in Satan’s ass crack with fifty-thousand other fans, God only knows how the players survive being cooked alive in all their gear.

When the teams finally come out onto the pitch, after what feels like a year of waiting – and after Connie and Eren have both shared two boxes of shitty nachos each, with me having to hold them between them on my lap – the whole stadium lifts into a tremendous roar of applause. The stands shake as people stamp their feet on the grates, and I’m surprised Connie doesn’t take off into the stratosphere, judging by how high he’s bouncing up and down, ecstatically pointing and naming every Titans’ player who appears on the grass.

“Ah, do you see number eleven!” he crows, tugging on my sleeve, “That’s Franz Kefka! He just got drafted in from Stohess, oh my God! And look! There’s Wagner, the quarterback, and oh snap, look! Look! Number three is Zeramuski, he’s new too! And— hey, it’s Reiner! Reiner!”

Connie starts waving manically, and Bert joins in, both of them calling out Reiner’s name. Eren offers a whoop or two from my other side. Reiner is strapped up in his red and white pads – looking even more enormous than usual, and is spinning his helmet in his hands, chatting to the number eleven that Connie pointed out. Number eleven points up into the crowd at us, and says something to Reiner to make him turn around, and latch onto our position in the stands. He face lights up into a massive, toothy grin, and he blows us a kiss (obviously meant for Bert, of course, but I don’t think Connie exactly _cares_ , because I genuinely think we’re running the risk of him fucking _imploding_ in his excitement here).

He grabs my wrist in his enthusiasm, and starts waving my arms around wildly like a puppet (an abused and tormented puppet, I should add); I struggle against him for a moment, until realising why he’s suddenly gone _batshit insane_ – the audience camera has panned onto our row, and I look like a right sour-puss on the big screen above our heads. I wrangle out of Connie’s grip, and cup my hands around my mouth, hollering at the top of my voice something along the lines of “go Titans!”, before pounding the air with a clenched fist. When I glance back up at the big, panoramic, the camera’s moved on to other, more enthusiastic spectators.

I think a little bit of Connie’s insanity has rubbed off on me though – I feel the patriotic buzz rippling through my system, replacing the simmering emptiness rooted in my stomach and chest, and I think, _yeah, this is gonna be a good game_.

And it _is_ a good game.

It’s fast moving to begin with – the Giants keep pace with the Titans for the whole of the first half, and I can see Connie practically gnawing at his knuckles the whole way through. Reiner’s solid in defence though, and only gets stronger, making some insane tackles, and managing to hoof the ball up the field in the last minute of the first half, where a conveniently positioned halfback manages to score a touchdown which takes the Titans ahead. The dropkick conversion only lengthens the lead.

Connie whoops and cheers as the Titans regroup and high-five each other as the claxon signals half-time. The players leave the pitch, and are replaced by a cacophony of cheerleaders; our entire row takes the opportunity to go for a bathroom break, and I’m left alone to guard everyone’s stuff. My eyes scan the eye-wateringly short skirts of the cheerleaders, with their high kicks and thighs that could probably kill a man, before moving on to notice the straggling players who loiter pitch-side, chatting to one of the refs. There’s one guy who’s ditched his pads – he’s tall, and tanned, and hey, you know what, he kinda looks a bit like Marco. If I just added freckles … yeah, I could see it. This guy’s more stacked than Marco though. Like, he’s a pinhead on a mass of muscle. Marco looks better than him.

Connie barrels into my side to rudely catapult me out of my thoughts, thrusting a greasy hot dog into my hands, which he was ever so kind to buy for me. At least he remembered to lay off the mustard this time.

“Whatcha looking at?” he beams, scanning the field below to try and follow my line of sight. I could just be checking out cheerleaders for all he knows.

“Nothing. You want some hot dog? I’m not gonna eat it all.”

The second half of the match follows in the way the first half ended; the Titans storm into an early lead, with a handful of touchdowns, and Connie is inconsolable, which has whipped Eren up into a frenzy as well. (I narrowly avoid having his slushie spilled all over me when he leaps abruptly to his feet.) With thirty seconds to go, the quarterback makes a run for it down the flank of the field, and the crowd goes absolutely wild – and I think I’ve honestly lost my sense of hearing – but I’m not sure if I’m more shocked by the way my heart pounds erratically in my chest, thumping on the inside of my rib cage, or the fact that even Annie’s out her seat cheering in encouragement.

As the quarterback powers into the grass on the other side of the line, the claxon bellows, and yep, there we go, I _definitely_ can’t hear anything anymore. The final score has the Titans nineteen points above the Giants. Everyone goes mental.

The red-and-white players _pile_ onto their quarterback, the coaches and managers at the side-lines embracing in massive bear hugs; Eren is shrieking in my ear, Bert is practically tearing his hair out, and I think Connie might actually be _crying_. His wails are lost in the raucous wave of thundering applause. The field players disperse from their tangle of limbs, drumming up the crowd with waving arms, air-punching fists, and impressive backflips; I pin-point Reiner within the throng, slapping his teammates heartily on the backs, with what I can only imagine as a bellowing laugh. His eyes reach us in the stands, and he offers a wave, whispering something to a team-mate, before making his way towards our side of the seating.

You can see how the linesmen are telling him to stop, but Reiner doesn’t listen, clambering over the advertising boards that line the pitch side, much to the deafening bellow of all the fans in the front-and-centre seats – they all out-stretch their arms to slap the star line-backer on the shoulder as he barrages along towards the stairs that lead up into the crowd. He jogs up the stairs three at a time, leaving me wondering: did this guy _really_ just play a sixty-minute game? He makes it seem effortless, beaming ecstatically through the beads of sweat that stick his cropped hair to his forehead, as he climbs up to our row.

Bert’s not even given a second to breathe as Reiner scoops him up in celebration and twirls him around then and there in the stands – clumsily, awkwardly, Bert’s bright-fucking-red – it feels like a private moment, but we’re all still cheering, and Connie’s leaning across to pound Reiner on the shoulder with his fist, Eren’s cheering, I’m _laughing_ —

 _I fucking love football_.

Reiner gathers his boyfriend in his arms – Bert held a head higher than him – and they press their noses together, before Reiner cheekily grabs a kiss, disgustingly sloppily, but stupidly adorable (even I have to admit). He breaks off into a cheesy, wolfish grin, pecks Bert once more on the cheek as the sweaty giant tries to embarrassingly hide his face between his fingers, and then leans into the row to clasp hands with Connie, and gleefully high five Eren, Annie and I.

As my palm slaps his, I hear damning words from the row behind us.

“ _Fucking faggots_.”

It’s a punch to the gut.

I high-five Reiner, but I feel nothing. The air around me sobers in a second. My hand drops limply, but he doesn’t notice, slapping Connie once more on the shoulder, and giving Bert another smooch on the cheek, before tearing back down the stairs, and bounding onto the field to be greeted by the rest of the team.

The crowd roars, but I’m silent; I twist to glance over my shoulder to find the speaker, taking in the man one row back and three seats across, who now whispers to his friends amidst the shouting all around us.

 _Who the fuck does he think he_ —

“Jean.” That’s Connie. Connie, of all people. Connie-fucking-Springer who shouldn’t be paying attention to me, but he suddenly is, and he suddenly has one hand clamped on my shoulder and—

I realise my face must give me away. The blood in my veins has turned from stone to fire. The words burn. I shake with the frustration coiled in the pit of my stomach.

“Just leave it,” he says.

I clench my fists, and stare forward, intensely. But I can’t— I can’t just—

“I need to say something,” I growl, through gritted teeth. Everything aches with the way I hold in my pained breath; air seeps like a hiss through the tight line of my mouth. I feel Annie’s eyes on me now, somewhere beyond my peripheral. Her gaze is cold, blue, and icy. “Did you hear what—”

“Dude, they’re not worth it,” Connie presses again, giving a firmer tug on my sleeve, trying to make me see straight again. Fuck that.

I look back over my shoulder again, and I can see it in the faces of the men behind us – squinted eyes on Bert, judging him, debasing him, _hating_ him. For kissing his fucking boyfriend in public.

Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t so angry. But anger is my middle name, my second skin right now. I feel the anger about my dad stew deep inside my gut, and it mixes with the anger caused by that fucking _word_. I see Reiner there on the field, and Bert two seats along, and Eren beside me. And Ymir, Historia, Marco.

I see Marco, and I know I owe him that much—

“Jean, _don’t_.”

I’m going to make that man eat his fucking words.

I turn around in my seat, and lean into the row behind. There’s nothing but anger fuelling my bravado – and I know this isn’t normal Jean, this isn’t the timid, cowardly, scared-of-fucking-water Jean. But not even that can push back the red that leaches into my vision. Last night’s anger bubbles to the surface.

“Hey. You.” The man doesn’t even hear me at first, until one of his friends jostles his arm. Even then, he looks behind him, thinking I’m not talking to him, the scumbag. “Yeah, you.”

I’m so scrawny, this must look pathetic. He eyes are hard and as judging as steel, and that’s just him. I don’t want to peak back at Connie’s face, because I know the liquid courage in my blood will fly south for the winter in a split second. I push on.

“You got a problem?” the man sneers in disgust. I’m sizing him up – he’s butch and gruff, but not tall, not broad like Reiner. I could take him. I totally could. I could hit him square in the jaw before he even had time to react.

“Yeah. Yeah I do. You wanna take back what you just said about my friends?” It takes him a second to piece it together – I see the cogs whirring in his tiny, little mutated mind. He barks a laugh that’s like a cold stab of metal in my chest. I grind my teeth. I curl my thumb inside the fingers of my fist, ready.

“What? You a _fag_ too? Those your little _fag_ friends? I didn’t come to a fuckin’ football game to see fucking _queers_ go at it.” He stares me down, and my world burns. I bite the inside of my cheek, and am about to fucking launch myself at the piece of sentient trash, when I feel Connie’s hands securely squared on my shoulders, his fingers digging into my skin. He’s stronger than I give him credit for.

“Jean! Leave it!”

I allow myself to be pulled back; because I see Bert’s worried face, and the people around us staring, and I know the urge to rip that guy’s head off will not subside, because I see _my dad’s face_ on his, so maybe I should just—

“Fucking _pussy_.”

I snap. Not quick enough.

 _Annie is the quickest_.

She vaults over the back of her seat, and socks the guy in the jaw, sending him reeling back into the hard, red plastic, without a word of warning and a splintering crash. That is the exact moment in my life where I begin worshipping the ground that she walks on. She is fearless. I want to be fearless.

The douchebag clutches his face and the red welt blooming on his chin, and he shouts, they’re all shouting, pointing fingers, snarling like a pack of hungry wolves; one of the dick’s friends has his fists in the fabric of Annie’s shirt, and is hauling her up, and—

Eren and Connie both launch themselves into the fray. There’s no stopping them. The loud crack of knuckle meeting skin and bone cracks the air, as Eren does what Eren does best – wild, inconsolable fury. The dude drops Annie – huge mistake, because she takes a swipe at him too, and knocks him on his ass, and I’m just … stood staring, agape, frozen, and in awe. In _jealousy_.

One guy grabs Eren by the scruff of his neck, ready to smash his nose into a million pieces, and I am not frozen any more. Like hell I’m letting him do that. I’m the only one who gets to break Eren’s nose. Fucker.

I scramble over the seats, and ram my head into the guy’s chest – we both go tumbling over, him knocking his head on the grate, and me scraping the side of my arm against obtuse metal bolts. I pin the guy to the floor, and ram my palm into the base of his nose, Eren wheeling ‘round in surprise to see what – _who_ – came out of nowhere.

People are screaming – people are _cheering_ – all around, and I don’t know if it’s at us, or at the game, or what. My hands are covered in thick, sticky blood, and I’m being dragged roughly away, and it’s a blur of fists, and feet, and blood, and teeth.

Eren takes a knee to the stomach that was coming my way, and keels, but he doesn’t bow. He can take more than that. Connie grunts loudly, with the sharp smack of skin on skin somewhere over my shoulder, but he rockets past me to head-butt a guy taking a swing somewhere on my flank – I have no time to spare thoughts for his wellbeing. I think Annie tackles a guy to the floor with some crazy-ass karate shit.

Blunt force collides with my lip, metallic tang spilling into my mouth, a ferrous bile that I spit as a wad into the eye of the dick who thought it wise to fuck with Jean Kirschtein when he’s already had a shitty few days. I take an elbow to the face, and everything spins – fuck, I see stars – and then I see scuffling feet, before I’m tripped, and flung to the floor, finding my face pressed flush against the grate, and weight on top of me. I think I hear Bert shouting my name, and Annie’s name, or just a garbled concoction of both, as my ears ring. The weight thuds harder, and my nose slams into the metal floor – the pain that sparks from the impact shoots like splitting lightning up into my temples.

I raise my head, and the world whirls – which way is up, which way is down, I have to fucking clue. Black, polished shoes are ploughing a path through onlookers – shoes connected to dark blue pant legs, and, as I strain my neck higher off the floor, Tasers strapped at hip height, and gold-plaqued police badges clipped to belts.

Security grips my shoulders, and I’m lugged to my feet, almost keeling forward again as everything blurs into swirls of red and black and white, and more _red_.

The shouting is loud, and right in my ear, but it’s muffled by liquid – I drag my hand up into my hairline, and shit, it comes away covered in ribbons of blood – and I‘m not even _with it_ enough to tell if it’s my _own_ blood or not. Eren struggles somewhere nearby, ‘cus I can hear his kicking and screaming, strings of profanities littering the ground as they pour like fervour out his mouth, and hell, I _don’t_ envy the security guard who’s got his hands full with him.

I know his anger, because it’s also _my_ anger. It’s not the anger I felt when he pushed me in the pool. That was anger drawn from fear, from the way the water clogged my lungs, and shame and pity made me want to run, and how _I trusted you_ had dissolved into nothing in an instant. But this. This is different, because the anger is hot. It’s under my skin, and under Eren’s skin, and I can see the faces of my friends when I don’t react to slander like this. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim, says Elie Wiesel. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. One thing I remember from God-damn Philosophy. I think of my mom and my dad in this instant, too. Dad’s face lays coals to my internal bonfire. It invigorates me how I feel like I could tear apart anything laid into my hands.

We’re manhandled out of the stands – I lose sight of Eren, and lord knows where the others are, if they scarpered or broke it up when they saw security barging through the crowds. The guard with his hands clamped like iron vices over my shoulder blades pushes me forward, and I struggle to comply, with floundering steps, almost tripping over air more than once as he shepherds me down the gulley. My vision still constitutes violent smears of colour.

The concrete tunnel vibrates with the cheers of the drowned out crowd, and how hollow my footsteps sound compared to the click-click of the heels of the security guard. I can’t tell if anyone else is following – my heart hammers behind my temples like a marching drum that makes my eyes water with every beat.

Abruptly, we turn a sharp corner, and I get thrown into a narrow office, almost smacking my chin off the wall, had I not caught myself on the cheap plastic of a fold-away chair.

“Sit,” the guard instructs fiercely, and I’m in no place to disobey, because I sure as hell can’t stand without wobbling all over the place, or _bleeding_ all over the place, and _that dude has a fucking Taser, shit_. I careen onto the stiff plastic with a riled-up huff, but I literally have a non-existent grip on reality, save for the point at which I clutch onto the seat. “And shut up. Or you’re on a one way trip to the station, alright kid?”

I sink into the back of the chair, it digging sharply into my spine as the red that tinges my vision begins to slip away, sobriety dawning on me like a particularly cruel hangover. The light in the small guard room stings, bright, white and artificial, and as I bring a hand up to shield my face, I notice how my knuckles are violently lacerated, and my palms splattered with tacky, brown blood. I bring my fingers up to my nose, and they come away freshly red. Fuck.

Seconds later, and Eren’s hauled in, pouting and fuming, but no longer bucking and kicking like a trapped animal. The guard who holds him throws him gruffly onto the chair beside me, with a distasteful sneer.

“That all of them?” my guard murmurs – maybe he doesn’t murmur, but my hearing is shot to pieces. Eren lolls his head back beside me, snorting blood out his nose in a messy splatter across his shirt. He’s a train wreck.

“Berner took the other lot down to his box,” the other replies sternly, cricking his shoulders. “Keep ‘em together and they’ll probably have each others’ throats out. Wanna breathalyse them?” He pulls the door closed behind him, shutting Eren and I securely in what I guess is, now that I look around the small concrete room, the guard station. From the other side of the square glass window, I hear a frustrated: “fucking drunk hooligans”.

Tch. They should see the other guys.

I lean forward, clutching my head between my knees as I remember reading something about tilting forward if you’ve got a nose bleed, otherwise you’ll choke, or some shit. Marco would probably tell me off for doing it wrong. Eren’s definitely doing it wrong. He spits wads of blood and saliva onto the floor with every other breath, but when he notices I’m staring, he eases into a wicked, satisfied grin.

I can’t help but return it, the bastard. I’m not entirely sure what just happened. It was a bit of a whirlwind. But I sure as hell have a sick pleasure resting comfortably in the bruised pit of my gut.

 

* * *

 

Minutes sift by into what could probably be hours – I don’t know, because I’m still fighting back a blur, and coming to terms with the wince-worth stings of pain that shoot through my split lip every time I pass my tongue over it. Eren’s dozed off, but at least we’ve both stopped bleeding all over the fucking floor – that’s a good thing, right? His nose might be broken, but hey, if he’s lucky, it’ll undo the damage I did to it last year. I wonder if I look at horrific as he does, now that his bruises are purpling, and his ugly face is coming up in splotches.

One of the guards slips back into the box-room, looking pretty displeased, but equally fed-up. I wonder if he gets this stuff a lot. I raise my head to look at him, but Eren still snores.

“You kids can go,” he says, though I can imagine he wishes he could book us for … whatever. Beating up a homophobe. I wouldn’t complain. “You got lucky this time. Pull anything like this again and you won’t be allowed back here, you got that?”

He holds the door open sternly, so I shove Eren to get him to wake up – he bolts up right with a garble that just becomes a mouthful of stale blood, which he hacks all over his legs. The guard is the furthest thing from impressed.

“Fuck, Horseface, I—” he snaps, but I just drag him to my feet with the little strength that hasn’t been brutally sapped from my arms.

“C’mon,” I hiss. “Let’s get outta here. Find the others.”

I feel like I should probably apologise to the guard for the gruesome, _Saw_ movie-esque mess we’ve made of his office, but I don’t.

 

* * *

 

Eren and I wonder out of the stands like dopey corpses; the Trost sun is a lot harsher than we both remember, and I flinch, Eren grumbling something incoherent under his breath. The parking lot has mostly emptied – I guess they let all the rest of the spectators leave before letting us go. Probably for the best. I would’ve had another go at that douchebag if I’d run into him again.

We hear Connie before we see him – loud and obnoxious as ever, desperately pleading with what looks like another security guard, alongside a pretty shaken Bert. Annie perches on a bollard off to the side, inspecting her nails in boredom, with _not a scratch on her_. She looks up when she she’s us staggering, but her nothing notable really flickers over her features.

I overhear Connie frantically begging the officer to be allowed to keep his season ticket, and Bert trying to reason that it wasn’t us who’d started the scrape, but Eren flumping to the ground behind me stops me in my tracks before I get anywhere near the others.

“Go on without me,” he grumbles, laying back on the concrete, and throwing a wrist over his eyes dramatically. “I don’t wanna walk any further.”

I sigh, which fucking _hurts_ as the air whistles through my nose. That’s not a good sign.

“You’re a fucking drama queen, Jaeger,” I retort sharply, but joining him in the middle of the sidewalk anyway. He sprawls out, and I almost think he passes out – asleep or unconscious, who even knows – until he mutters something surprising.

“That brought back memories, huh?”

I puff out my cheeks, and sink my chin into the arms that I wrap around my knees. My ribs ache, my shoulders ache, my butt aches, fuck, what _doesn’t_ ache?  I think my right foot is just about okay. Great.

I don’t really want to talk about this now. I’d rather focus on how my bruises are starting to hurt. How my butt is slowly losing all feeling. How I’m pretty sure I can’t actually breathe out through my nose anymore.  

“Shut up,” I murmur briskly, chewing the inside of my cheek, which still tastes of blood. Eren doesn’t listen. He wants to bring it up.

“I’m glad I had your back, back there,” he continues. One too many knocks to the head, maybe? He’s talking nonsense. Maybe I should tell someone to call an ambulance. “Like, I mean… well, I owe you for being a shit.”

“I said _shut up_. You already apologised. It’s dealt with. Get over it and start thinking about how you’re going to explain _this_ to Mikasa. Jeez.” If anything, she’s gonna whip his ass even _more_ when she sees he’s been in a fight. _Again_.

Eren’s arm flops back to the ground, and he reluctantly drags himself up into a sitting position; he steels me with his blue-green glare, despite the fact one of his eyes is basically crusted together with cakey, brown goo.

“I didn’t though,” he frowns. “Just let me talk, okay? I _didn’t_ apologise properly. That was all Miks talking before, all her idea. You know she was on my case since day one, right? She genuinely threatened me to sort our shit out, but I was so… I dunno, _so fucking proud_ , I guess. I was a dick—”

“What’s new?” I scathe, but I’m thinking about that day in the cafeteria now… how Mikasa had been the one looking for me, the one pushing Eren to come clean. Eren pulls a face at me, but carries on regardless.

“Oh, fuck off. I’m trying to be decent here. Shame that ‘decent’ isn’t in your vocabulary, huh? Anyway—” He takes a moment to gather himself, struggling against what I’d imagine is a splitting headache. “—I shoulda listened to her earlier. I let that shit go on for way too fucking long, man. So did you. We sucked so much.”

“Still do,” I say. Him probably more than me, but … yeah, I suck. I can admit that. Only to him though.  Only to Eren.

“I didn’t realise about the water thing,” he says, and yep, _this is it_ , he’s broaching the subject. I was wondering if this would happen, but where else is better? The others aren’t nearby, and we’re both half way to unconscious and not thinking straight, and— Eren interrupts my uneven thoughts. “And I fucking shoulda. I mean, I can’t believe we didn’t see it. I’ve known you for, what, five years now? That’s a joke. I didn’t realise for _that long_. No wonder you freaked out … bet you thought you could rely on us not to pull something like that around you. What shitty friends we all turned out to be.”

I swallow thickly, which is difficult, because nothing in my body feels like it’s working right. Eren is completely right. They were shitty friends – _he_ was a shitty friend. And hell, so was I.

“I probably woulda flipped my shit if I was in your place, you know. Imagine that. I throw better punches than you, after all. You’d be totally fucked. I would’ve decked you one.” He laughs bitterly to himself. “We handled it so fucking _badly_.”

“You can’t… expect me not be an ass about it,” I start, slowly, struggling to find my steady voice. “It… really fucked me over.” Wow, look at me, being honest with Eren Jaeger. Someone should take a photograph to preserve the memory. “You know it… can’t be the same. Or at least, it won’t be. For a while.”

I refrain from telling him that I can still barely go within six feet of the pool without sweating buckets, and that it takes every ounce of self-control, and one-hundred of Marco’s glorious smiles to get me standing ankle-deep in water, even twelve months later. That’s what he did to me. But… I’m realising he doesn’t need to know that. But I appreciate the apology – this apology, _the real apology_ – more than I can articulate, whether I’ve been beaten around the head, or not.

Eren shrugs cheekily.

“It’s okay. I can work on it,” he grins. “I’ve been told I’m a determined shit at the best of times.”

I roll my eyes, but feel a great weight lifted from my shoulders as that chasm between us stitches itself back together, inch by inch.

“So this is a truce, huh? You gonna let me push you in my pool next time you come over?” I suggest, finding my tone almost wary.

“Least I can fucking swim,” Eren retorts haughtily, but backtracks when he sees my face contort. “Sorry, not funny. Sure, push me in any time. I deserve it.”

Our “touching reunion” is interrupted as Reiner comes jogging out from the players entrance, his kit bag slung over one shoulder; he doesn’t make it far, though, because he stops dead in his tracks when he sees the bloody pulp that is Eren and I, sprawled out across the sidewalk, with Annie watching us from afar.

“Hey gu— Do I … _want_ to know what went on here?” he asks; Eren and I both bleat wearily, heads clunking down on the concrete in unison. I stare up at the sky, and will it with all my might to stop spinning. “You two look like crap. Worse than crap. You guys look like—”

“Shut up, Reiner,” Eren coughs.

“We were doing the human race a service,” I supply.

Reiner flounces over to Bert, hooking an arm around his waist as he leaps into the debate with the guard, and apparently that’s the leverage they need to get the security off their case, Connie’s season ticket and all. The guard looks frustrated, but more so: tired and fed-up, and without question returns inside the stadium. Connie, relieved beyond measure as he kisses his season ticket with more intent that I’ve ever seen him lay on Sasha, sidles over to join us as Bert and Reiner _do their thing_ , and he makes a spectacular addition to our posse, sporting a blooming black eye.

“Remind me to never _not_ trust my gut again,” he grumbles, jabbing me in the ribs with his foot. I whine, and curl over on myself. “Or a least have a freaking ice-pack on standby next time. If I end up having to go to ER, you’re paying my hospital bills, Jean. You got that?”

“Fuck off, Connie,” is all I manage weakly.

Someone rings Mikasa – and it’s not Eren or me, because we don’t move for the best part of half an hour, until she pulls up in her battered, red Sedan, her expression flitting somewhere between concern and silent, fuming anger. I’m kinda glad I’m not Eren. Hell, I’m _very_ glad I’m not Eren.

He slips into the front seat in considerable pain, resenting every which way his muscles move, groaning lewdly as he attempts to fold his legs into the passenger foot-well. Mikasa gives him the once over with a frosty, cold glare, but doesn’t reprimand him (at least within my earshot).

The look she gives Connie and I is positively _resentful_ though. She’s not pleased with us.

She drives off before my mind really has the chance to catch up with: _hey, it totally wasn’t our fault! The douchebag was asking for my fist in his face!_

Bert – taking saint pointers from a certain freckled Jesus – offers to drive us to the hospital, ‘cus apparently we look that shite, but Connie blows him off with a casual wave of his hand. (Which is probably the right thing to do, seeing as we all but fucked up what was supposed to be a fun day out for Bert. But he’s not the sort of guy to hold a grudge, I don’t think.)

If I was thinking anyway straight at all, I’d probably second guess the sensibleness of getting into a truck with a dude who’s just been clobbered in the face, but I’m not, and Connie’s not, and his ability to steer is not _that_ impeded. I’m sure we’ll live. Touch wood.

Once we’re on the road though, I’m surprised we don’t get pulled over by real cops.

 

* * *

 

We make it about half the way back to my house – almost tail-ending three cars en route – when Connie remarks that the pick-up’s running on empty. I lean across the gear shift, to check the dial on my dash board myself – because I sure as hell don’t believe anything he says right now, seeing as he’s having real trouble understanding that red means stop and green means go – but yep, sure enough, we’re almost out of fuel.

Connie swings into the first gas station we come across – shitty, run-down, probably something straight out of an apocalypse movie, and filled with suitably enough people to scare with our deranged appearances.

I catch _my_ appearance in the wing mirror of the truck as Connie hauls ass to the gas pump, groaning as none of his joints seem to work in the way he wants. My face is, uh… it’s pretty bad. I look worse than Jared Leto in _Fight Club_. I poke experimentally at the dark split than divides my bottom lip, swollen and sore, and barely scabbed over. Stings like a bitch.

Connie leans into the cab to grab his wallet.

“Want anything from the store?” he asks. The bruise around his eye is something to behold – smears of purple and blue, but he’s got some green and yellow going on in there, it’s impressive. Worth the lost brain cells, for a shiner like that. I dig into my back pocket, and hand him a ten.

“Ice cream. Or a Coke. Anything from the chilled section. Hell, even a bag of peas would be great.”

“Gotcha. Back in a tick. Don’t scare any small children. We’ve made it this far without being arrested.”

 _A God-damn miracle_ , I add.

I turn back to the mirror as Connie saunters towards the store, remaining casual as a mother steers her small child away from his bruised and battered face. He’s lucky though, because he hasn’t got blood crusted all over his nostrils and top lip, or a pretty horrendous looking, black and oozing gash across the bridge of his nose. I do. I think my nose might actually be broken. There’s also a weeping scrape or two along my hairline as well, but none of them look too deep, and I’m pretty sure I’m not rocking a concussion or anything. (I’m familiar with how _that_ feels, after all.)

I try to part my hair to inspect for further damage, leaning into the wing mirror to angle my head for the best view. It’s then that I catch the dirty, white paintjob of a van that’s parked on the other side of the gas pump, and have to do a double-take when I realise that the blue, watery logo plastered onto its flank is something that I know well. Really well.

Coincidence is sure happy enough to strike in the same place more than once. Just one of the mechanisms of the world, I guess, stopping and starting in fits and coughs, and colliding randomly across the universe.

Coincidence has a _Trost Pool Service and Repair_ van sitting on the other side of the pump from me.

I slip out of the pick-up, finding my legs stiff, and my stomach queasy from one too many blows taken to the gut, and I ‘round the gas pump, curiosity taking the better of me. It might not even be _him_. There are loads of people who work at that company. It could be the evil, stick-up-his-ass guy, or it could be the _Abercrombie_ model in the speedos. It could be neither. I see small feet crossed on the dash board, the window cranked down a little bit to let the slither of a breeze into the front seat.

It’s not Marco. But it _almost_ is.

The freckled, loud-mouthed, me-hating, mini-Marco is slouched in the passenger seat, her ankles crossed over the air bag, focussed intently on the DS console in her hands. She taps away furiously at her game, tongue peeking out of the corner of her lips in concentration.

Screw scaring little kids, I’m going to get arrested for peeping on one at this rate. I step into full view of the passenger window, and wrap my knuckles against the glass; Mina jumps a mile in her seat, almost throwing her DS against the windshield in shock. I’m surprised she doesn’t squeak or anything (but no, she’s too cool for that), even if I look like I’ve just been dragged backwards through a hedge out of some Eli Roth film. Her alarm quickly dissolves into a snotty sort of recognition, however.

I tap on the window again, and gesture for her to wind it down. She complies, with an acrid scowl.

“I’m not supposed to talk to _strangers_ ,” she snipes coolly, as her eyes roam over the minefield that was once my not-too-bad looking face. I can feel I’m being severely judged.

“Can it, kid,” I wheeze, leaning one hand on the roof of the Vauxhall Combo as my ribs twinge. _You don’t get to talk to me like that when you were the one who put me on Skype with that demon Furby you keep under your desk the other day_ , I think. Glancing into the front seats, I see Marco’s stuff is littered across the space, his shitty old phone left in the well below the hand break, and plastic grocery bags crammed carelessly in the storage room behind both seats. “Where’s Marco?”

Mina quirks an eyebrow, and her whole expression screams _where do you think, idiot_ , which is probably fair enough, as I follow the line of her outstretched finger, to look towards the store front.

Through the store window, I see Marco, in home clothes, sunglasses popped on top of his head, browsing the drinks cabinet, be tapped on the shoulder by a grinning Connie. Marco clearly is shocked by the whole black-eye thing, judging by the way he startles and gestures wildly, with Connie just rubbing the back of his head guiltily. I can imagine Marco’s the sort of person to probably be freaking out, even if Connie just considers the whole thing a war-wound of sorts. I hope Con doesn’t scare him too much. He’s a bit of a gentle soul. I turn back to Mina when she makes a noise to reattract my attention.

“So …” she starts, warily, “… Why do you look like that?”

“Like what?” I chide, pursing my lips sarcastically. “Devilishly handsome, you mean? With great hair?” She’s really not impressed, reluctantly transfixed by the blood smeared across half my face.

“No. Like, _scary_.”

I scratch the base of my nose, where the dried crap itches, and it falls away in leaf-life flakes. Gross. I sniff heavily, but the pain that shoots between my eyebrows, over the bridge of my nose, is enough to make my eyes begin to water again.

“Some guy said something shi— uh, I mean, there was this guy who was, uh … a total _loser_. Had to teach him a lesson.”

Her dark eyebrows knit together, and I reckon she’s considering whether that was a sensible idea on my part or not. (I guess she’s got past the beating each other up in the playground thing … or maybe that’s just a boy thing, I dunno. I’m not an expert on how little girls view fist fights.)

“Why did you have to teach him a lesson?” she asks cautiously. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to approach this, with a nine-year-old and all. So I turn to the wise words of Nani from _Lilo & Stitch_. (Yes, okay, so my summer hasn’t been particularly productive so far, but you can forgive me, right? It’s actually a pretty heart-touching movie. Not that I’m a, _you know_ , … sap.)

“He was total vampire. Wanted me to join his legion of the undead. Couldn’t have that, so I had to, uh … show him where to stick it, ya’ know?”

Mina hesitates, dark eyes narrowing. I wonder if she knows that line from the film.

“That was … _dumb_ ,” she comes out with, if a little slowly, as she’s considering my sarcasm – and yeah, true, maybe it was a bit stupid, but— “But I guess if he was… _a vampire_ … it’s okay?”

I quickly realise that whilst Mina might _look_ like her older brother, they’re not really alike in any other way. Marco would definitely scold me for getting in a fight with some random fuck-ass. Mina, on the other hand, seems mildly accepting, extravagant lies aside. She’s on my wavelength.

“Yeah, he was a _dick_ ,” I concur, before realising my language, “I-I mean, uh, he was really _crap_ , uh— _shit_. Fuck. Shit.” I would make _such_ a great parent. Fuck. I slap my hand against my forehead, and instantly regret doing that. Ouch.

Mina’s not impressed, and folds her gangly, freckled arms across her chest, tapping her fingers against her weedy bicep.

“I’m gonna tell Marco you _swore_.” Maybe not _entirely_ on my wavelength.

 “Hey, don’t, I didn’t mean—”

“— but maybe it’s just ‘cus you’re ugly and you can’t help having bad language.”

“Wow. You did not just— You’re _so kind_ , kid.”

She scrunches her nose and sticks her tongue out at me – and I would do the same, if moving my tongue over my split lip didn’t result in a course of fiery death pain shooting through my mouth.

I notice that the woman getting into the Civic parked in front of Marco’s van spares us a suspicious look; creepy bloody man, talking to unaccompanied little girl through a van window is not my most ideal of situations. I don’t make a habit of it, believe me.

 _Please don’t phone the police. My day has been shitty enough as it is_.

I glance back at the store – Marco and Connie are in the queue to pay, Connie with an armful of sugary junk, chatting amicably to Freckles. Connie nods out the window, gesturing my way with a turn of his head, and Marco twists to look back; they’re obviously talking about me, or at least, what happened. I think my eyes meet Marco’s for an instant – not really sure at this distance – but I strain a smile for him none the less. It’s a pretty shitty looking smile, I’m sure. I just want to be reassuring, even if my general bedraggledness screams otherwise.

“So, uh, what’ve you guys been up to today?” I ask; Mina, making a long arm for where she’s left her DS on the console, huffs a little, and lets her hand drop. Doesn’t want to talk to her brother’s loser friend, I guess. “Uh… _sorry_.” Feel free to go back to your game, kid.

“We went to the store,” she says casually, with a shrug of her shoulders. “My dad’s coming home on Sunday, so we had to go buy groceries.” She reaches again for her video game, and that’s that apparently, as the 8-bit jingle of some _Super Mario_ spin off fills up the cab.

I realise that’s the second time in as many days that I’ve heard that line. Their dad’s coming home. From where? Where’s he been? Marco doesn’t mention his dad much – does he ever? Has he ever actually brought up his dad in conversation before?

But _this_ conversation is over, and any curiosities I have lose out to Mario and Luigi.

My stomach grumbles, and I reckon I should’ve partook in the soggy nacho party at the superdome, before everything went to shit. I delve into my back pocket for the fag end of my chewing gum packet, popping one stick into my mouth. It fucking hurts to chew.

“Wa’ some gum?” I ask with my mouth full, holding out the packet through the open window. The kid breaks contact from her game to stare up at me in the same manner as if I’ve just offered her a cigarette.

“Marco says you shouldn’t have chewing gum before you eat because your stomach will start to eat itself,” she deadpans.

“Well Marco’s not here, is he?” I should _never_ be allowed to have children.

Mina glances between me, the bloody hand holding out the wallet of chewing gum, and Marco, waiting patiently as Connie pays for his loot inside the store, before she stretches out her hand, and swipes one peppermint stick. She tries to play it cool, but I’m not fooled; she’s Marco’s sister, and I know when he tries to bite back a devious smirk. Her face twists in exactly the same way.

She unwraps the gum, scrunching up the paper and stuffing it down the side of her seat into secrecy, before popping it in her mouth and chewing hurriedly. I can’t help but smirk.

I look up from the van again, rolling my gum around in my mouth with my tongue, to see Marco and Connie leaving the store. Connie’s manic enthusiasm radiates this far as he waves his free arm around extravagantly, miming punches and blocks, no doubt still entertaining Marco with our gallant tale; Marco, I think, is only half listening. He’s got his head turned towards Connie as they walk, his expression contorted into concern, but his eyes flitter, and he’s definitely looking at me. The closer they get, the more and more focused he becomes on my face – not that Connie actually notices, and keeps on waffling.

I can’t look at Marco’s face, because it makes the nape of my neck burn, and this is the first time I feel any semblance of regret over what I did. My fingers tense on the roof of the van. I look away, back at Mina, who’s not got the time of day for me anymore, slumped back in her seat – running my teeth apprehensively over my lip reopens the cut, and I taste blood. Fuck. I panic. All because of Marco.

I wipe my fingers over my mouth, smearing red over my chin, as Marco and Connie reach us. Marco’s distressed. He’s also angry, I think. I dunno. I’ve never seen him angry before.

“—and so that’s when Jean and I almost hit this SUV at the junction back on Rose, ‘cus apparently this—” Connie points despairingly at his black eye, amidst retelling the final moment of our story thus far. “—has kinda messed with my depth perception, I think? Anyway, then we realised we needed gas before we got arrested, and here we are. Funny story, huh?”

The words go straight in one of Marco’s ears and out the other; I turn sheepishly towards him as he drops his purchases on the hood of the van, and marches straight up to me. I have a second to muse the fact I think he looks hurt.

“Jean,” he breathes, more to himself, I reckon, because I‘m pretty sure I’m still with it enough to remember my own name? I can’t react – I don’t know _how_ to react – when he takes my face firmly (but gently, because hey, this is Marco) between his palms. His hands are soft. I still wince. It’s a closeness that usually makes me feel uncomfortable, but not this time. The feeling ebbs. “What have you done, you idiot?”

I smell camomile detergent, which overpowers the stench of petrol in the air. Am I wrong to think it takes the edge off the dull pain thumping around inside my head?

I try to swipe him away, with a limp brush of my hands, but he holds my cheeks securely, doctor instincts kicking in as his dark eyes roam the damage. The crease between his eyebrows is extra deep today. He’s really worried. Fuck.

“’S nothing,” I murmur, quickly self-conscious, flicking my gaze away from admiring his eyelashes and his freckles up close; Connie’s shut his trap, his face unreadable, weirdly, as he watches Marco, uh … _fondle_ my face in the middle of a gas station. “Marco, I’m fine. C’mon.”

He runs a thumb across the top of my brow, and I feel it come away with dry, flaky blood.

“I think your nose is broken, Jean. And your lip—” He moves to touch my mouth then, but he stops himself. Just. I notice he swallows thickly. Something hitches in my throat – maybe it’s blood. Maybe it’s not. “Are you _stupid_?”

Yeah, apparently I am. But stupid does as stupid wants. (And if I’m stupid, then so’s Connie, and so’s Eren … wait. Bad analogy. They might _actually_ be stupid.)

“Look at your _face_ , Jean.” So this is his angry voice. Gotta admit, it’s kinda exciting. Don’t think he sees it that way though.

“Yeah, we thought he might start scaring little kids,” Connie cuts in; he’s popped the cap on a bottle of Coke, and is leant against the pump. He looks like such a tool, especially with his shiner. The smirk toying on his features is pretty fucking obnoxious. I don’t hesitate to look back at Marco.

“’S fine. It’ll heal,” I muse, as Marco brushes his thumbs across the apples of my cheeks. He’s zoned in on the break in the bridge of my nose, the black strip of concealed blood, and the yellow-brown bruising at the apexes of my eyes, and … it’s entirely professional. I think. “Y-you worry too much, man.”

Marco huffs loudly, but his touch stays tender.

“I think I worry just enough for the both of us, actually.”

He lets me push aside his hands this time, and they drop dejectedly to his sides. I can tell he wants to do _something_ , but he’s not sure what. I’m not sure what either – is it putting it past him to have a first aid kit in his van? Marco contemplates his thoughts, and I stuff my hands deep into my pockets, finding great companionship in staring at the pot-holed concrete at our feet, my shoulders hunched. The silence doesn’t last long.

“… I’m going to take you to the hospital, okay?”

“Marco!” Mina and I both whine in unison. Marco startles, apparently having forgotten the presence of his little sister chilling in the van and eavesdropping on the conversation.

“M-Mina!”

“I want to go hooooome,” she whinges, “Jean can take _himself_ to the hospital.” It’s not a bad suggestion. Though just replace _hospital_ with _my bed_ , and it’s even more reasonable. I just want to lie down for a really long time.

“Jean and Connie can barely _drive_ , Mina,” Marco ascertains, bending down a little to talk into the window of the van. Mina just pouts, chewing obnoxiously on her gum. “And Jean’s really hurt. I need – want – to make sure that he’s okay.”

“He’s _fine_ ,” Mina dismisses, frustrating Marco, as he sighs loudly out his nose. “If he goes to hospital, they might find out about the _vampires_.”

Marco is bewildered, his jaw tipping open, and steam would be coming out of his ears if this was a cartoon. I snigger, even though it just brings up metallic-tasting phlegm in the back of my throat.

“Can’t have them finding out about the vampires, Marco,” I cough-chuckle quietly. Marco despairs at both of us. Connie cackles somewhere in the background.

“I would ask you if you’re concussed, but whatever is wrong with you is clearly contagious,” he fumes, hands resting on his hips. He pouts. It’s … kinda _cute_. Or maybe that’s just delirium talking.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I say, nudging him in the arm with my grazed fist; he catches my hand, but doesn’t grasp it long, letting it fall, his face stern. To be honest, it probably is as bad as it looks, and a hospital trip probably wouldn’t be the worst idea in the history of suggestions, but … oh my god, my bed is calling to me. “Anyways, sounds like you got problems other than me to deal with.”

Marco glances between me and his sister, who crossly blows a bubble in her chewing gum, letting it pop in Marco’s face. He looks nine-hundred-percent done with life. Me too, man. Me too.

“… Where did you get chewing gum from, Mina?”

“Jean gave it to me,” she boasts, throwing me unabashedly into the deep end. I’m not sure if Marco’s horror is the mocking sort or not.

“I think someone needs to have a stern word with _Jean_ ,” he says, narrowing his eyes – playfully, I guess, or I hope – at me. “He’s making some pretty _shoddy_ decisions lately.” I lean into the taunt with a smirk, and Marco’s body language seems to open up as I do.

“Oh yeah? You gonna do something about it, Marco?”

The electric tension dissolves with the unsubtle clearing of Connie’s throat. I realise just how close I’ve drifted to Marco; I remedy that with a leap backwards. Marco’s cheeks are dusted alarmingly pink.

“Sorry to drag you away from your _husband_ , Jean, but I need to get home so I can get thoroughly chewed out by the ‘rents and the girlfriend for what _you_ did to my face,” he barks through a laugh, balancing his bag of quickly-warming drinks and junk food on his hip. “C’mon, get your ass back in the truck. Or I’ll give you a shiner to match mine.”

Fair enough. There’s a queue forming for the pump behind both the van and the pick-up, with some pretty pissed-off people behind the wheels. As much as this friendly chewing-out is fun … I peek at Marco once again; he’s still pink, flushing violently, not… looking at me anymore. Trying his hardest to look anywhere but, actually. I’m sorry my car wreck of a face is so offensive.

“Connie,” he says; I genuinely think Connie’s ears prick up. “… Please make sure he takes himself to the hospital, will you?”

“Can’t promise anything, Marco, man,” Connie grins, “He’s an ass at the best of times.”

 _And you’re an obnoxious monkey, but at least I don’t constantly tell that to your face. Jeez_.

Marco bites his lip, and realises this is the best he can get out of the pair of us. I give him another, reassuring buff on the arm. He doesn’t try to stop my hand this time.

“You’re coming ‘round tomorrow, right?” I offer, quietly. “If I don’t answer the door, you can assume I’m dead then, alright?”

“… Or asleep,” Connie adds, unscrupulously.

“Yeah, or asleep. Just knock really loudly. I’ll be fine once I’ve passed out for a few hours.” I’m not sure that’s exactly how broken noses mend themselves – and Marco knows that – but he just sighs exasperatedly, not happy at all, but, I dunno, that kinda gives me some sort of selfish satisfaction.

“… If you don’t answer the door straight away, I’m calling an ambulance, you got that?”

I nod, smirking stupidly. Marco pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut briefly, shaking his head. He’s so done with me. But his frown does crack.

We say our goodbyes – Connie getting frustrated with how I have to have the last word over Marco, and how he won’t get back in his van, ‘cus he’s a loser, or whatever – and I toss the remainder of my pack of gum through the window onto Mina’s lap, before I’m brutally dragged away back to the truck by the sleeve of my t-shirt. I offer Marco one last, cheekily-insolent wave, as we turn our separate ways out of the gas station. I think I catch him shaking his head in despair.

Connie throws me a Coke as he pulls out onto the street again, whilst munching on a Twizzler. I press the bottle to my lip, but it’s lost it’s cool, so I just resort to, you know, _drinking_ it, which stings a little, but is ultimately worth it for the way it quenches my sandpaper throat.  Connie doesn’t say anything until he’s munched through three of the strawberry straws, and we’re halfway back to my place, successfully having navigated three sets of traffic lights. I guess Connie just needed sugary sustenance to rewire his brain.

“You and Marco … uh, you guys are pretty tight, huh?”

I’m raking through his glove box when he says this, on the hunt for a lighter, having found the bitter end of a pack of Marlboro’s I’d left in the truck previously. I twist my head to glare narrowly at him; but his face is not contorted by evil mischief like I’d expect. Instead, his eyes are on the road, and he’s just … considering things. Quietly. To himself. This is weird.

“… Yeah. So?”

“Well, like, are you guys … _you know_?”

Apparently this is a conversation I’m having, right here and right now. And with Connie Springer of all people. Please _no_.

“D-dude! How— I mean, what the— Marco’s a _guy_!”                       

Connie’s not phased, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel as we make the turn into my neighbourhood.

“And? So what, right? If you… like, _like him_ , then it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“Oh my God, please, stop right there,” I groan, slapping my forehead with my palm, and leaning into the open window. The air rushes through my hair as I poke my head out of the space, car exhausts and the sounds of suburban Trost greeting me. “Marco… Marco and I are not like that. _Holy shit_.”

“I’m just calling it as I see it, dude,” he shrugs. “I mean, he was like… _stroking your face_ back there. I’m not sure where you draw the line between homo and no homo, but—”

“Please shut up. Please. Save yourself. And me.”

“—you’re just lucky Sash isn’t here. You know she laps that stuff up. You’re lucky I’m a cool guy—” I snort loudly at that, and Connie pulls a face at me. “—but I’m totally serious.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a few tacos short of a fiesta platter? ‘Cus I think someone fell outta the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down,” I lament.

“Hey! That’s totally not true, dude! You carry on like that and I _will_ crash this car and then neither of us will be able to have happily married lives with our baes ‘cus we’ll both be _dead_.”

“Which would suck. So I thoroughly recommend that you _shut the fuck up_ about now.”

“You don’t have to be an ass about it, Jean.”

“Sorry, ass is my middle name.”

“Really? I thought it was _closeted homosexual_.”

I’m genuinely surprised that we don’t plough straight into the car in front of us, because I make a lunge for him across the front seat, with the full intention of murdering him and dumping his body in my pool. The world shall be better off.   

 

* * *

 

I pass out for a couple hours when I get home, broken, exhausted, and entirely frustrated by the fact Connie managed to escape my clutches before I could throttle him, only waking up around eight when I realise I’m more hungry than tired.

There’s no disparity in my _grumpiness_ between hungry and tired though. Matters are not helped by the fact I kinda am wishing I had let Marco take me to the hospital, because my nose has started swelling up, and it would’ve also gotten me out of that conversation with Connie. And given me some more time with Marco, but let’s not go there, because thoughts like that are what encourage the giant, sexual nightmare that goes by the name Springer. Ugh.

I drift into the kitchen and procure a bag of frozen peas from the freezer, pressing the glorious iciness to my face as I lazily throw some bread into the toaster for a pitiful dinner.

I’m attempting to both hold my toast and butter it with just one hand, when the front door clatters open, and mom enters the kitchen in a whirlwind. Shit. Forgot she was getting back today.  Shit, shit, shit.

“Jeaaaaaan!” she shrills, and I count down the seconds until— “How are y— what happened to your face?!” Yep, that. Predictable. I lower the bag of peas from my cheek, just to show her the true extent of the damage. I could tell her that at least the house is still in one piece – I’d promised that much, at least. Myself in one piece… yeah, that was a clause that I may have missed out of our initial agreement before she left. I cower into myself, because I’m about to get one hell of a berating. Please don’t hit me with your shoe, mom.

She abandons her suitcase and handbag in the doorway to the kitchen, and hurries across to me, seizing my face in her red, manicured talons – her hold is a far cry from the way Marco touched my face. I haven’t been manhandled by my mom like this in a long time… not since I was like, you know, _ten_.

“Have you started fighting again?” she accuses, twisting my neck to get a better look at the shallow cuts along my hairline. “Who did this to you? Was it Eren again? Did he hit you?”

“Mom, it wasn’t Er—”

“This is why I shouldn’t leave you at home! I can’t believe this has happened again, Jean – you’re nineteen years old, for goodness sake. All this is supposed to be past us by now!” Her fingers press into the bruises around my eyes, product of my fucked-up nose, and it … kills. I seethe, and whip my head out of her grasp.

“ _Mom_!”

I unsuccessfully try to shrug her off, and escape, but she blocks any potential exists, hands now firmly on her waist, irate as I straighten up, and look down on her. I’ve never noticed how small she is without her heels. But she doesn’t budge.

“You are not going anywhere, Jean. Sit down. And explain. Now.”

I sigh, and slump into one of the bar stools, giving mom the height advantage. I think of Marco, and he’d probably want me to come clean. That’s what _he’d_ do, at least.

I give in, reluctantly and rapidly explaining the gist of what happened, as mom taps her foot on the kitchen tiles. She quirks an eyebrow against her Botox when I describe Bert and Reiner, but she doesn’t quip when I repeat that _word_. I do. It makes me tick. Makes me feel sick just saying it. I follow the story through, right up to meeting Marco at the gas station, and him insisting I go to hospital, and then I stop. Mom is silent.

“… Mom?” I try hesitantly, unsure if she’s just going to explode or what. It’s hard to tell. I think the air between us is volatile and ready to ignite. Maybe. Maybe not? Actually—

“Jean,” my mom sighs, her tone laced with exasperation. Am I about to be chewed out here, just to top off the last few days of my generally shitty existence? “… Get in the coupe. I’m taking you to ER.”

 

* * *

 

It takes three hours before I’m shown through to a cubicle at Trost General. Which is annoying as it is, but made even worse by the way my mom perches on the edge of her seat in the waiting room, clutching her handbag to her chest, making faces at every dirty looking man who happens to even cough.

The nurse who sees me through to some curtained bed is cute, with a tidy, ginger bob, and a homely, if sterile smile. She reminds me of a red-headed Mikasa, so it’s totally not a problem for me to take my shirt off for her to inspect the damage. She dabs some cotton wool dipped in _acid from the depths of hell_ onto my lip and the scrapes on my forehead, before murmuring something about stitches for my nose. I really just want to sleep, but it’s not easy when you’re being prodded and poked in the chest and face.

My mom follows the nurse out of the curtain, and I hear her murmuring about realignment surgery (and the nurse consequently dismissing her, informing her that they just need to strap me up and check me for head injuries) – I take the moment of alone time to wrestle my phone out of my jeans’ pocket (which is difficult, because I’ve got one hand bathing in a dish of some weird disinfectant stuff to sooth the grazing on my knuckles).

I’ve got a text from Bert, another from Reiner (less worried, more appraising), and two from Marco – both of which asking if I’m okay and haven’t died. Idiot. I wish his concern didn’t tickle that stupid, fluttery feeling within my chest. But fuck, it feels pretty fucking good, I’m not gonna lie.

I line up the camera on my phone with a shaky hand, and manage to snap a good angle of my face and chest – bandages and plasters and bruises and all – before opening up my Snap Chat app. I send it onto Connie, Eren and Reiner (I don’t have Annie or Bert’s details … or even reckon they have the app to begin with), and also to Marco, all with the caption: _two guesses where i ended up_.

Connie replies first, with a snap of a bag of frozen fries wrapped up in a dish cloth, with the caption: _yep sasha and i were there earlier she had my balls when i came home_. Reiner’s response follows quickly after, an ever eloquent and articulate: _HAHAHAHAHAHAHA_. I’m gonna send him something sassy back later, when I figure out something suitably witty. (And I don’t expect Eren to reply, because firstly, he’s probably doing what I would rather be doing – sleeping – and secondly, he’s likely to have been murdered by Mikasa by now. Such a shame, after we progressed so much today.)

The curtain rustles, and I’m about to shove my phone under my butt to hide it, when a reply from Marco pops up on my screen. I hurry to open it, fingers smearing across the screen of my Samsung.

His snap is just a black screen, with a single, white line of text across the middle. Two words.

 _Thank you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got slightly frustrated with the quality of this chapter - is it okay? Action and anger are hard things for me to grasp sometimes ... give me emotional, sappy scenes any day.
> 
> This chapter was gonna be longer ... but it ended up getting ridiculous, so I sliced it down the middle, and the rest will make up chapter 13. I know I promised angst, and there was a bit (but mainly just anger), but that will now begin to start in the next chapter.
> 
> That aside ... important things happened in this chapter. Lots of useful information involving Marco. Why does he Skype Reiner and Bert so often? Where's his dad coming home from? Why does Marco not talk about him much? What the hell is even going on in Marco's life? Well ... soon, my friends. Soon.
> 
> I'm really sorry that I know absolutely nothing about American Football ... I did some reading on it, but it was so confusing and there were so many terms I didn't understand ... and it was really boring OTL So let's just pretend that everything is 100% okay in whatever universe this story takes part in !!
> 
> Uh, what else ... the title comes from the song by the Pixies, which featured in the Fight Club OST. Great track. Give it a listen for this chapter.
> 
> Please drop me a comment, if you have the time! I really appreciate hearing back from you guys, especially at the moment, when I'm struggling to pin point the things I need to work on. Concrit is welcomed, as much as other stuff. I look forward to hearing from you!
> 
> As always, thank you for the fan art from last chapter - a special thank you to my darling Eli and all her glorious art she does for this fic. Please drop stuff in the fic: droplets tag for me to see on tumblr. Love you all.


	13. Starry, Starry Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now I understand  
> What you tried to say to me  
> And how you suffered for your sanity  
> And how you tried to set them free
> 
> They would not listen, they did not know how  
> Perhaps they'll listen now
> 
> \- "Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)", Don McLean

I think one of the most _frustrating_ things in life – besides cheating fathers and homophobic douchelords of course – is when your parent thinks they know better than a professional.

For the entirety of our stay in Trost General, mom noisily regurgitates the fact that she thinks I should get stitches, or an x-ray, or reconstructive surgery, or _whatever_ for my nose; and that the nurse is just keen to get us out of there to make bed space for sloppy drunks. She’s loud and obtuse, and I just will her to _please shut the fuck up_. It doesn’t help matters that everyone in the surrounding cubicles is staring at us.

Normally, I’d ask her to show me her med-school diploma if she thinks she can make a better diagnosis than the nurse, but the minute we step out into the parking lot, eventually dismissed and paper work signed off, she falls eerily quiet. She doesn’t talk to me, maintains three or four steps ahead of me, and leaves me to my internal monologue, punctuated only by the click of her heels on asphalt.

My mom is a bubbly person most of the time, but all of a sudden, she feels icily _cold_.

I try to care, but I’m too far gone, slipping into the car with little grace. Mom barely waits for me to pull the door to, before she revs the engine, if impatiently, and we zoom out of the hospital parking lot.

I lean my head against the gently vibrating window of the coupe; my eyelids are heavy, and everything whisks into a blur of pale, yellow streetlamps against the dark of the night sky. The illuminated city whips passed the window like some swirly Van Gogh painting; smears and streaks of deep colour that rock me closer to passing _the fuck_ out.

It’s gone midnight by the time we get back to the house; mom doesn’t say anything once we pull up on the drive, alongside my Jag. She doesn’t wait for me to leave the car either, heading straight for the front door, clicking the central locking on the key over her shoulder. I shuffle to catch up, craving the sweet release of my pillow and duvet.

I climb the stairs as she wafts into the kitchen, and leaning over the bannisters, I offer her a woeful “night, mom”, but she doesn’t respond, doesn’t look back – she just gently heaves her shoulders, and disappears out of my line of sight.

I should probably … do something. But the wires have been knocked unplugged inside my head, and all I can focus on is crashing for a good few hours, and escaping any remote form of responsibility.

I hope … I haven’t upset her too much. It’s not that big a deal, is it? It’s not like I haven’t been in a fight before, and no-one died, and the fucker at the football game really _did_ deserve it.

I’ll deal with it … some other time. That’s been a decent motto of my life so far. Well, debatably decent. Not really that decent. Shit.

 

* * *

 

That night, I sleep without dreams or disturbance, and for once, I’m not victim to horrific insomnia. I’m not even woken up when Marco texts me around 2AM, asking if I’ve gotten home safely from the hospital (instead, I’m left to bleary scan my eyes over his words in the morning).

 

* * *

 

Saturday morning, to put it lightly, is probably the worst morning of my life. Even worse than the hangover I got the night after waking up sprawled on Connie’s driveway, a couple years back. That was nasty, but this … this is the fucking pits. It feels like someone’s taken a sledgehammer to every square inch of my body.

It hurts to open my eyes – like I’m fighting against some vice keeping my lids shut. A couple, steady blinks stretch the tender skin across the bridge of my nose and cheekbones, which triggers a simpering pain in the back of my head. My mouth and throat feel dry and cracked, and a trepid swipe of my tongue across my lower lip is the biggest fucking mistake of my pitiful nineteen years on this planet. I’m so glad there’s no-one around to hear my pathetic whimper of pain.

It only gets worse as I strain to sit up; my rips twinge, my shoulders crack, and my gut seems to realign itself within my belly, churning from the sudden movement. Even my arms tremble as I try to hold myself upright, before I graciously lower myself back against the headboard – uncomfortable against my spine, but _uncomfortable_ is the least of my fucking problems. I take a peak under my shirt, hitching up the fabric clinging to my chest in sweat; my skin is punctured with purple and black splodges, some stippled with angry red. I ghost my fingertips over one, particularly large blemished flower imbedded in my rip cage, but even the breath of a touch is fucking _murder_.

I curse the fact that the _Savlon_ is a whole two doors down the landing in the bathroom; I wonder if I can get away with texting mom to go get it for me? Probably not. That’s pushing _S.S. Insolent_ out a little too far.

I slither out of bed eventually – not after dozing for a while, and lamenting how much my existence sucks – and begin the perilous trek along the landing. My legs are okay, but it doesn’t really matter, because every step makes me twitch, the dull ache in my muscles sharp with every slight movement.

When I clatter into the bathroom, I resent mom’s decorative choices: _really now, do we need this many fucking mirrors_? I’ve _always_ wanted to see my bruised and battered face from a three-hundred-and-sixty degree angle.

The nurse had managed to clean off most of the dry and crusted blood last night, so I’m not so much looking like a freshly-fed zombie any more … but drunkard fresh out of a bar fight is something I’m definitely channelling.

I don’t know how mom managed to look at me last night – I wouldn’t even want to look at me. My broken nose – which is a kinda brown and yellow colour at the moment – has slung crescent-shaped bruises beneath my eyes, which are not only inordinately painful, but also make me look like I haven’t slept in around, oh, I’d say _a hundred years_. There’s a wine-red welt blooming on my jaw, hot and swollen, and the slit in my lip is black and congealed with blood.

_And to think Marco managed to stare me in the face for so long yesterday…_

I waste no time slathering myself in _Savlon_ from the medicine cabinet below the sink; I grit my teeth against the citric sting, dabbing the white crap onto my war wounds.

 _Now, who can I pay to slap some deep heat or something on my back_?

 

* * *

 

Getting dressed is a struggle, especially when the band of my t-shirt snags on my nose, and I whine, fearing that it might have broken the flimsy scab over the cut. Fortunately there’s no gush of blood down my face. I opt for sweatpants after that, because like hell am I gonna attempt the skinny jeans dance this morning. I roll the jersey fabric up to my knees, look like a bit of a pillock, but oh my God the sheer, comfortable _bliss_ is worth it.

On my way downstairs, I keep my eyes trained on making sure I don’t miss a step – or maybe just deliberately ignoring the frames upon frames of family photos lining the stairwell, and the faces in them. The one photograph from my third birthday, with the fat, chubby kid bouncing on his dad’s knee … it no longer make me remember what Marco once said about it, that one time he came over for dinner. It doesn’t make me think _shit, I was a fat kid_ , or _but that doesn’t matter, because Marco thought I was cute_. It just makes me think of dad. I can’t even look at his face.

Still angry. It hasn’t subsided into bitterness this time.

 _Still angry_.

Mom’s out; I don’t want to put it down to her deliberately not wanting to talk to me, but that feeling sure spikes somewhere in my gut. The TV is off, and the coffee in the machine is cold. She’s been out a while.

I make a fresh pot of coffee, and go about a standard brunch routine; picking bits and pieces out of the fridge to make a haphazard meal that has a dangerously low nutritional value. Fuck that. Cold pizza is the food of kings, the universal truth, the meaning of _life_. If I could eat cold pizza for every meal of that day, I think I would live a happier life.

Coffee and pile of food in hand, I migrate to the living room, and collapse – with a strained grunt – onto the couch, and flick on the TV. I try my best to nibble around my split lip, but my coffee burns, so I set it aside for a bit, settling into whatever Saturday morning trash occupies the screen in front of me.

I’m not sure I actually grasp the name of the show I’m watching, because, letting my eyelids just creep closed for a second’s respite, I end up dozing off. My internal Duracell battery evidently needs a good charging.

I almost careen off the sofa when I’m abruptly awoken by sharp rapping on the window of the living room; I cling onto the couch cushions, but my plate of cold pizza and other condiments doesn’t quite have such good fortune. It meets an early demise on the hard wood floor with a reverberating clatter. Fuck. The heavy sigh that pushes its way out of my nose and mouth, before I can stop it, is excruciating; I grit my teeth, and make a fist in my pants’ leg.

“Jean?” comes the echoic, tinny voice through the window pane. I twist my head as best I can, to look back: Marco. One hand shielding his eyes to peer into the room, the other pressed flush against the glass. Shit. That time of day already? I offer him a feeble wave of: _yeah, I’m alive. Just._

He nibbles his lip, and with the sun glaring down behind him, his freckles are hidden mainly in shade. I’m more than glad I can’t exactly make out _how_ worried his expression actually is. I slump back onto the sofa, feeling the strain pulling at my neck from peering over the armrest at him; he vanishes from the window as it is.

I hear clattering in the kitchen, the back door creaking on its hinges, and I figure he’s not convinced that I _haven’t died_. I delicately roll onto my side, and start scooping my ruined brunch off the floor, depositing it onto the plate, and that onto the coffee table, with a defeated huff. Not sure what’s worse … the thought of Marco’s intensive worrying over _nothing_ , or the loss of those few, amazing slices of pizza.

 _Even if mom’s not here to hand me my ass, at least Marco can take her place. Great_.

I blink wearily, maybe letting my eyes flicker closed for a little longer than necessary, until I feel the couch cushions by my feet dip down, my toes pressed against warm thighs. He moves very quietly; I guess I’m rocking the classic look of: _disturb me and I will rip your head off_. I open one eye by a slit, and find him studying me from the other end of the couch, the sunlight through the window now bright on his face – not sure if he’s squinting against that, or at me. (Still, it brings out the flecks of colour in his eyes that I don’t usually notice.)

“Don’t say anything,” I grumble, wriggling myself a little more upright against the arm rest. I poke him consciously in the thigh with the point of my foot. “I know I look like shit. Feel like it too.”

His lips purse into an unimpressed sorta smile. Ugh.

“Did they say anything about your nose? At the hospital?”

I scratch absent-mindedly at the scabs on the ridges of my knuckles, and his eyes follow; he watches intently, and I’m acutely aware of that fact. My finger catches the rough edge of a scab, so I rub the skin a little harder, attempting to dislodge it.

“Recover at home,” I reply to his question, “Mom wasn’t impressed with that.”

“Can’t be too bad then,” Marco muses softly; but where his voice is gentle, his brow knits into a frown as I continue to pick at the healing skin on my hands. “Jean,” he warns. He leans into me, and, with a swipe, separates my hands from each other. I puff out my cheeks, and meet his gaze with an infantile glare. It’s hard to place what emotion rests itself in his eyes, but whatever it is almost makes me ignore the fact one of my hands now sits in his. That is, until he ghosts a thumb over my coarse knuckles.

I abruptly squash down the sound of my breath snagging in my lungs.

He breaks eye contact, eyes flitting downwards. I think he blushes.

“Keep picking at your scabs and the skin won’t heal properly,” he murmurs. “You’ll end up with scars.”

I don’t hesitate to seize my hand back, curling my fingers into a stiff fist over my chest.

“Don’t care,” I mutter gruffly. Marco sighs out through his nose, and falls back into the couch cushions, folding his hands in his lap. I must be a pretty shitty patient, if ever he saw one. Marco’s dark eyes are focused on the ceiling now, his head lolled back over the spine of the couch, and I wonder what he’s thinking about. Or if he’s just rueing the day he ever met someone as troublesome as me. Probably that.

“Don’t think I’ll be going in the pool today,” I add dryly; Marco’s stony expression cracks into the reluctant whisper of a smile, still focused on the ceiling. I give him another stab in the thigh with my toe. “Which sucks. I was _totally_ looking forward to it.”

Marco inhales and exhales deeply, his chest rising and filling the creases in his shirt, before he tilts his head to look at me again. He roams the welts and bruises on my jaw and nose – and then digresses.

“Well … I see your sarcasm wasn’t knocked out of you yesterday. Such a shame.”

My mouth forms a round o-shape, in my surprise and under the pretence of offense. Now that was totally and unexpectedly _sly_.

This time I kick him forcefully, and he throws his head back and fucking laughs.

 

* * *

 

Marco lounges on the sofa with me for a bit; long enough for me to rearrange my feet on his lap, and him to roll his eyes in my direction. I try to get back into the show on TV, but I’m more in tune to the fact Marco doesn’t seem to be watching it _at all_. I figure he’s afraid I might fall off the sofa and break something _else_ in my body.

Eventually though, he resigns to informing me that he’s got a wage to earn, and has to get cleaning. He carefully pushes my legs from his lap – I would’ve just shoved them off, if I were him – and then heaves himself to his feet wearily, rolling his shoulders with a crack as he stands.

“Are you coming outside?” he asks; I pout, and squish my way deeper into the cushions.

“Do I _have_ to?”

Marco clicks his neck and shrugs.

“How likely is it that you’re going to accidentally kill yourself if I leave you alone?” I resist the urge to throw a cushion at him, and just glower instead; he chuckles, and changes his tone. “Well, I wouldn’t, uh … complain about the company. If you feel up to it.”

 _Only ‘cus it’s you_. _Don’t think I’m normally this nice to everyone_.

I stretch my arm out, and tug gingerly on the hem of his shorts.

“… You’re gonna have to pull me up.”

Marco’s a good guy, and sometimes I think if I asked him to even do something nuts, like jump off a bridge with me, he’d do it. Not that this is really like _that_ – he turns back to the couch, slides his hands under my arms, and hauls my skinny, white ass to my feet without much problem; I find myself not minding the feeling of him supporting my weight, and I wonder how much I could pay him to give me a piggyback all the way outside.

“I’m pretty sure your legs are working fine, Jean,” he says, evidently reading my mind as he separates himself from me. I bite back the urge to make a comment about him _sassing an invalid_ as he turns, and makes headway to the kitchen; I have to awkwardly waddle to keep up, my ribs twinging all the while.

 

* * *

 

The Trost summer is unrelenting; believe me when I say it’s _entirely_ possible to get sick of seeing cloudless, blue sky every time you leave the house. The heat makes the patio shimmer – I weigh up my options, and prepare myself to make the jump from the back door, across the baked concrete, onto the grass, as Marco tries and fails to conceal his snigger. Tsk. Whatever. Some of us aren’t used to living and working in the fiery depths of hell, thank you very much.

I take the patio in two, rapid strides, and every ache in my body screams bloody Mary. Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo-stick. Remind me never to move ever again.

Under my bare toes, the grass is prickly and shorn, but radiating heat like some spikey, green electric blanket. Feels like I’m not the only one in need of some rain, with how solid the soil is beneath my feet. I can barely remember what rain feels like – and I swear, that’s not even an exaggeration. I think I miss most the feeling of sitting on the back porch, under the shelter of the slate awning, and watching it pour all around me, and the overwhelming smell of fresh, damp earth more potent than anything else. I like it when it rains hard; it sounds like white noise, which is like silence, but not empty.

It hasn’t rained here in months. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some hosepipe ban enforced sometime soon – which my parents most definitely will decide to ignore anyway, ‘cus they can always just _throw cash at people to get more water_.

As I tip-toe across the grass towards the appealing shade of the pool shed, I pray that the summer breaks early this year. I plonk down on the concrete, as far under the shade of the roof as possible, and try to get comfy – a pretty fucking _hard_ feat, because my butt is already going numb, and everything _hurts_.

Marco takes up the mantle of the pool net, and gets to work – he doesn’t even break a sweat under the full beam of the sun, and I wonder if he even finds Trost summers that hot, compared to what it’s like down in Jinae. I wonder when he moved up here? Why he moved? He seems pretty damn suited to living in a perpetual sauna.

I’m about to ask, when I’m interrupted by the kitchen door banging open. Mom. Killer heels, giant shades. Lemonade. The usual.

Nothing out of ordinary, right? Or at least, that’s what I hope.

“Marco, darling!” she calls, teetering over to the patio table, where she sets down the jug and crystal tumblers. Marco’s head pops up, and he flashes his best Hollywood smile. “You must be thirsty, so I—” She spots me then, and something – something really small, and probably not noticeable to anyone else – changes. In her voice, her body language, I don’t know. A fine, diamante edge appears. “Oh, Jean. I didn’t think you’d be up yet.” She sounds cold. You don’t realise how much you like the obnoxious pet names until they’re no longer there. What I wouldn’t give for “honey” or “darling” to be tagged on the end of name, just to show she’s not pissed with me.

I think she’s pissed with me.

I stare incredulously as she pours some lemonade into a glass for Marco; her posture is stuff, and not the _I’ve-just-had-lipo-or-Botox_ sort of stiffness. She crosses the lawn, and gives Marco the drink at the poolside, throwing me a sideways glance just at the last minute. She sighs heavily, as Marco thanks her, taking a courteous sip. I think he notices the atmosphere, because his eyes are fleetingly drawn to mine. But we’re interrupted.

“Do _you_ have any advice for me, Marco, sweetheart?” mom laments, surprising me – and obviously him. Oh boy. We’re playing this game, are we?

“A-any advice?” he repeats, with a waver.

“On dealing with a son who decides it’s a good idea to put himself in situations where he might seriously hurt himself – or worse – _yes_.” She shoots me the dirtiest glare I’ve ever seen; I attempt to shrink away from it, but my back is already pressed against the wooden slats of the shed.

“I… I, uh—”

“What am I expected to do when he comes home looking like he’s just staggered off the streets?” she continues, without waiting for any sort of answer. Marco looks bewildered. She’s moaned to him about me before, but not like this. It’s always been in good humour. This … this doesn’t feel the same.

Who’s she talking to here – Marco, or me? Or herself? I don’t really want to sit out here and listen to _her_ complain about how much of a burden I am. Deploring the disappointment that I am. I get that enough from dad as it is, fuck.

“What on earth the neighbours must think,” she sighs, “I don’t know.”

I notice Marco’s polite smile begin to fade.

“I’m sure the neighbours don’t—”

“Your parents must be so glad of you, Marco. I bet you never cause them any trouble.”

So that’s how it is.

I don’t want to listen to this anymore.   

I stand, brush my thighs off, and walk back to the kitchen – trying to measure, to control my strides, but needing to move faster, _faster_. I think I hear my name on Marco’s lips, but fuck it, I don’t want to look back, because if _mom’s going to give it to me_ , I—

A better son. That’s what she wants. Probably what she deserves.

Sadly, she got me. Not great at school, not great at home, not great at staying out of fights, not great at dealing with his own stupid problems, not great at fucking owning up and telling the God-damn, fucking _truth_. There’s a lot of things wrong with me.

Maybe I can live with that. Maybe I can live with being a general pit stain on what this family wants of me. It’s because I know she cares. She really fucking does _care_. It’s the comparison to Marco that stings. I’m sure she’d prefer a perfect son like him.

I want to go to bed – forever, ideally – sleep this all off and awake in the ideal world where my dad never comes home, and my mom doesn’t regret all the things I couldn’t bring myself to be, and the Eren thing never happened, and Marco … and it’s just me, and Marco, and sitting on the rooftop talking. Forever. Please? That’d be real great right about now.

I weave through the kitchen, the hallway, up the stairs, and haul myself into my room, throwing myself down on my mattress with a defeated thud; there’s a dull ache in my forehead and the bridge of my nose, where I press my face into my pillow, but movement is futile. I’m done for today.

Too tired. Too frustrated. Too … angry? I’m not sure if I’m still angry. I think it’s more, oh, I don’t know, _crippling distress_.

The buzz of low conversation whistles through my open window; even if I’m half-way passed out, I know Marco’s musical lilt, and I know… _I know_. He’s talking to mom. Stupid, fucking, perfect idiot – I should be the one talking to her. Or, her to me. Our problem, my problem, not yours… _not yours_.

Except we all know how great I am at confronting my own fucking demons.

I muffle a groan in the pillow, and tug my comforter up over my shoulders, over my ears, over my head: time to block out the world. I wish for sleep, but I’m left in a sort of mental purgatory, where I don’t really register anything, save for how shitty I feel. At least I can’t hear the talking outside when I’m under the blanket like this.

Not sure how long I stay like that. It lasts until there’s a soft creak of my door – no knock. I shuffle further down under my shield, curling my legs up my chest, like the pathetic piece of crap that I know I epitomise right now.

There’s a weighty sigh, and the springs of my mattress complain as someone sits down next to me; they bring their legs up onto the bed, and I feel a hand press through the comforter onto my shoulder. The smell of camomile detergent is unmistakable. Does he never buy other fragrances?

“My sister is also a fan of the bed slug look,” Marco says, gently, the headboard creaking as he evidently leans back against it. “But I have to admit … I think she does it better. It doesn’t suit you, Jean.”

I reply with a grumble, and compress in on myself even more, winding the fabric up in my fists. Hell if I care. I’ll have him know that being a drama queen is second nature to me. Marco’s hand doesn’t budge, as it begins to move in caressing, soothing circles across my shoulder blades, and upper back.

“Your mom’s really sorry, by the way,” he says. “She didn’t… well, she’s just worried, Jean. She didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”

His body shifts a little closer; even on my double bed, I think I feel part of his weight press up against my side. It’s comforting. Damn it. He shouldn’t have to comfort me _again_.

“… Did she figure that out herself, or did you have to tell her that,” I mutter gruffly into the pillow. Marco tenses. Yeah, I thought as much.

“You know your mom better than I do, Jean,” he starts, cautiously. “What other people think about her … that matters a lot more to her than you or me. I don’t … quite understand it, but … I can see what she’s worried about. She’s worried about you putting your foot into trouble that you don’t need to get involved in. Which seems _perfectly_ reasonable to me, if you don’t mind me saying.” He pauses, waiting for a reaction or something, but I relinquish nothing. “It’s just your mom’s way of showing you she’s worried. She’s really sorry.”

 _Why are you here, and not her, then_?

“How come she sent you to do the dirty work then?” I mumble; Marco’s hand glides across the tension in my back. This is such a joke. I’m not some kid, or some relative, or his _boyfriend_. I’m just Jean – the guy who’s pool he got lumbered with two and a bit months ago. I wish he didn’t care, so I could justify my complaining and my self-loathing. But no. I had to go and become friends with the most fucking considerate and selfless person in the whole of Trost.

I gingerly take a peek out of my blanket fort, and find him close, peering over me with a Marco-smile. The corners of his lips twitch up a little more, the expression in his eyes softens, and the freckles at the corners of his apexes vanish into the creases in his skin. I want to find something ugly about him – one mismatched sock of a quirk, some sort of hitch in his gait, but there’s nothing. Even the way he breathes – chest in, chest out, long and deep – is gorgeous.

No, shit, that’s the wrong word.

(Actually … I don’t think it is.)

Marco turns his languid strokes of my back into a cruel poking of my bruised ribs with his index finger; I jolt.

“Well, for starters, your mom has this _crazy_ idea in her head that you actually like me, and might listen to me,” he chimes. “And unfortunately, you seem to have me wrapped around your little finger, so—”

“Marco.” _Shut up, Marco_.

“… Yeah?”

“Stay here for a bit.”

“O-okay.”

He does just that, shuffling himself into a more comfortable position against my headboard, kicking off his shoes over the side of the bed. Damn him. Why is he doing what I want him to do? I kinda wish he’d just pull the blanket off my shoulders, and give me a good boot out the door, telling me not to be such a loser.

Oh. There we go. That’s it.

That’s his one short-coming against someone like Connie or Sasha or Eren. They’d give me the once over I deserve.

I want to talk more – but I find that the words are sticky like tar in my head, and it’s difficult to arrange exactly what I want to get off my chest into coherent sentences. I want to ask him if he thinks my mom had wanted me to be more like my dad when she was pregnant with me – would it have made everything easier? Maybe I would’ve been pressured to get into a better high school then, push for a career in business or finance, or whatever the hell dad does. Maybe then I wouldn’t have met Eren, and I would’ve ended up dating Sasha after our parents pushed us together, and maybe the time at Connie’s pool never would’ve happened. Maybe I wouldn’t be so angry. Maybe I wouldn’t be so frustrated.

Too many maybes. Makes my head spin.

Maybe dad and I wouldn’t be at each other’s throats at every given opportunity. Judging by what his secretary alluded to on the phone yesterday, his leave runs out tomorrow. Well, that’s going to be fucking fun when he comes back. I’m sure the state of my face is everything he ever fucking dreamed of.

I wriggle down further into the warm – and slightly sweaty – darkness under my comforter, disappearing back under the quilted cotton.

“You okay?” Marco asks.

“Mm,” I mumble, shaking my head – but he probably can’t tell that’s what I’m doing. “Thinkin’ about my dad. He’s coming home tomorrow. I’m gonna have to deal with this all over again. Just worse.”

Because when dad says I’m a disappointing son, he’s not lying. He’s not worried about me, or whatever.

“I’m sorry,” Marco soothes. He then adds, in barely a whisper: “I wish I could be here with you for when he comes back.”

Me too. Jesus, fucking Christ, me too.

My dad will tell me he wishes he had a different son, and he will _mean it_. I wonder if Marco even remotely knows what that feels like.

I find myself murmuring information that evidently stored itself somewhere at the back of my mind: “At the gas station yesterday … Mina said your dad’s coming home tomorrow too.”

It’s the _wrong_ information. Marco stiffens beside me, and I hear breath catch in his throat. A space appears between his body and mine, and I lose the gentle pressure against my side. I peel back the blanket over my head, inhaling a lung-full of not-stale air, and sit up; my head spins a little, the bruised skin beneath my eyes stings as I wince against the light, but I ignore it.

“H-hey, Marco?”

He keeps his gaze turned down, and twists his fingers in the edge of the comforter, musing the woven threads.

“Y-yeah,” he says, under his breath. He tugs a little at the blanket. “Yeah, he is.”

I shuffle closer, crossing my legs under myself, and scooting my butt across the mattress, until my knees are pressed into his side. He doesn’t push me away, but meeting my curiosity is still a step too far, I guess. I catch the flash of white teeth as he chews at his lip.

“Yeah? Where’s he coming back from?” _How long has he been away? Aren’t you excited? Why … why are you making a face like that?_

“Jean, I…” he starts, and then stops; gulps heavily, his Adam’s apple bobs noticeably. He twitches. “I should probably go … sort out the pool skimmer.” He’s cold – but not like mom, with her icy cold – no. This is a pretty forsaken sort of coldness, and it doesn’t feel right coming from him.

 _What did I say_?

He shifts off the mattress, and I almost – almost – reach out to grab the back of his shirt, pull him back onto the bed because _I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I went and fucked up again, I didn’t mean to_ —

My hand falls listlessly onto my lap with a soft _flump_.

“H-hey,” I try, “I didn’t mean to…”

Marco turns back to face me, looks down on how my legs are still tangled up in the comforter, and my hair is all mused into a forest of cowlicks, and he forces a smile. It’s the worst.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “It’s okay.” _I don’t think I want to… talk about it yet_. That’s what he’d said last time. Is this the same? I’m moping so hard about my shitty situation when he … when he’s struggling through something just the same. I can spill out all my dumbass insecurities to him whilst I’m wrapped up under a blanket like some kid scared of thunder, but he … he clearly doesn’t trust me enough to—

 _Burden_.

“I’m going to go finish up the pool, okay? I think … I think you should go talk to your mom, Jean.”

_Hey, Marco? I’m sorry. Please teach me how to make things not always about me, ‘cus I really struggle sometimes._

 

* * *

 

I don’t follow Marco downstairs to talk to my mom, in the end. Doesn’t feel quite right. Or maybe I just have no clue what to say. Probably the case.

I curl back up under the comforter, and end up dozing for the best part of the afternoon; by the time I wake back up, the sun has shifted far across the sky, and no longer clips the open window. The shadows in my room are growing longer, and my bedside clock tells me that it’s just past six. Marco’s long gone.

I can still smell the camomile of his laundry detergent though. Makes me think he might’ve come into the room again to say goodbye. He shoulda woken me, the idiot.

Falling asleep in clothes always makes me feel disgusting, and this is no exception. It’s the feeling of a hundred bugs crawling all over my skin, and I just want to scrub and scrub and scrub, because I just feel pasted in grime and sweat.

I creep my way along the landing, avoiding the creaky floorboards as deliberately as possible, and slip into the bathroom, securely locking the door behind me. I shower carefully, scrubbing at my skin hard, where I can, one limb under the stream of water at a time. The humidity in the cubicle makes my war-wounds ache.

Most people say that showers are good places for some deep thinking. I’ve never really had that – usually too concerned with _in and out as soon as possible_ – but … I dunno. Thinking about dads. My dad. Marco’s dad. Both of us pretty reluctant to deal with their imminent arrivals home.

 

* * *

 

I avoid my mom for the rest of the evening, sneaking down into the kitchen for food whilst she’s enamoured with some soap opera, and consequently hermitting myself away in my room, my desk chair pushed against my door like some theatrical teenager.

It’s mainly because I feel guilty, and that guilt is still mixed with the remnants of anger simmering in my system, and my fear over what tomorrow will bring when my dad sees my face, and the state of general self-loathing that I seem to live my life in most of the time.

Sometimes it’s just easier to avoid … everything.

I spend that night eating stale cereal on the floor of my room, my TV muted, the picture perfectly clear and crisp – I find myself missing the way my old crap-box used to flicker slightly green.

There are so many things I wish I could change about myself. I wish I was warmer, more patient, had tougher skin. I wish I knew how to let things slide. I wish I knew how to use words to comfort people when they need me – and how to not say the things that requires them to need comfort. I wish I wasn’t a pain for mom, and I wish I was the person my dad had wanted me to be. I wish I was good enough for them.

I wish I was good enough for Marco to place his trust in me.

But my roots run deep, and I can’t change who I am.

Still – I wish I had a better heart.

 

* * *

 

I don’t know what I expected. But whatever it was, this is probably worse.

I don’t sleep well – maybe because I dozed so much during the day, or maybe just because I got caught up in a lot of deep thinking at stupid o’clock in the morning. It’s whatever. I’m awake by nine on Sunday morning, but I can’t quite bring myself to brave downstairs for a few hours – I kill the time woefully lounging on my bed, playing Xbox half way across the room. It feels good to absented-mindedly shoot things.

I stay that way until Connie logs on around two in the afternoon, and requests to Xbox Live me. Yeah, no. That’s not happening.

My stomach complains loudly, reminding me that I haven’t had a decent meal in … to be honest, who knows. My diet has been pretty pitiful for a long while.

I guess it’s now or … well, never. Might as well.

 

* * *

 

I run into mom in the kitchen, where she’s brewing coffee; she has a mug set out for me already. That makes me feel bad, even more when she pours mine for me, and presses it into my hands with a smile – albeit a nervous one.

 _Mom, c’mon. Don’t make that face. I’m not pissed off at you_.

“Thanks,” I say quietly, testing the waters. The taste is a little weak. It doesn’t really matter.

The air in the kitchen is awkward, despite that. Neither of us know how to bring up the things that probably should be said – it makes me wonder what exactly Marco said to mom yesterday. It’s almost an amusing picture, imagining him giving my mom a scolding, in that paternal condescension that he’s got down to a T. _Almost_.

Mom and I float around each other in silence: her, opening today’s mail, rinsing her mug in the sink, noting down some stuff on the calendar, and me, tentatively sipping my coffee as I plug the toaster with a few slices of bread.

She takes a breath, and _I think this is it, is she going to make the first move_? But then she stops.

That’s all good and well. I can deal with this. It’s okay, mom, it doesn’t have to be now, it can be—

I _can’t_ deal with the sound of a key in the front door lock, and then loud clattering in the hall. It’s like a punch to the gut.

Mom and I both freeze.

 _Why couldn’t he just stay away_?

Mom looks over her shoulder at me – just once, her expression filled with something I don’t think I understand – but no, I’m gonna stand my ground. What else am I meant to do? (Well, bar dig myself a giant hole and go bury myself in it for the rest of eternity … but that seems a little far-fetched.)

“R-Robert, darling, is that you?”

My dad takes his time – I can hear the rustling of him setting his suitcase against the wall, and hanging up his suit bag on the end of the bannister – and you could cut the tension in the room with a knife. I can’t help but feel my shadow begin to shrink.

And then, there he is. Bulbous stomach, squinty little eyes, greeting my mom and allowing her to give him a peck on the cheek. He mimes returning it, but it’s careless and sloppy.

His eyes meet mine across the length of the kitchen.

Here we go.

“Jean.” He separates from mom. I stare at the floor. “What did you do to your face?”

I swallow the lump in my throat. Push it down, push it down. _Keep your cool_. I throw back the last dredges of my coffee, lukewarm and mainly gross; it’s barely a trickle into my mouth.

I like how he asks: what did _I_ do. Not who did this to me.

I set my coffee mug down on the counter with a loud clunk, as my toast pops out of the toaster. I move to collect it, picking it out with two fingers, and dropping it hurriedly onto a plate to save myself from burning my fingertips. I breathe. _Keep your cool_.

“Jean? Did you hear me—”

“Yeah. I was in a fight. It’s no big deal.”

Right. Get the butter from the fridge— I have to stand my ground, however much I want to run away. Hold the fire in my palm and not let it burn me.

It’s not like there’s a switch with dad – it tends to build with him, each remark slightly more scathing than the last, slightly more deprecating – and this is no different. I can taste the growing terseness.

“You got in a _fight_?” He says the word like it’s a foreign language on his tongue, a bitter taste he despises. Yeah dad, that’s a thing. A thing that happens. Sometimes people are dicks, and I just really wanna _hit them_ , you know? “Did you get their details? Follow up with the police?”

I cross the space to the fridge, collect the butter, and keep going. My toast is slightly overdone, one degree too crispy. Oh well. _Keep your cool_.

“No,” I say plainly. “Wasn’t worth it.” The guy was an asshole. He wasn’t worth _anything_. “I started it.” Well, I was the one who attempted to make the first move.

My dad looks stern. Not that it’s anything new, but he does. His heavy brow knots into a firm frown. My mom sticks closely to his side, but she wrings her hands, and she’s waiting – she knows what’s gotta happen here.

“Did you even _think_ about this, Jean?” Oh, here we go. This is the tone of voice I was expecting. “Did you even _consider_ , for one minute, what other people might think? Seeing your face like this? I thought we’d talked about you sorting out your priorities. What self-respecting son of mine goes and gets into _fist-fights_ in his spare time?”

Me, apparently. Though I can’t say self-respecting is something I’m ever going to describe myself as. Dad prattles on, and it seems like his broad chest expands, with every breath he draws into his lungs, and with every word he spits out.

I try to calmly butter my toast – the knife scrapes across the bread, too little butter across too much surface. My hand trembles, and I fucking _hate it_. Dad’s not done.

“People recognise you, Jean. They’ll see you and think: _well, Robert Kirschtein’s son sure is off the rails these days. They can’t really be thinking about leaving the company to him, can they? What sorts of parents raise a son like that_? Well, Jean, I really don’t know. How do you think this looks on me, when people see my son fighting in public, and walking around like he’s just wandered off the streets? What did I fail to do to end up with a son who thinks this sort of thing is acceptable? What on _earth_ could be worth looking like this, Jean? Please, _enlighten me_.”

“Robert,” my mom intervenes; her voice sounds timid, like she’s afraid of saying too much, afraid of standing up to him. “Jean’s already promised that it won’t happen again – haven’t you, honey? He said he was only looking out for some friends.”

But no. My dad dismisses her abrasively.

“Saying things like that is what makes him think he can get away with it, Céline,” he says – and it’s like watching slow-motion, as mom shrinks into herself, suddenly very quiet, and very passive. She seems small next to him. “You baby him far too much. It’s about time he realised he’s a God-damn adult and take responsibility for _once in his life_.”

_Responsibility? You wanna take about responsibility, do you, old man? Well how about we talk about you taking responsibility for where you’ve been this past week. Because it sure as hell wasn’t a fucking business trip._

My mind can move at a hundred miles an hour, but there’s no way in hell my mouth can ever keep up. My tongue doesn’t know how to form words at times like this – it’s dad’s special power: the ability to suck the courage out of my system, to make me feel small, and weak, and useless. A disappointment.

That word again. _Burden_.

I clench my fists, now at my side, and stare intently at the marble grain of the counter top.

I can’t stand up for myself. I just … don’t know how when it’s around him.

My dad sighs, and pinches the skin between his eyes with two fingers.

“This is the worst possible timing,” he mutters. “To think I arranged for you to come to the office with me this week coming. How am I meant to show your face to my colleagues now, Jean? Do you _want_ to look like an embarrassment? Well … I suppose I’d rather you had some work experience under your belt this summer, instead of you wasting your time lying on the couch or getting into uncivilized fights with every old Joe and his drunk cousin.”

Something inside me snaps. Loudly. Furiously. It’s a shock to my system, which knocks everything so quickly out of sync. That anger – that same anger from two days ago, that boiled, and bubbled and burnt – here it is again. It really _hurts_ now.

“You even thought that maybe I don’t _wanna_ work at your _fucking_ office,” I seethe; the words press out between my gritted teeth drenched in spite and acid. I plant my hands firmly on the counter top that remains between me and dad – and I’m grateful for it, because something changes in dad’s eyes too.

First, I think it’s shock. Because his son just doesn’t speak to him like this. _His_ son is gonna follow the family business, and go to work in midtown, in a tall, glass high-rise, and devote his life to finance and fucking leggy, blonde secretaries over desks.

His son is not a breeding ground for insurgence, no. His son does what he’s told. I guess I can’t even promise him that much.

But then it’s not shock. Then  it’s anger.

“ _What_ did you just say, Jean?”

Mom looks terrified. I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. This is not me, this is not me. I‘m a coward, I don’t put myself in harm’s way, I don’t say things like—

No, I do. I can. And I think I will. Being passive fucks this family over enough as it is.

I want to shout – I need to shout, but the words break, slipping out of my cracks like a broken, pitiful trickle. It doesn’t pack the punch I desperately need it to have. _No_. I sound so _weak_.

“You will have to drag me, kicking and punching and screaming, from this house if you want to get me into that fucking _office_ of yours,” I glower – and it’s not just that. It’s not just here, and now. It’s ever. He will never drag me into the “family” business. I won’t let him now. My final words come out as a gruff, barely legible murmur. “I’m not the fucking person you want me to be. I’ve had enough of this.”

I fully expect him to hit me – I expect him to round the counter and smack me in the face, and I can almost feel the pre-emptive sting of it across my cheek. But he doesn’t. His brain is slower than mine when he’s fuming – so I run.

I takes until I’m up the stairs for me to hear my dad shouting my name – and I hate it, I hate the sound – and then there’s mom begging, fucking _begging_ my dad to calm down, and—

Fuck. This is stupid. This is so, so, _so_ fucking stupid.

I slam my bedroom door with enough force to shake the house, and I’m running on adrenaline as I heave my desk, and my chair, and any heavy item of furniture I can feasibly move, against my door. I feel like I’m thirteen again, throwing a tantrum – but oh my God, it’s exhilarating. It rattles my bones, my nerves, every fibre in my body, and I did it – I didn’t say everything I wanted to, not even _close_ – but I did it. It’s not a good feeling, and it’s not a bad feeling. It’s just … it just _is_. It’s a sense of finality, and clarity, and fear, and anticipation, and everything under the fucking sun, all distorted into one _feeling_.

Mom and dad are arguing in the kitchen below now – my dad’s great boom, and my mom’s catty shrieking, and this is _it_. I sink down against the side of my bed, and find my breathing heavy and pained; I know the feeling well, how anxiety sinks its claws into my skin and pulls, threatens to pull me slowly a part, piece by piece. I don’t know what I’m feeling. It’s a jumbled tornado of a mess and I—

I close my eyes, and try to block out the screaming downstairs. I want to leave so bad. I could pack a bag right now, and leave. I could grab mom on the way out, and we could just go.

For the first time, I find myself thinking: _and she might just do it this time_.

 _But he’d probably find us. I don’t think he’d let it happen that easily_.

 

* * *

 

I stay there for a while, holding myself together with a hug of my knees, as the adrenaline wave I was riding begins to ebb, and is overcome by gripping fear. A riptide of numbness sweeps through my system, and begins to pool inside my gut as some great, black abyss of feeling.

The shouting eventually stops – but not without the slamming of many doors, and loud stomping up the stairs – violent banging on my bedroom door startles the living beejebus out of me.

“Jean!” my dad bellows, madly twisting the door handle – my _Les Mis_ -worthy barricade doesn’t budge though. “Open this door, _right now_ , Jean.”

I coil in on myself tighter, because it’s like a pinching in my chest now, and just _please go away, just fucking go away_. I think I’m trembling by this point, it’s so pathetic.

He slams on my door again with his fist, and each time makes everything inside me lurch painfully. I scrunch my eyes closed. Please go away.

For one, cruel moment, I think: maybe he hears me. My dad’s tone loses its edge, and becomes suddenly more sombre.

“Jean. C’mon, son. Open this door, and we can talk.”

 _What if I don’t want to talk_?

“Come on, kid, throw me a bone here. I‘m trying my best for you, you know that, right? You don’t want to do this office thing? We can postpone it. I’m sure I can talk to the boys and rearrange it for next week.”

 _You’ve missed the point_.

“You don’t want to throw away an opportunity like this, Jean. Why are you behaving like this? You need to stop acting like a _child_. How do you think this makes your mom and I feel, huh?”

 _Please, please just stop blaming me for one minute_.

It goes silent out on the landing – I think he leaves. Yeah, there’s the tell-tale creak of the floorboards, ‘cus he doesn’t know which ones are dodgy and which ones aren’t. Moments later, I hear the front door go, the thrum of an engine on the driveway, and a car pulls out onto the street. I guess that’s him.

I count in my head fifty-seven seconds, before mom’s outside my door, her knocking softer, almost nervous against the white-washed wood. Still scares me – but in a different way.

“J-Jean?”

I think my heart just about breaks then and there. Oh God, with just one word, I know. I know what she sounds like when she’s been crying. Mom, I’m so sorry, I’m such a piece of shit, yesterday I shouldn’t have—

“Jean, honey, are you okay? Sweetie, can you hear me?”

 _Yeah, I can hear you, mom_.

I hear what sounds like her sliding down the outside of my door, and the thump of her resting her head back against the wood.

This is not fair. You’re only meant to hurt once in a while. Not all the fucking time.

“I’m really sorry about what I said yesterday, baby,” she says. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean it that way. You know I love you, baby. I couldn’t ask for a better son, I hope you know that. I love you.”

I press my nose into my knees, breathe deeply, wishing, longing for something tangible to clasp onto. Camomile would be nice. Or the feeling of a hand rubbing circles across my back. I don’t like this sense of listlessly drifting that washes over me.

I hear mom laugh ruefully from the other side of the door, but it sounds far away.

“I think you might laugh if I told you about what Marco said to me yesterday,” she muses. “He … how do you kids say it these days? Oh, yes, he _gave me a right grilling_ – that’s how you say that, isn’t it? I was so surprised, but I didn’t … I really didn’t realise …” She trails off, and I really, really hope she’s not crying again. Mom’s not so good at holding back the flood gates. Hell, I’ve seen her cry at an episode of _Desperate Housewives_ before.

There’s a moment of two of silence – and maybe I hear a hitched breath that I try not to let feel like a shot to the gut – before she speaks again.

“I love you, baby.”

This is what happens when I stop being passive. For the briefest moment, I feel on top of the world, and then it all comes crashing down around me. Dad shouts. Mom cries. I feel like it’s not so worth it after all.

I really don’t know what to do.  As if I wasn’t a breeding ground for insecurities before. At least now I know I’m a rock-solid, A-plus failure of a son.

Mom cried because of _me_.

_Why d’you think it’s a good idea to stir up shit, Jean? Wouldn’t it just be easier if … well. You gave up trying?_

 

* * *

 

I end up falling asleep, curled up in a ball against the side of my bed, all my energy zapped. It’s been a rough couple of days – it’s no wonder I feel like I’m walking on borrowed time. I’m tired. Real tired. I can’t outrun it anymore.

I drift with mom’s words in my mind: _I love you, baby_ , for a long time. I’m not sure how long. Long enough that it’s dark when I wake up again. Artificial light streams through my window, makes shadows long, and darkness darker, painting the wooden floor with strips of vaporous, pale yellow. The air is lazy with the sounds of occasional cars, distant barking of neighbourhood dogs, and the ever-present thrum of the heart of the city.

My body is stiff, and cramp pools itself in my joints as I try to unravel myself. Despite the echoes from beyond my open window, the house itself seems eerily quiet. The barricade against my door is still in place – no-one’s tried to get in whilst I’ve been out of it.

I clumsily pull my phone out of my jeans’ pocket to check the time: it’s just gone ten. There’s also an unread message in my inbox from 2AM last night.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
I hope you’re feeling better.

I don’t stop my fingers from rattling out an instant response. I know what I want.

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
do u wanna go for a drive

I don’t expect him to reply. It’s late, and he’s busy. _His dad …_

No doubt he fared better with that then me. Not that that’s the point – no, the point is that Marco is clarity when everything else just seems a right old mess everywhere else I look. Even if it’s just Marco stretched across an electronic distance. The thought of him there … it still quenches something.

I stare at the screen of my phone, in the semi-dark of my room, until it blips to black. I see my reflection in the darkness, one side of my face illuminated by the pale glow of streetlamps, and I know I look bad. I look so bad.

But then my phone lights up. Artificial blue seizes the dark space around me. Inbox: 1.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
Please.

 _Oh_.

Marco. Not you too?

I text him back unsparingly, asking him if he remembers the route to the outlook, from all that time ago. He tells me he does.

I tell him I’ll see him there in twenty minutes.

 

* * *

 

My second worst decision of the day is the one where I think it’s smart to escape the house by climbing out my bedroom window, and scaling the roof and the pool shed, to get down onto the grass. My foot slips on the tiles more than once, and it’s not an exaggeration to say I revere the feeling of hard earth under my feet when I finally set down onto safe footing. The kitchen lights are off, and I can’t hear the sound of the TV in the living room either – whoever’s here has already gone to bed.

I sneak out through the back gate, and make my way, road-side, around to the front of the house. My dad’s car is back on the driveway.

I try not to think about what that means.

I jump into the Jag, and peel out of there as quickly as possible, so that I don’t _have_ to think. I tune the stereo to the first station I can pick up – smooth, easy listening crap that you always find on at this time of night – but it’s noise, and I _need_ noise, and it’s nice. It fills the car.

There’s something exceptional about driving a car at night that my pretentious, inner-douche just laps up, like a cat with cream. You can’t see further than the glow of your headlights, so you’re left to drive the whole way without being able to truly see what’s coming, save for the bulbs of light on the roadside and in the horizon, that make you dizzy, and forget how much of a dream is a dream.

I like the colour of night in Trost; more alive, and more richly coloured than the day. The blur between where the twinkling of skyscrapers ends and the stars start is enchanted, and the sky is not dark and black without character – it is a deeper blue, and the starscape a whimsical swirl of freckled constellations that I find myself loving.

I’m surprised I remember which turning I need to take.

The lack of rain has made the dirt track up into the hills almost sand beneath the tires of my car – in the dark, the orange dust is grey in front of my windshield, a deft cloud between me and the sprawling, sparkling mass of the city below. The plateau of the viewpoint spreads out either side, and I drop the Jag into park, eager – really eager – to breathe in the air that doesn’t grace the city streets. There is a charm to it, when it doesn’t taste like car fuel, or exhaust pipes, or a mix of whichever coffee shop and kebab house you’re standing half-way between. It tastes like I know water should – fresh and unspoiled. I climb onto the hood of the Jag, the engine beneath like a warm, rumbling belly; I’ve done this so many times before, but not enough. _Not enough_.

The sound of the radio is the lullaby, where the cicadas of the undergrowth are the symphony, and the pin-pricks of light spanning to the horizon (and higher) are my own personal night light. People say that the light of a city at night is unnatural, hostile, and menacing. I don’t think so. There’s no-one else down there that has the view that I do right now. They don’t get to see how each colour is brushed on top of the last, in delicate strokes, yellow on black, and blue on blue, making the deeper shades of the night a spectacular painting.

The feeling possesses me for a moment, and around me, there’s nothing but the stars – every kind of star. I float. Floating is better than drifting. That’s all I want.

I think when you’re alone at night, looking up at the stars in total darkness, you know that nameless person inside you. It’s a taste of peace.

The cliff edge is lit-up by headlights approaching from behind – I don’t need to look back, no. The van pulls up next to me in the dry, orange dirt, thrumming and spluttering, not a beautiful purr like my Jag, but alive nonetheless.

In the harsh light of the cabin, I see Marco – he looks fragile, like the slightest breath of wind will be too much for him. _Marco_.

As he climbs out of the van, I tilt my head back up at the sky, and admire it. His steps are soft and soundless in the sand.

“Rough night?” I say, cordially, resting my hands behind my head.

He slips onto the hood of my Jaguar, wriggling himself up the black paint, until he’s next to me, back to the glass, hip pressed to my hip. And then he deflates.

“You could say that.”

The radio hums something unintelligible to my ears, soft rifts and acoustic guitar, but it is nothing compared to how it feels to be shoulder to shoulder with him. Definitely what this scene needed. I hope he puts it down to me just shifting my weight, when I decisively squish a little closer into his side.

The moment is like a painting – I see it now, laid before me like a canvas, but with us in it, our cars, one white splodge, and one black splodge, parked side by side on the outcrop of dusty rocks – I visualise the scene from high above, as a spectator looking down on a quiet flicker of perfection.

It doesn’t last long, when Marco speaks.

“So who’s going to go first?”

I wriggle around a bit, press my chin against my chest, and slide a little further down the windshield. Can’t it just stay like this for a bit longer? That’d be nice.

That’s not how it’s meant to go, though.

My voice seems too coarse, too harsh, too wrong – no tender lilt like Marco’s, which matches the way the summer-night air feels against my skin. But I say it anyway.

“How … do you forgive yourself for the things you couldn’t become?”

He looks down at me like he’s more than the twenty years he has under his belt. He seems older, much older than me, because we’ve establish that at best, I’m a tall child, who hides under his duvet when things approach too fast.

“Jean?” he says – the things his voice does to the vowels in my name is not what I need, but at the same time, it’s everything. Hearing it whenever possible is nice. I don’t tell him that. Why would I? _How_ would I? “What do you mean?”

Well, if I could answer that question, we’d all be better off.

With heavier eyelids come sincere words, so I don’t think there’s much to be done with the way my thoughts roll off my tongue. I’m a frank guy. Maybe not always like this, but honesty is honesty, isn’t it? Marco is the sort of person to whom anyone would feel comfortable spilling their heart out.

“If I could just … give in, and be all the things dad wants me to be, d’you think it would be easier? If I were good enough for him, if I were the son he … fuck … if I were the son that he … wanted, maybe it would— maybe I could bat a blind eye to— maybe everyone would be _happy_.”

I suck in a deep breath; I grabble for the words, like searching for a light switch in a dark room.

“Dad laid it pretty straight when he came home and saw my face. Not happy. Gave me the whole line about what other people are going to think, how other people are gonna judge him. Even asked me what he did wrong to end up with such a shitty son. Well, not in so many words, but … yeah.  Said I was an embarrassment. He told me I had to sort out my _priorities_.”

“I think your priorities are just fine,” Marco breathes.

“Not according to him,” I admonish. “I’m not good enough. Not anymore. That’s if I even was before.” I begin to pick at the mesh of scabs across my knuckles again – but it really doesn’t take long for Marco to notice again, and gently swat my hands away from one another.

“You know,” he starts, “There’s something my mom told me the first time I came home from a ward shift in my first year of pre-med. The shift was tough, and I was really _scared_ the whole time.” He puts emphasis on that word, because apparently it’s important. “I thought I’d done a really bad job, because the consultant we were shadowing that day took me aside to talk at the end of the shift, and told me that I needed to work harder on my, uh … _nervousness_ when I was put on the spot with patients. That night when I went home, I was a mess, and I told my mom that I didn’t want to be a doctor anymore, that I wasn’t cut out for it, that I wasn’t _good enough_ in the eyes of the surgeons there. You know what she said to me? She said: Marco, you are the _only_ person you need to be good enough for. If you believe that, everything will right itself in the end. So that’s what I’m telling you, Jean. It doesn’t matter if you’re not good enough for your parents. You will always be too much of something for someone ... don't lose your own edge – don’t sacrifice parts of yourself for them, Jean. You are your own person. You only have to be good enough for yourself.”

I know that his words should rally something inside of me – that they should summon some haughty courage. And they almost do, because I can feel how they rouse the hairs on my arms, but … above all, I am a cynic.

 _I don’t even know if I’m good enough for myself, Marco. What am I meant to do then, huh_?

Something in the back of my mind reminds me that it won’t even matter at the end of the day, if I’m good enough to be happy with myself … because come results day next week, I’m probably gonna be fucking _disowned_ as it is.

Marco would tell me that it’s okay to feel weak. He would tell me that even if it feels like you’re seconds away from everything crashing down upon you, it’ll end up okay in the end. You can admit to moments of weakness and know that it isn’t wrong.

I wish … I wish I knew how to believe in that philosophy.

I make a noise of acknowledgement, and let myself slide almost all the way down the hood, until I’m on my back, staring upwards at the great, big, fucking _mess_ of sky. I don’t want it to feel like this. I don’t want to feel so useless. Fuck.

“Wish I was like you,” I find myself murmuring. “Parents couldn’t complain if they had a _perfect_ son.”

 Marco shifts; he pulls away, and I lose the warmth, and he sits forward, bringing his knees up to his chest, where he rests upon them. He’s not looking at the stars – and I know he loves them.

“I’m not perfect, Jean.”

“Sure you are,” I reply swiftly. Boy, my tongue is getting loose. And this is without drinking. “I don’t call you Freckled Jesus for nothin’.”

He snorts wryly at that – maybe I’ve never called him that to his face before. I want him to sit back. I want to feel the cotton of his shirt caught against my arm again. C’mon. He doesn’t oblige me.

I see where this is going.

I reach up with one arm, and tug gently at the hem of his shirt; his skin is warm where the backs of my fingers brush against him. He shivers – but sure as hell isn’t cold out here tonight.

“Marco,” I say, breaking the silence; I think about the way something in my chest aches, something that is pushed and pulled and suffocated by some ethereal, gravitational pull, which radiates from him. It squashes down the words I think I should probably say – I’m never good at saying what I mean. Not when it matters.

The air feels dense and heavy.

He repeats the words just said, and they linger. “I’m not perfect, Jean.”

I prop myself up onto my elbows, and study him in the dark, how his back curves over as he cradles his head between his knees. His back is strong, and his shoulders broad, but he looks so small now. I slip down the hood, matching him posture for posture, but maintaining a slither of air between us. I can now see his face – the skin between his eyebrows is pinched, and his mouth a taught, firm line.

My throat seizes up when I try to speak, so my words come out cracked – which irks me, because I need them to be sincere.

“You’re really smart,” I say first, as a whisper. “You always know what to do. Way better than me. Shit hits the fan and I decide that the best possible solution is to just … hide under a pile of duvets and wish for the world around me to just stop. You’re considerate. You’re selfless, you know? I don’t understand how you care so much, but fuck, you do it anyway. And y-you’re friendly. Everyone likes you – even if they’ve just met you. You’re always like … smiling. Always happy.”

You make _me_ happy.

Marco sighs wistfully, and tilts his head to look me, his cheek still pressed against his knees. His eyes catch the faint lights of the city a little brighter than before.

“It’s hard … being happy all the time,” he breathes. For the second time in the night, I think my heart breaks. It makes me feel bad – because whatever I might want to complain about my life, here he is, silently shouldering some invisible weight; Marco is strong, stronger than me, and he’s beginning to collapse. How bad is it, Marco? What’s going on?

“Marco,” I say. I shouldn’t be doing this – I have no clue how to be a professional shrink, or deal with other people’s problems like this. The most challenging thing I’ve ever had to deal with was trying to convince Connie that Sasha definitely had a thing for him – and that was fucking obvious. This is hard.

But it’s hard not to miss the pieces of the puzzle, and even harder not to put them together.

“Your dad …” I begin, tentatively. “You said he was … coming home today. Does that—” I think about all the reasons why – why that could not be a good thing. What is he having to deal with by himself? “— does that … not … make you happy?”

Marco’s eyes glisten – oh God. Oh God, no, please don’t cry. I don’t know how to deal with—

He swallows audibly, and holds it all in. Marco is strong, remember. A wave of admiration washes over me, because Jesus, he must be just a fraction away from cracking.

“It should do,” he whispers, pained. “ _It should do_.”

What do I have to do to make him want to open up to me? What do I have to do, to give him what he so easily knows how to give to me? What can be so bad to make him hold a look like this? I hate it. I really do.

What is he so afraid of that he can’t tell me?

I end up voicing that last line into the darkness, and into the space between us.

“What are you afraid of, Marco?”

I regret the words the moment they leave my lips – because they sound too harsh, too direct, too nosey. They sound too cold; they sound like something my dad would say.

 _What are you afraid of, Jean_?

Well, everything.

I feel Marco’s eyes on me – and I rue the darkness for once, because his eyes are just black spaces, where I know there would usually be deep, honey brown, with flecks of flaxen yellow that only show up when the sun shines on his face just right. Fuck.

I’m in so deep – so deep, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to pull myself out of this pool this time around.

He chews his lip, and, to my surprise, he gives me an answer.

“Being pitied.”

He’s afraid of being pitied. Why would anyone pity him? He’s _amazing_. To tell him: _but I don’t pity you_ – will that make it any better? I’m not sure it will, however hard I wish it would. So I settle for the next best thing, and the only thing I can rely on myself to still offer him.

I think there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, who latch onto and absorb all the things they don’t have, until they feel selfishly full again, and those who prefer to be sad alone.

I don’t think Marco prefers to be sad alone … I just think that’s how it’s ended up. This is the only time I want him to be like me. I want him to be selfish.

I think about how it felt to have him hold my hand on the rooftop those few weeks ago. How it felt to have both his hands in mine, coaxing me into the pool I never thought I’d step foot in again in my life. I remember his hands pressed against my cheeks, and the bare touch of his thumb across my skin at the gas station.

I can do that. Everything else might be tumultuous mess around us, but here, in the eye of the storm, I can be pretty sure of one thing. I am here. If I can give him anything, it’s something to hold onto.

I don’t tackle him, or squash him in some giant bear hug. I just loop one arm around his shoulder, encircling my fingers around his far bicep, and draw him into my side. He bigger than me, and broader than me, and it feels a little dumb, but I reckon it’s probably worth the way he releases the tension built up in his body in one swift breath, and his head plops down onto my shoulder with a shaking sigh.

I press my nose into the crown of his head, tickled by his thick hair, and this – _this_ is what I’m meant to do, right?

In that instance, I find myself knowing the melody that wallows in the summer air – the melancholic acoustics and the sweet lilt of a shuddering song – I know it well, like some well-versed dreamscape, that whisps its way through our legs, and the trees, and through city streets far below.

 _“Starry, starry night_  
Paint your palette blue and gray  
Look out on a summer's day  
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul”

It feels like an old lullaby, the sort of thing your find your parents listening to on a long car journey, whilst you drift on the threshold between asleep and awake in the backseat, their conversation lost to your ears save a gentle hum that merges with the strumming of a guitar string, as red tail lights pass by beyond the car window in silence. At least, that’s what it reminds _me_ of.

Marco shifts against me, and when he does, I feel a pull on my shirt where he’s fisted his hand in the cotton against my stomach without me realising. He murmurs against me, and I feel his breath. Jesus.

“I know this song.” His voice is low and drawn out. “My dad really likes Don McLean.”

There’s a painful space when he pulls away, and the last semblance of friction, between where his shoulder presses into my side, disappears as charged static, that springs between us. He stretches his arms high above his head; the muscles in his shoulders, in his back – they ripple and flex, and as he rolls his neck, it gives a satisfying crick.

Marco lies back, flat against the hood of this car, and folds his hands one over the other, on top of his stomach. He breathes deeply, and I am struck by the rise and fall of his chest, and how that makes his hands move too.

He blinks really slowly – one, twice, three times – but when he finally settles on opening his eyes, there’s a new clarity there, I think, and he looks up high, higher than me as I peer over him, up into the sky. I know he’s fascinated by it. He doesn’t have to be drunk this time for me to notice that.

Before I realise, my eyes are scanning his face for the places where I know his freckles are – even if I can’t really see them in this light, I know where they are. I’m not sure exactly when I went about memorising and charting the constellations on his face, but here I am, recalling the strip of four that arches the bridge of his nose, and the coordinates of the larger ones that appear, one below his right eyes, one on his chin, two as a double stipple in the middle of one cheek.

 _Jean. When was the last time you looked at Mikasa like this_?

“Jean, you’re staring.”

 _W-what_?

“I-I’m not,” I blurt out automatically. But that’s not true. “Uh … I was just … _you know_. You really like looking at stars, huh?”

Marco smiles – a small, sad smile – but it’s a smile nonetheless. He gestures for me to move up the car, to sit closer. I don’t need asking twice.

“They hold memories,” he admits wistfully as I slide up next to him. “Reminds me … of when Mina was little. When she first started at kindergarten, she was teased about her freckles.”

“Dumb-ass kids,” I muse. Freckles are great. Anyone who thinks otherwise clearly doesn’t know anything. Marco hums in agreement with me.

“She ended up really hating them. When it was really bad, I remember when mom and I would go pick her up, she’d be crying. The kids in her class would call her “spotty”, and other … uninventive things. She wasn’t like she is now. Her skin wasn’t so tough.”

It’s hard to imagine that, I think. Mina is a pretty tough kid, and she definitely knows how to give good lip these days. She has no trouble sassing me.

“I remember, this one time, mom was out, and Mina was crying about it again. It was pretty scary – especially because … let’s see, I must’ve been fourteen or fifteen at the time – and she kept asking me what she did wrong to make her different from the other kids. It was hard. I didn’t know what to do.”

Marco sighs, and I watch his eyes flicker closed, for a brief moment, before he continues the story.

“I don’t know how I came up with the idea. But she loved it. I told her that she was lucky, because her freckles are like her own personal stars, and not many other kids had that – she was worn special. I told her that, just like the sky, she could find patterns on her skin, and if she connected her freckles with lines, she could make pictures, like astronomers do with constellations. She lapped it all up. I think that’s where the whole art thing happened – she really got into drawing after that. First of all, on me. I was a great, big game of dot-to-dot to her. I’m surprised I didn’t get ink poisoning, if I’m honest.”

Marco laughs to himself, and wow. Really, _wow_.

I have an idea. It’s almost wicked, but more than that, it’s perfect. And it’s slightly selfish. But we won’t – and we don’t need to – go into that. I scoot my butt over to the edge of the car, and slide off the hood with as much grace as a beached jellyfish, almost losing my footing as the dirt ground is a little farther away than expected. Marco half-sits up, watching me curiously, supported by his elbows.

“Jean?”

“Hang on,” I say, pulling open the passenger door of my Jag, and climbing onto the seat, where I open up the glove box. It really needs a good clear out – empty cigarette packets, and receipts from McDonald’s, and spare paper napkins are mainly what I store in there – but I’m pretty sure, somewhere— aha! Yep, I was right.

I close the glove box with a bit of a struggle, trying not to let all the crap inside cascade out over the foot well, balancing what I’ve found between my teeth. I slide out of the car backwards, and then shut the door, swinging myself up onto the hood again, with better ease this time.

“Wha—?” Marco begins, as I hold up the item in my hand, with a somewhat triumphant grin. It’s a marker pen. I knew I had one somewhere in the car. “Jean?”

He tries to sit up further, but I press one hand onto his chest, and push him back down – maybe he blushes, I don’t know, but he feels really _warm_ then. I cross my legs beside him, and uncap the pen with my teeth, spitting the lid into my palm, and then putting that into my pocket.

“Gimme your arm,” I instruct, not really waiting for him to agree, manoeuvring one of his hands off his stomach, and plonking his forearm into my lap. I can feel him watching me intently, and that makes the hairs on the back of my neck bristle – in anticipation, I guess.

Oh, but his _smile_ , man.

If I squint hard enough, I can make out the individual dots that spatter his arm, and as I press the nib of the marker into his skin, I feel him jolt.

“It’s just cold,” he says lightly, craning his neck so that he can watch me. I move the pen between one freckle and the other, forming a thick, black line – he shivers again. I move my free hand to hold the top of his arm, at the elbow, still.

“Moving canvases are the worst,” I smirk, squeezing my grip a little tighter. I think Marco’s breath catches, but really all it does it make me grin like a champ.

I connect that one line to a diagonal downwards, meeting a smaller freckle, and then diagonally up, to another, finishing off with a final line, parallel to the first. The letter M. I move the pen sideways across his arm, and start on the next letter.

Marco lets his head drop back against the hood – I guess the view isn’t great from his angle, or maybe he’s getting cramp in his neck, but there’s less churning in the pit of my stomach when he moves his gaze back to watching the sky, and not watching my hands.

I think I lose him – his body language suggests he could be sleeping, with the way he breathes so slowly and deeply, and how he doesn’t move a muscle – but his eyes are still open, so I guess he’s just floating somewhere I can’t quite reach him right now. It’s a better expression on his face, with the wrinkle between his eyebrows smoothed out – relaxed.

I know the feeling. I’ve always liked it when people draw on me too – though for me, it was always Sasha or Connie doodling multi-coloured dicks on my forearms during class, and somehow always getting away with it.

I lean in closer, trying to find a good freckle for my next line in the dark. I’m close. Real close. It feels okay though.

The last letter of my freckle constellation is a round O, which draws back Marco’s attention. His eyes flit to his arm, and then to my face, and he raises his eyebrows, somewhat unamused. (Though, he’s not really. He’s pretty _a-_ mused, I’d say.)

“Wow, really original,” he remarks, removing his arm from my grasp, and holding it up in front of his face – the word is upside-down for him, ironically. M-A-R-C-O. “At least now if I forget my own name…”

“Can it,” I snipe jovially, seizing his arm quickly back, giving him barely time to blow on his skin to try and dry the marker pen. “I’m not done yet.”

It’s not like my next constellation is much better. A handful of strokes later, and I’m looking down at my own name written in his freckles, just below his. The E is a little wonky, because there was no good freckle to make the central stroke parallel to the others; it’s a bit clumsy, but it makes Marco beam.

“Draw something,” he says, softly.

Well, you don’t have to tell me twice.

I doodle on his arms until there’s barely another freckle not connected to its neighbour. It’s mainly stupid stuff – like really bad, five-pointed stars, a handful of bug-eyed cats and dogs, flowers, leaves, a hot air balloon that I’m mildly proud of … anything really. Once I get going, it’s easy to see the shapes pull themselves out of the smattering of brown dots on his tan skin.

In the last space, on the inside of his wrist, I draw a little cloud, and turn the left over freckles into rain drops across his veins. When the pen dabs onto his skin, Marco jerks his hand away with a squeak.

“Th-that tickles!” he whines, holding his wrist out of my reach as I try to pull it back to finish the droplets.

“C’mere you big baby,” I jibe, lunging across his chest. His other arm loops around my side, and his hand grips the side of my shirt in a sharp tug, trying to pull me away from grabbing back my masterpiece – his forearm. The movement pulls me down on top of him, my chest presses flat against his. _Close_.

He makes a low noise. I freeze.

“M-Marco, I—”

Both his hands brace either side of my body, his fingers on my ribs, and if I just … if I just shifted a little further forward, I could— if I want to—

We’re almost nose to nose, Marco’s cheeks flushed, and if the temperature burning in my face is anything to go by, so are mine.

 _What do I_ —

His freckles. H-his _mouth_. His breathe on my face. He says something I almost don’t catch.

“Jean … look.”

He sits up, bringing me with him, so I’m almost propped in his lap, and his eyes follow something moving over my shoulder. I push away from him, because it’s still _so close_ , but he holds me firm at my sides.

“Jean, stop moving. It’s landed on you.”

Those are four words I’m definitely _not_ a fan of. I can’t move away from him fast enough.

“W-what?! Get it off me, get it off me!”

Marco laughs gutturally, and steadies me with one hand on my shoulder, as he fishes something off my back. A little, yellow-green glow twitches on the outstretched finger that he presents to me.

“Firefly,” he grins, showing me the brown and pale-yellow bug, about an inch long, shaking its glow-in-the-dark butt around in my face.

“That’s gross,” I say, scrunching my nose – and slightly regretting it when the break stings - and I lean back from the insect. Marco loves it though, making some weird cooing noise at the thing balancing on his finger. “Marco, c’mon, put it down.”

“No, it’s cute,” he smiles, inspecting it closer. It flutters its wings, but doesn’t launch, scuttling down the length of his index finger, and then back again. When it reaches his nail again, it takes off, twizzling up into the night sky like some drunk bottle rocket. “Hey, look, it’s got a friend!”

True enough, as I crane my head up, the firefly begins a whirling tango with another blob of yellow light, spinning in dizzying circles, ‘round and ‘round.

“I didn’t realise we had fireflies in Trost,” Marco remarks, enamoured with the floating light dance. “I haven’t seen any in years.”

I take the opportunity to right myself on the hood of the car, returning to my original position of propped up against the windshield. Marco moves to join me, his eyes never straying once from the scene above. He has an expression painted on his face like a kid in a candy store.

“Did you get them in Jinae?” I ask, as two – no, three – more glowing orbs appear over the lip of the outlook, maybe looking for their friends. Marco seems to prickle with excitement.

“Yeah, all the time,” he says. “The yard of our house then backed onto a wood – you’d get whole swarms of them at this time of year. It was magic.”

“Must’ve been a bit of a culture shock moving to this place then,” I murmur. Marco tilts his head to look at me, and there’s something strangely – excessively – sincere about the expression in his eyes.

“It has its perks,” he says, meekly. I can’t help but feel the heat crawl back into my cheeks, and up the nape of my neck. I chew on the inside of my cheek, and pull my gaze away from his, forcing myself to look back at the cloud of fireflies milling around. There are more now, maybe a dozen, and I wonder where they’re coming from. I’ve never seen them up this way before.

“There was a lake in the wood,” Marco continues with his story, “My dad … when I was little, my dad built a tire swing from one of the trees that bent over the water, so I always liked to play there. The fireflies liked it too – well, not so much when dad and I decided to try and catch them in some of the glass jars we had lying around.”

The mental image makes me smile, imagining a little, baby Freckles running around in tatty shorts and a floppy hat, swinging around and oversized net, trying to scoop up clouds of the glowing bugs.

“I wasn’t very good at it,” Marco admits, his voice becoming a little quiet, and maybe … maybe a touch more reserved as well. “Dad … dad, he was much better at it. But then again, parents always are, aren’t they? They … know how to do everything.”

“Did Mina go with you?” I ask, seeking detail for the picture I’m painting in my head now. I visualise her: gappy-toothed like she is now, but just a whole lot shorter and chubbier with baby fat, shaking the jars of fireflies in her stubby fingers – because hell, I have _first-hand experience_ that she’s a sadist like that.

Marco smiles, a tinge of something wistful, and nods, as one firefly from our personal show dips down lower than the others, zipping past Marco’s flank. He moves his hand to see if he can catch it, but it easily evades his fingers.

“Yeah. When she was born, I was old enough to take her to the lake by myself, so when she learned to walk, we’d go down there just after sunset in the summers, and we’d fill a few jars, watch them for a bit, until mom called us in … and then we’d let them all go, and I’d piggyback her home, because she’d be too tired to walk.”

I don’t remark on how he leaves his dad out of that scenario – maybe it’s not glaringly obvious to him, but it is to me. It makes me wonder what happened between Marco being a kid, and his sister being born. But I don’t want to open the wounds from earlier this evening.

“Sounds like you were a pretty rad big brother,” I say, and he eyes me with disdain at my use of the word _rad_. I find his story makes me kinda glad that my parents decided to stop having kids after me – I woulda been a pretty shitty big brother, I reckon. And not to mention the other kid – my brother, or sister – would’ve had to go through everything too. I don’t think I’d wish it on them, hypothetical or not.

“I try,” Marco says quietly. “I try really hard. I want to be there for her, you know?” The way he says that … I know there’s more. There’s definitely more, and I want to know, I really do, but … even a swarm of fireflies, and a smattering of pen lines all over his arms, and an evening that feels straight out of a movie has not granted me the ability to simply _ask_. Marco mistakes my silence for something else, though.

“Ah … I’m sorry, Jean. You probably don’t want to hear this, do you? I’ll stop rambling.”

“No, it’s cool,” I say, giving him a reassuring nudge with my elbow. “I like it.” _I never had stuff like that when I was growing up. It’s nice to hear._ “Plus it makes you feel better, doesn’t it? I can tell. You should see your face.”

Marco moves to hide his face behind his hand in embarrassment, so I try my hardest to push my sincerity into my own expression. I really mean it. Reminiscing about his childhood brings a new light into his face, that I think he really needs.

“Take me to Jinae sometime,” I prod, “I want to learn how to catch fireflies, okay?”

He chuckles lightly, and rubs the skin beneath his nose with his pointer finger. It’s … well, shit, it’s _cute_.

“S-sure. I’d … really like that.”

 

* * *

 

I’m not sure how much longer we sit on the hood of my car, watching the swarm of fireflies. They bridge the gap between the Trost city lights below, and the blanket of stars above, and despite the general creepy-crawliness, I really love it, as long as they don’t land on me again.

An hour or two: worth a thousand golden coins, worth the clear scent of flowers instead of city smog, worth songs and flutes on the radio like faint threads of sound. The night is deep. I pin this time with Marco to memory, making sure to memorise ever colour, every sound, every feeling that flushes through my skin.

Both of us are pretty still, shoulder to shoulder against the windshield, and it’s a good feeling. Every time I remember what I’m going to have to deal with when I go home, I’m able to push it back, for the time being at least, because I can hold onto the sensation of his skin against mine. It’s tangible. It’s what I needed.

I don’t feel so numb, and I know, with every fibre of being, who that’s thanks to.

I try my luck, and let my head drop onto his shoulder – Marco hums something under his breath.

“It’s probably pretty late,” he says; I feel him press his nose into my hair gently, as if he doesn’t really intend to, but he finds himself doing it anyway. I don’t choose to remark on it, though. “Do you want to go home?”

Not really. I’d rather stay here all night, if I had the choice. This is nice.

But I have to face up to it sometime or another. And I guess I’d rather have a night’s kip in a real bed under my belt, before I go jumping in the deep end.

“Guess I should,” I mumble, debating how fun it’s going to be climbing back in my bedroom window at this time of night, considering that, of course, I didn’t bring my house keys with me when I left earlier. “How ‘bout you?”

“Yeah,” he admits, and I feel his chest rise as he inhales deeply – his nose is still buried in the crown of my ashen hair. “If my mom hasn’t already realised I’ve skipped the house, she will do soon. And then she’s start pacing the kitchen, and wear a hole in the lino, until I get back. I don’t really want to stress her out any more than she already is.”

I peel my cheek off his shoulder, and that’s the signal to part. We both scoot to the edge of the Jag, and step off into the sand; the space is suddenly very odd-feeling, and I’m not entirely sure if I resent it. I watch Marco slide into the cabin of his van, check his cell phone, which he apparently left on the seat, and start the engine, before I get into the front of my car myself. I quickly roll down the window, and mime for him to do the same.

“See you Wednesday, yeah?” I call out; Marco nods enthusiastically.

“Yeah. Drive safe, Jean.”

 

* * *

 

Almost falling in the pool in the dark, two loose roof tiles, and one near death experience later, and I’m safely back in my room, somewhere in the hours approaching 2AM.

I change into a ratty bed shirt and some sweatpants, and fall into bed, lying flat on the covers, as my phone lights up the room in pale blue on my bedside table. I scramble for it clumsily, dragging the sleek, black Samsung onto my pillow.

Unlocking the screen, I’m not surprised to see it’s Marco checking up on me.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
I’m just home! I hope you got back safely.

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
yeah just got into bed. gonna sleep for a year

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
Sounds like a plan … sadly I have work in the morning. I don’t want to go  >3<

The dumb emoticon makes me roll my eyes – what is he, a teenage girl? I try to imagine him making that face, and it just makes me snort to myself in the dark.

Before I have time to type out a reply, I get a follow-up message in my inbox.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
Thanks for tonight, by the way, Jean. You always know how to cheer me up. :’)

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
glad im useful for something lmao

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
but seriously

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
im glad. u dont have to be happy all the time. next time ur feelin shit, call me or come over or whatever. i can regale u with tales of connie and the jellybeans. i know theyre ur fave

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
and also let it be known that ill sit with u in a parking lot at 2am again any time

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
Is that supposed to mean something pretentious? :p

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
shut up u suck

I watch my phone for five minutes after that, but there are no more replies, so I slip it under my pillow, after flicking it onto vibrate for the rest of the night.

My heart thrums loudly in my chest as I try to grasp the fringes of the sleep I know I probably need. My mind wanders to the car crash I’m going to have to deal with in the morning – or maybe in the afternoon, because I can probably spend a couple hours hiding, right?

Well, anyway, that’s going to be fun. I don’t know how I’m going to face mom without either blubbing like a baby, or wanting to run for the hills. I don’t know how I’m going to face dad, full stop.

I see his expression in my mind, his shock, his anger, and it burns at the quinacridone edges of my mind. I can see this not being the last time we come to blows. It’s going to happen again.

In the hollowness that fills the cavities in my chest, I find myself longing for his shoulder to rest my head on again, or the feeling of squishy skin beneath my fingers as I cradle his arm in my lap as I draw on it.

I don’t want to roll over at 2AM to a text message, no. I want hands on my back, or on my ribs, or on my face. I want gentle murmurs in my ear, I want the earthy smell of camomile, I want smiles that melt away the fear in my limbs.

I want—

Oh, _fuck_.

Maybe it’s the fuzziness of the borderline of sleep. Maybe I can keep telling myself that. If not, I have another problem.

I don’t want to roll over at 2AM to a text message. I think …

I think I want to roll over to a kiss.

 _I think I like Marco Bodt_.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jean, my son, you are so, totally fucked.
> 
> I promise things would start moving forward, didn't I? 
> 
> Aside from that, what do I have to say ... well, for starters, I'm sorry this chapter was so mopey! I'm afraid the general angsting is going to be a reoccurring thing for the foreseeable few chapters. We're going to get to the bottom of the Marco thing very soon, and Jean is also going to have a lot of run-ins with his dad. It's going to be tough.
> 
> I hope Jean wasn't out of character ... I tried very hard to focus on making him true to canon in this chapter, and I had his character tropes up at every instant where I was questioning his decisions. It was all about balancing that with the believability of parental disappointment that I'm sure a lot of us are familiar with feeling.
> 
> What else ... those fireflies were such a cockblock, right? Tell me about it. 
> 
> The song in the chapter is Don McLean's Vincent, of course. The Van Gogh painting, Starry Night, inspired the feeling in this chapter. I studied it closely before, and during, writing, because I wanted to capture it within my words. I really love that painting.
> 
> Let me know your thoughts! I'm really excited this time! Especially considering the last line ... As always, comments and concrit are staunchly appreciated, and I read every single one I get! And thank you for all the kudos, hits, and art that've come this way since the last chapter ... I am so humbled by it all. If you have anything you want me to see, drop it in the fic: droplets tag on Tumblr, and I will be on that like Jean on a freckled butt.
> 
> Until next time! It's going to be a wild one for Jeanbo.


	14. Can't Fight This Feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The problem came when my father asked me: "if he told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?"
> 
> The problem was, daddy dear, I would have jumped, even if he never asked me to.

When I was five years old, I had a crush on Sasha Braus. It was great, because we both liked chocolate ice cream, and her favourite class was also art, and she helped me fend off some third graders at recess with mud clods to the back of their heads. That’s really all you want in a potential playground wife when you’re in first grade, right? _She_ was great – when you’re five years old, and you’ve spent your entire life thus far around only your family, it’s no surprise that you form such close attachments to kids and other people, you meet outside of home. They’re exciting and new and shiny like an unwrapped present.

Sasha liked to play dirty; she would always join in when we were basting mud pies, she would make people laugh in class by sticking straws and pencils and God knows what else up her nose, and she would always try her hardest to coax me out of some part of my packed lunch … but that was all totally okay with me, because she’d give me the biggest, cheesiest grin and a thank you when I obliged her with a packet of chips.

My parents were enamoured with the fact we were friends – even if it was probably them who’d pushed us to meet each other in the first place, though I can’t actually remember our first meeting to be honest – Sasha’s father and my father went to the same university, just a few years a part, and were both part of Trost new-money families, both heading up home-grown businesses in their own names during the eighties. It was the perfect match.

What my parents, and Sasha’s parents, and probably me as well, didn’t count on, was that Sasha had about as much interest in me as a potato. Actually, bad analogy. Pretty sure I come below potatoes in the grand scale of things, but you get my gist. About as much romantic interest in me as a piece of chewing gum on the bottom of her shoe.

Because there was also Connie. And Connie Springer, when I was five years old, was my arch nemesis for all the reasons my fat, little brain could fathom. Everyone loved Connie Springer – our classmates, the teachers, everyone else’s parents, Sasha. Connie was confident, loud, funny, not self-conscious of anything … running around like a lit bottle rocket all the time, any time.

For approximately, I dunno, two weeks – which was a pretty long period of time at that age – I was intensely jealous of him, because Sasha liked him more than me.

Looking back on it, I have to ask five-year-old me what the hell he was thinking; because a marriage to Sasha – even a playground marriage – is, uh … not really on my list of top things to do with my life. I think I’d probably prefer to throw myself in the pool instead.

But at the end of the day, none of that really matters.

Because this … this is _entirely fucking different_.

I think I like Marco Bodt.

 _Marco Bodt_.

My pool guy. Twenty years old. Dark hair. Loadsa freckles. Eyes that catch the sun and turn flaxen yellow in the right light.

This is … not right. I can’t _like_ Marco. He’s a _guy_ – and I don’t like guys, do I? I l-like Mikasa, I _liked_ Sasha, I let Hitch what-ever-her-name was _blow me_ behind the bike sheds in sophomore year of high school.

A-and it shouldn’t even matter that he is a guy – ‘cus he’s my friend. My _best_ friend. There’s gotta be something in the bro-code about this. It’s like … you know, the same as me liking Connie, or liking Eren, or—

_But you can’t fucking deny you were just thinking about what Marco’s tongue would feel like in your m—_

Jesus fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.

I am not sleeping tonight, I’ll tell you that much. I roll over onto my side, but that’s no good – the pillow too lumpy, the sheets too itchy. I try rolling onto my back again, but yeah, I can feel the springs of my mattress digging into my spine. Nope. I sit up too quickly, my head spinning, drawing my knees up to my chest, and pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes.

Why am I suddenly thinking of this now? Why am I … you know, imagining things like—

It’s not like it’s an epiphany – no choir of angels, or dramatic background soundtrack, or fluttering of tree blossom in the wind – like in the movies where the heroine (or hero, I guess) finally realises she has the hots for Hugh Grant, or Patrick Swayze, or Heath Ledger, or whoever.

This is no dumbass chick flick. There are no ten things I hate about Marco … fuck, I don’t even know if there’s anything I hate about Marco. There’s no musical number, no nothing.

It just … it just is. Like something that’s slowly slid its way into my consciousness, and now suddenly, it’s too fucking late.

Sharing beds, holding hands, lying together on a car bonnet watching fucking fireflies. Jesus Christ.

He’s a guy, he’s my best friend.

He’s a _guy_. He’s my _best friend_.

Shit. I really fucking _like_ him.

It takes me a split second to scramble for my phone underneath my pillow, but a good five or six minutes of sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at the black screen, before I summon up courage to … do _something_.

I decide I need to talk to someone. Well, more like plea for help because … this. What _is_ this? Everything seems to whir inside my head at a hundred miles an hour, my own personal tornado of all the times I’ve touched Marco unsparingly, of all the warm feelings that filled my chest, of the boners – oh God, the fucking _boners_. At least they … make sense now? Right? _Oh God_.

Maybe I really am _gay_. It’s not something you really get to decide, is it? You’re just … born that way. But I don’t feel gay, ‘cus I don’t think I know what being gay feels like. _I know what liking Marco feels like_.  

What sort of _liking_ though? Why do I like Marco – and I’m not talking about the aesthetic side of things, ‘cus appreciating a hot bod is allowed, sexual or romantic interest or not, right?

Why do I like Marco? Because he’s selfless and kind? Cute as fuck? Because he’s the first fucking person to pay me this much attention is what feels like forever?

Oh God. This reminds me of that movie – you know, the one with Zoe Deschanel and the guy from _Inception_ – about being in love with the idea of being in love. Falling in love with the idea of there being a person, not the actual person.

Not that this is l-love. No.

_But still—_

I slide open the lock screen on my cell phone finally, and pull up my sparse contact list. I need to talk to someone, before I drown in this black vortex of confused questions.

Connie and Sasha are both immediately kicked off the list of possible contactees. Ymir too. Even Historia – she may be a goddess descended from the heavens, but … pretty sure she’s been corrupted by the evil freckled lesbian. And failing that, _definitely_ corrupted by thing one and thing two. Can’t be trusted.

Reiner and Bert are just as implausible, I decide, skimming past both their names. Whatever Bert knows, Reiner knows, and whatever Reiner knows, the whole of fucking Trost knows. And Trost doesn’t need to know that Jean Kirschtein is having a minor gay panic at two in the fucking morning, thank you very much.

Can’t pick anyone prone to gossip, okay.

I would text Mikasa, in the ideal world. In the _ideal world_ , because we don’t talk to each other that much, she’d be the perfect impartial third party to whine to via text message. But … well, in reality, she’d probably ignore me, and that’s if she hasn’t already changed her number since the last time I unsuccessfully tried to ask her out on a date. So, that’s a no to Mikasa.

Armin. To be honest, I’d put money on him blanching if he reads anything along the lines: _help, I think I want to bone the pool guy. Or at least create a secret handshake with his that involves presses our mouths together_. Armin’s never even mentioned anything about this sort of thing before. You know: being … _interested in someone_. (I briefly wonder if Armin’s ever even _been_ interested in anyone.)

So that leaves Eren. Fucking _Eren_ , at the end of all things. My thumb hesitates over his contact – newly added back to my phone, not even used yet since … well.

And it’s so fucking ridiculous, me, sitting here, clutching my phone between my hands, now staring at a blank message template.

Stupidly, he’s perfect for this sort of thing. He won’t beat about the bush with the truth. He won’t lie. He won’t _spread_ it, not if I ask. (He _owes me_ enough.)

And didn’t Sasha once say that Eren … liked guys? Well, girls and guys. _Well_ , non-committal, wiggly hand gesture, if we’re being specific.

My fingers tremble as I begin to type words out onto the blank space.

 **To: Jaegerbombastic**  
need to ask u a question

 **To: Jaegerbombastic**  
a HYPOTHETICAL question

 **To: Jaegerbombastic**  
so HYPOTHETICALLY what if i have this friend who totally digs this rlly hot chick and has been into girls all his life right

 **To: Jaegerbombastic**  
but suddenly hes realised hes actually kinda into this guy he knows and well hes kinda confused cus hes never had the hots for a guy before but its not like its actually a surprise cus

 **To: Jaegerbombastic**  
well cus this guy is like really attractive and kind and stuff

 **To: Jaegerbombastic**  
but he doesnt know what to do now cus obviously all this stuff is pretty fucking crazy and he hasnt even begun to think about what this is gonna do to their friendship and how his friends will think of him or if he actually like-likes this guy or just likes the attention or

 **To: Jaegerbombastic**  
sorry. didnt mean to ramble. u got any advice man

 **To: Jaegerbombastic**  
for my hypothetical friend

Okay, so that’s more than one message. That’s a _barrage_. That’s a whole flurry of: _I’m so fucking out of my depth here, what am I meant to do?_

For once in Eren’s miserable life – and boy, am I fucking thankful for this – he actually replies. My heart hammers in my chest as I pull up the inbox.

 **From: Jaegerbombastic**  
u can tll ur hypothetical frnd that he needs 2 get his hed out his asshole nd consder he might be a thng called bisexual

Looking over the fact he seems to be able to spell long words absolutely fine, but have no cognitive ability anywhere else, I shoot him a quick few responses. I don’t realise I’m holding my breath until I hit send again.

 **To: Jaegerbombastic**  
even if he only just started realising he liked guys ?

Eren replies before I’ve even taken my thumb off the touch screen. I can practically hear him rolling his eyes at me through his poorly spelled words.

 **From: Jaegerbombastic**  
what were u born in the fcking stone age or smthing

 **From: Jaegerbombastic**  
it doesnt fckin matter when u strted liking guys jesus do u think anyone actually cares. no

 **From: Jaegerbombastic**  
nd im rlly fcking glad ur hypothetical frnd will finally start leavin mikasa alone

 **From: Jaegerbombastic**  
only took 6 fckin years but u gotta work with what ur given i guess

My phone is saved from a premature death of being flung across my room only due to the fact that if I break this one, I’ll have to go grovel to my dad for a new handset. And I ain’t about that right now.  Instead, I furiously type back a response, pretty certain of the steam coming out of my ears.

 **To: Jaegerbombastic**  
what part of fucking HYPOTHETICAL did ur thick brain not understand ?!

 **From: Jaegerbombastic**  
look its 2 fckin am and ur usin big words i cant be expcted to read ok

 **From: Jaegerbombastic**  
but wlcome 2 the club man. always knew u were as bent as a nine dollar note. so whos the dude u crushin on? do i know him

 **From: Jaegerbombastic**  
if its me i will knife u in ur sleep dont get me wrong ok

I snort very loudly and very unattractively at that. In his _fucking dreams_. Who cares if I’m fucking new to this (whatever _this_ is), I know what’s attractive and what isn’t. Eren’s on the latter half of that list, believe me.

_So, you’re saying what’s attractive is dark hair, freckles, abs of steel, a really big—_

No. Yes. Fuck.

Another message from Eren lights up my screen anew, bringing electronic blueness to the residual darkness of my room.

 **From: Jaegerbombastic**  
does he like u back

O-oh.

It’s as if the storm of thoughts inside my head suddenly goes still, and falls off the radar. The air is still, and very muggy. Everything is eerily quiet, save for the sound of my internal monologue rereading those words aloud.

 _Does he like you back_?

Well done me, for making the assumption that yes, _of course_ Marco’s gonna want to stick his tongue down my throat, ‘cus he’s said he’s _gay_ , and I like _him_ , so therefore he _must_ like me. The world sadly doesn’t work like that.

Why would Marco _like me_ like that? What do I actually have to offer in the slightest – unless he’s into rake thin guys with emotional issues who turn to jelly when then go near a droplet of water. That would be peachy, wouldn’t it?

Something tells me he wouldn’t go for that. Something tells me he deserves better than that. Something _definitely_ tells me he doesn’t think of me like I think of him.

I drop my phone somewhere down the side of my bed, regardless of Eren and whether or not he has anything more to say, regardless of what damage I might cause to the thing, and cocoon myself up in my comforter, drawing the ratty, blue fabric up to my nose.

This sucks.

In the ocean of doubt and uncertainty, there is pretty much one only thing I’m sure of. I am fucked.

 

* * *

 

I see … I see Marco. We’re in what seems to be a coffee shop – your typical Starbucks, with a pretentious mismatch of wooden and leather chairs, and tables of different heights, and all the sorts of background people who come crawling out of the woodwork for an iced caramel macchiato five times a day. The edges of my vision seem to fizzle and waver, but I ignore it. Doesn’t seem important.

I don’t remember what I was doing before here, but it doesn’t really matter, as my eyes dart straight to where Freckles reclines in a high-backed, leather armchair, pulling aimlessly on the tufting, feet crossed at the ankles on a low table.

He doesn’t have a drink, but when I glance down at my hands, I realise I’m holding two white-and-green, styrofoam cups. Well then.

I don’t even have to call out, because he glances up, and a smile paints itself onto his expression – broad and angelic that kinda makes my knees knock. Only kinda. _Kinda_. (Okay, maybe not just kinda.)

I hand him his cup – his coffee – and the corners of his lips only stretch up further, revealing perfect, white canines. He takes a sip, his eyes flicker shut for the briefest of moments, and when he withdraws the cup, there’s a glistening bead of coffee on his lower lip.

I wonder if I could taste it if I kissed him.

“Do you want to try?” he says, some sort of melodic humour hiding behind the glimmer in his dark eyes. He gestures at me with his cup, pursing his mouth into an amused line. I glance down at him – I’m still standing up, but my coffee – my coffee is not in my hand anymore? In fact, I don’t know where it is. But whatever. Marco gestures again.

I lean down, and expect my mouth to meet warm plastic – but it doesn’t. My lips meet lips – warm, yes, but soft too – and the taste of bitter coffee mingles with the strange, new taste of the man I’m quickly kissing, the man whose hair I’m carding my hands through, the man whose jaw I’m sweeping my fingers over. It feels like the most natural thing in the world.

 _So this is what it’s like, huh_?

His tongue swipes against and slides between my lips – I wonder how he got so deft at this? He kisses like he’s speaking gentle words into my mouth, and he drags out a longing moan from the crest of warmth that’s spreading out from the core of my chest.

The scene around us seems to disappear – literally – with the coffee shop setting disintegrating into blackness, where the two of us float, weightless. He licks my open mouth, and it’s all I can do to pull him closer, tugging at the roots of his hair, breaths heavy and hitching. I can’t help the keening noises that I whisper between his lips, but he laps them up with his own, perfect, breathy gasps. Waves of heat are rushing over me, lathing up my back, creeping over the hairs on the nape of my neck – burning, or maybe that’s just where he touches me. His lips pop from mine with a fine web of saliva, before he dips back in to mouth wetly along the swell of my throat, each crude kiss poker-hot.

My heart thrums inside the cage of my chest, and I whine airily against his ear.

“ _Marco—_ ”

…

I awake with his name on my lips (and a distinctive tent in my pants). I am alone in my room. There is no Marco, and I sure as hell aren’t kissing him.

 _O-okay. So that … that was a thing. A thing that happened_.

This isn’t exactly how I wanted to start my day today. I already have to deal with mom and dad. I have to deal … to deal with Marco. With the fact I just woke up with a hard-on. With whatever this is.

I don’t want to be dealing with exactly where my mind has decided to take up residence in the gutter. Thanks _so much_.

 

* * *

 

I scuttle along the landing to the bathroom, and jump into the shower; I duck out of the way of the spritz of water, instead dampening a wash cloth, and using that to wipe down the sheen of sweat I’m pasted in. The water solves the, uh … the downstairs problem – no way can I stay at full mast with a pulse of water hammering into my skin.

After I’ve dried every miniscule droplet of water from my skin, and thrown on some scruffy shirt and ripped jeans, I manage to sneak downstairs with my sweat-soaked night clothes stuffed deep inside my laundry hamper, which I load quickly into the machine in the utility room.

I try not to think about Marco.

I try, and I fail.

I think about the time I accidentally pushed him in the pool – and then me stuffing his wet clothes in the tumble dryer. I remember … locking myself in the bathroom to deal with my … indelible thirst. Oh God. A wave of mortification rushes over me unsparingly. That was so fucking embarrassing.

 _But hey, does that mean you had the hots for him all the way back then_?

I remind my internal monologue to shut the fuck up.

I don’t have much time to dwell on it really, and I guess I’m kinda relieved that I’m forced to push Marco to the back of my mind for the time being, because I hear padding on the floor of the kitchen – not tapping, like you’d expected from, say, high heels – and clattering noises as a mug is set down on a counter top.

I tense up, and quietly push the door of the washing machine closed, with a gentle click. I lean back slightly, to grab a glance out of the utility room door – it’s mom, in the kitchen, her back to me, piling two generous spoons of coffee granules into a mug I got her for a mothers’ day one year. She’s not wearing heels, she’s not dressed to the nines despite being at home … she’s wearing grey sweatpants, a white tank top, and a light pink jumper that hangs off her skinny shoulders. No heels – fluffy slippers only. Her hair, at least from the back, looks like it’s only had a brush through it a couple times, and definitely no product or straightening, or whatever she usually inflicts on herself.

I don’t think she notices I’m here. Oh well, she’s about to.

I spin the dial on the washer, and hit the little flashing button, and the whole thing starts whirling and trembling, flinging my clothes around inside the drum; the sudden sound makes mom jump a mile, knocking over the jar of coffee powder on the counter top. She squeaks in surprise, as I right myself to my feet.

“J-Jean!”

I don’t exactly know how to deal with this – which is basically the story of my life right now. She looks like she’s had a rough night. Well, you and me both, mom. Okay, so maybe the first part of my night was pretty damn swell, but the early morning hours … I’m honestly surprised my dignity is still intact. I’ve successfully concluded that I’ve broken the bro-code, probably emancipated a friendship, and had a bordering on kinky-ass dream, all in the space of a handful of hours.

And that’s just the Marco stuff. Let’s all now recall the tumultuous events of yesterday, shall we?

I offer mom a weak smile, pretty pathetic by any standards, because I remember the sound of her sliding down the outside of my door yesterday, and the fragility in her voice that told me she’d been crying. I know the quirk in my lips falters quickly, and I can’t really bring myself to look her in the eye, training my gaze quickly on the floor.

“Y-you need any help with that, mom?” I stutter, gesturing limply to the spilt coffee on the side. She spins around to look at the mess once again, and then back at me, eyes wide and damp. She manages a timid: “y-yes”. _Mom_.

I try to keep my shoulders square and my head high as I cross the few metres of distance between me and her, starting first, with screwing the lid back on the overturned coffee jar – it’s kept maybe a third of its contents. We can buy some more.

I can feel mom’s eyes on my back, watching me intently. I try to brush the feeling off, but it’s just _too_ awkward. What am I meant to say? How do I say it? There’s no casual way to bring up what’s happened over the last few days, first with the incident by the pool with Marco, and then … with dad. A simple _sorry_ just won’t cut it. And apologies are never really my forte to begin with.

I focus on the task at hand instead, whilst trying to piece together what I need to do to solve whatever atmosphere this is; I start by scraping some of the coffee granules into my cupped palm, before depositing them in the trash, some sticking to the residue of nervous sweat forming on the inside of my hand. When I turn back around to scrape up another handful, mom’s joined in, carefully dusting some of the spillage into a waiting palm.

We clear the counter in silence – it takes maybe five or six trips to and from the trash to scoop up all the coffee. Mom doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even try; there’s no hitch of breath, no expectant opening of her mouth to form words, nothing. She feels timid, not full of exuberant, if slightly obnoxious, life, like normal.

Unsure of what to do now to busy my hands – and my mind – I find myself watching mom as she finishes brewing her delayed cup of coffee. Her hand is shaky as she splashes in the boiling water from the kettle, and some droplets splatter onto the sideboard. She puts the kettle back into its stand with a barely audible sigh.

You know that saying about being able to cut tension with a knife? Well, I totally understand that right now. The air is so thick, you’d think you were trying to breathe underwater or some shit.

I choke.

“M-mom.”

 _What sort of broken sob is that, huh_?

She stops, time stops, I stop. I manage to peel my eyes from the tiled floor just as mom leaves her coffee on the counter, and swoops in on my personal space for one, massive bear hug. All the air in my body flies the coop as a surprised wheeze, with mom wasting no time in squishing my head down onto her shoulder, and enveloping my torso in her spindly arms. She grips the back of my shirt fiercely, and smooshes her chin into my collar bone, forced to stand on her tiptoes now.

It’s a lot. It’s maybe too much. I feel tears prick the corners of my eyes, and I will them back.

 _I’m so sorry, mom_.

A mother’s hug is different to a normal hug. With mom and me, they’re usually few and far between – I mean, I’m not so great on the whole physical affection with people, but when they do happen, they count. They really do. This is so sappy, I know, but it’s the feeling that she can make stuff grow even in the saddest, darkest, _grimiest_ parts of myself. Pushes everything else to the side for now, you know?

Mom pulls me tighter, and now, I can’t help myself but want to hold her back. The apology sticks itself like treacle in my throat, and glues my mouth shut. I hope this is enough.

She sniffs loudly, so I know she’s fighting back the tears too, just not as well as me. I move one of my hands to the centre of her shoulder blades, and pat her gently, the best I can do.

“Baby,” she coos in my ear, as we sway gently from side to side in the middle of the kitchen floor. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

She doesn’t need to be sorry – she didn’t do anything wrong, she didn’t mean anything, she didn’t know what the things she said meant to me. It’s okay mom, Marco explained it all. _It’s okay_. I’m the one who needs to be sorry, for making you cry, for avoiding you, for being such a damn shit-stain of a son.

How do I say all that?

It’s whatever. Because mom doesn’t let me speak.

“A-are you doing anything today, honey?”

She pulls back from my shoulder, but maintains a grip on my shirt; she moves to look me in the face, her eyes roaming over every facet of my expression. She’s so small, man, it’s crazy. Am I getting taller, or is she just getting shorter? Or am I just finally seeing her for real, and how, yes, _I know what I have to do now_. I know I have to protect her more, I have to work harder. I have to be strong for the both of us, even if I don’t feel it.

I shake my head diligently, and sniff loudly. Mom finally manages a smile.

“Well, that’s good,” she says, swiping one strand of ash-blonde hair behind her ear. “I was hoping you could show me some more of those drawings of yours.”

 

* * *

 

To be honest, this is not how I expected my morning to pan out, especially not after my more-than-rude awakening. Mom and I traipse up the stairs to my room, and whilst she prattles on about her grandmother _being a good artist_ and how she’s so glad I got that _from her side of the family_ , I try and mentally piece together what exactly I’m feeling.

There’s a tight swell in my chest, filled to the brim with anticipation, excitement, and probably above all, fear. It’s nothing new, no, but oh my God, I’d probably be petrified stiff if there weren’t some flood of adrenaline coursing through my system at the same moment, moving my legs forward for me. In my mind, I’m leafing through what drawings I want to show her, which ones I’m most proud of, what might happen _afterwards_ , what subjects I might be able to … tackle with her.

I really hope she likes them.

I try to hide my restlessness by busying myself with moving my crumpled bedding to access my sketchbooks, most of which I keep stuffed down the gap between the edge of the mattress and the wall; any others are under my bed, which I collect after handing my mom a small pile. She wheels up my desk chair and takes a seat, neatly crossing her legs, and opens up the one on top, whilst I perch on the very edge of my mattress, all but gnawing my fingernails to smithereens as I watch on.

The first sketchpad she hasn’t isn’t a particularly old one – which is either good or bad, I can’t decide. Good, because not everything in it will be shit, but bad, because it’ll make the older stuff she looks at next look worse.

 _And also bad, because you know what – or who – starts appearing in that sketchbook_.

The first few pages mom flicks through are literally solely Mikasa – because I’m not saying I had a problem, but … I totally had a problem. There are whole pages dedicated to different angles of her face, and I know that’s probably a little bit creepy, but honest to God, she just has a good face to practice three-quarter views with, okay? Okay.

Most are just messy, pencil sketches, graphite smears across coarse paper, but there are one or two line drawings as mom progresses, which she stops to study, her eyes flicking up, meeting mine, and drawing out wide smiles onto her lipstick-free lips.

She doesn’t say anything though – or at least, not until she comes across some doodles of Connie and Sasha, and then she chirps brightly that she recognises who they’re meant to be. (I overlook the use of “meant to be”, instead of just _are_ , because it’s mom, and she’s already trying so hard for me, and I get that.)

She crows over one particular candid of Sasha that makes me feel distinctly warm in the face, before flicking over the page, to what I guess I can loosely refer to as my demise.

There are technically a couple sketches missing from this pad – the ones that I tore out to give to Marco, all that time ago – so it starts with a couple loose, pencil works of his face, the upper half of his body, all that jazz, before skipping straight to pen work on the next few pages, and more purposeful lines.

Most of them are just arbitrary: a few with the pool net,, a few with hands on hips staring at the skimmer, a few crouching down at the pool side (that was a hard pose to master, believe me), but all with the same God-damn _glorious_ smile. All of them. I hadn’t noticed until now.

The warm blush on the back of my neck is starting to become uncomfortable.

Mom finishes that sketchpad, and amidst squawking about how impressed she is (which I sort of miss, because my thoughts are suitably _elsewhere_ ), she chooses another from the pile, my most recent stuff.

A lot of it is drawn from memory. Not just random portraits, but actual things that happened, you know? Mom lingers over scribbles I’ve done of Marco on the rooftop – maybe she remembers that day, when she asked me what I was doing up there ( _being miserable_ , I’d told her).

Marco leaning out of the window of his van.

Marco waist deep in the pool, smiling upwards.

Marco sitting on a bar stool in our kitchen, clutching a can of beer.

Marco … asleep. (In my bed.)

Mom seems torn between wanting to stare longer at that particular doodle of the night of that party, and wanting to avert her eyes from ever having seen such a thing in my sketch book. (And as such, I don’t know whether to die of mortification, or snort with laughter.)

“I-I... uh,” I begin, in a futile attempt to explain myself. I flounder pretty fucking dismally, and start pulling awkwardly at loose fibres on my bed sheets. “Yeah.” _Yeah, sorry mom, that’s a thing_. He looked so serene, I _had_ to draw him.

“You … you draw Marco a lot, don’t you, sweetie?” she says, her voice rising a little with the phrase of a question. She’s flicked a page, to some drawing of Marco looking upwards from the yard below, as if you, me, whoever is the viewer is standing at my bedroom window. It’s nothing special.

But actually … it is. It is something special. Because with the way mom’s looking at me now, I can feel the furious blush rising in my face, and this … this is all because—

I bite back the urge to start laughing hysterically, and quickly pluck the sketchpad from mom’s lap, slamming the pages shut. She looks a little startled, until I swiftly replace the empty space in her hands with a slightly older book, opening it for her to a particular page. (I slide the set of Marco drawings safely under my butt without a moment of hesitation.)

My mom gasps, and then sort of makes a really weird squealing noise. But this is the mom I know.

These sketches – sketches of my mom herself – are both: nothing special, and entirely special at the same time. They’re nothing special, because, hey, they’re old, they’re messy, they’re definitely not my best work (because do you know how _hard_ it was to draw two eyes the same back then?); but then, they’re _so_ special. They’re special because I drew these in the mind-set that neither of my parents would ever be remotely accepting of the fact that I … love art. I thought they’d disown me for it. I drew her anyway, despite that.

Mom is bubbly and ecstatic, pouring over the grey pencil lines like there’s no tomorrow, and I would take more pride in it, I would, but … my mind is still on the sketchpad currently digging into my thigh, despite everything. Still though. I can give her my best, forced grin, right?

She starts going off on an excited tangent, and I let her, because I want mom to be this happy all the time, I want her to fucking _sparkle_ like this, despite the messy hair, and slobby clothes, and no makeup. It’s too rare a thing. She blabbers about how she wants to sign me up for community art classes, and how she will buy me some supplies for Christmas and my birthday, and how she will definitely tell her friends at Zumba about my work, etcetera, etcetera.  

No. I don’t want her telling other people about it. Not yet. I can’t afford for—

I can’t afford for _him_ to find out, not before I’m ready. I need to find the courage first.

“Mom,” I say softly; with one page between her thumb and forefinger, mom pauses, eyes round and bright, looking at me curiously. “C-can you … maybe hold off on that. Just … keep this quiet for a bit, y-yeah?”

She’s surprised, judging by the way the leaf of page flits from her pinched fingers, but she’s accepting. And that alone is so, so, _so_ fucking _freeing_.

“Oh. Yes, of course, honey. Whatever you want.”

 

* * *

 

Mom leaves after a while, but not before she’s grilled me about how long I’ve been drawing under her radar, and why I haven’t shown her until now (I kinda dance around answering that question out right, which I think she gathers). We talk about the possibility of taking up some lessons out of uni, when the semester starts up again, and she even offers to pay for them (or, offers to use dad’s money to pay for them, but that’s not really much of a problem for me).

Her final question, though, falls upon the hollowness in my core … she asks me why I didn’t take up art as one of my electives when I started at Trost. She asks me why I picked Philosophy, because she knows I hate it, when I could’ve picked Art. She tells me that she wouldn’t have minded.

That hurts. Really does.

I feel words bubbling in my chest, the will to tell her: _mom, why now? Why not then? You could’ve said something._ But it’s not worth it. Can’t change the past. _Can_ change the future.

Mom excuses herself because she’s got some fitness class on that afternoon; she leaves with a kiss planted on my forehead, and a ruffling of my hair. My heart swells. I know the feeling won’t last, but it’s good. One less thing to worry about patching up.

When I hear the coupe leave the driveway, I flump back on my bed, narrowly missing giving myself a concussion off the wall. The spiral binding of the sketchpad shoved under my ass digs in, so I pull it out again, holding the offending pad of paper in my hands above my face. I squint at it, as if that will make the other, quintessential problem of the day conveniently vanish, and leave me not to worry about it.

I let the sketchbook drop onto my face (which I slightly regret, when my still-healing nose stings), and sigh. I have to figure this out by Wednesday. No ifs, ands, or buts. I’m gonna see him on Wednesday. So ideally, let’s try and decide how much I’m actually in … _in like_ with him, or not. Or whether it’s just that attention thing I’m craving. And then how exactly I’m supposed to act around him without suffering a stroke at the ripe old age of nineteen.

I commando roll across the mattress to where my phone is still under my pillow by the headboard; I light it up with two unread messages in my inbox: one from Connie, and the other from Marco. I don’t hesitate to open up Marco’s first.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
Thank you again for last night. I hope it’s not too weird a thing to say, but … you really cheered me up. I hope everything is okay on your end, Jean. Let me know if you need anything, and I’ll be there.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

That is probably the least helpful text message he could’ve possibly sent because, hey, you weren’t perfect enough beforehand, Marco? Well gee, that’s a fucking shame.

God dammit.

I stare at my phone screen until I fear I’m going to bore holes in it with my laser vision. Jesus Christ, I need to do something. I can’t just let this burn out like every other problem in my life.

I’m gonna text him.

No, I’m not.

Yes, I am.

This internal debate rages for … a while. A shameful while. I open up the message template, and close it again, at least half a dozen times, probably more.

What should I say? Why is it suddenly _so hard_ to figure out what to say? How do I be normal? What even _is_ normal?

Normal with Marco has always been erring on the other side of the friendly fence, let’s be real. Even Connie picked up on that, and that’s freaking saying something when Connie fucking Springer notices you might have the hots for the pool guy before you even realise yourself.

I glare at the blank message, trying to summon words with sheer stubbornness. It doesn’t really work out.

Before … before whatever is happening right now, I woulda just replied with something depreciating about my dad scarpering off to work before I woke up, or feeling really tired after watching fireflies all night, or maybe even have stretched to saying how glad I am that I made him feel better … but now … I second guess every word. What if the things I say mean too much? I don’t want to … make it awkward. I don’t want to be the one to throw a spanner in our friendship.

I decide to start simple. Simple and non-assuming. Simple and _there’s no way in hell you will be able to tell anything is up with me by the contents of this text message_.

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
so the craziest thing just happened w/ mom. i showed her some more of my drwings and she freakin lapped them up. fckin mental

There. Perfect. I am a master at avoidance. (Though, that should really be more of a problem than it is. Fuck.)

It literally takes thirty seconds for Marco to reply.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
REALLY? Jean, that’s great! I’m so happy for you! :D

Oh God. Something in my chest starts thrumming distinctly.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
Literally, that’s amazing! I’m really proud of you! It must’ve taken guts to show her your work!

Nope, fuck, I’m not liking this feeling. Not one bit.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
So does this mean you get to take some art electives next year? :’)

I’m not entirely sure how long I end up staring at that collection of words on the screen of my Samsung, but it’s long enough that I forget to reply. But I can tell you that I’m … feeling something pretty strongly right now. It starts as a coil in my gut, and snakes up into my chest, wringing itself around most of the vital organs in my chest cavity, where it squeezes tightly. I reckon I know what this is.

I’m not fucking kidding anyone, am I?

I like him. I fucking like him. He cares so much, and that’s why I fucking _like him_.

There’s no fucking question about it, is there? I like him because he likes _me_ – not in _that_ sense, but in the sense that he sees me as a person, and not a commodity, and because of that, I’m starting to like _myself_. But it’s not just that, no. I like him for his smile, for his endless bouts of positivity, even when he’s feeling like a piece of trampled shit. I like him for his laugh, for how he puts up with my mood swings, and my crassness, and my cynicism. I like him because he’s the things I’m not, or the things I can’t yet be. But I feel I _can_ be, and I _will_ be, one day … if he’s around.

What am I going to fucking _do_ on Wednesday when I see him now?

I growl to myself, and exit the hell out of that convo thread, opening up Connie’s message instead. This better be good. This better be fucking sunshine and rainbows, for all that it matters.

 **From: the coolest guy youll ever meet  
** yo jeanbo u wanna come down to that new place on rose st tonight with sash and me and get absolutely shit faced before results day ????? u know u do ;) meet u there at 9 ok

Alrighty then.

My first feeling is suspicion. Always is with these two. And then my second feeling is reluctance, because God knows I need to do some serious soul searching and sort my general existence out right now. And I kinda want to hang out a bit with mom when she gets back this evening.

But my third feeling … my third feeling, I guess, stems from my cowardice, and boy, does the thought of getting _so trashed_ that I don’t have to think about _anything_ sound hella attractive right now.

I don’t hesitate to text Connie back.

 

* * *

 

The bar Connie and Sasha have been eyeing up is a place called _The Three Walls_ , some expectedly shitty dive bar on the corner of Rose and 104th; a sort of hole-in-the-wall kinda place, a single door leading through to a corridor lined with prints of old movies and old bands and old newspaper cuttings. It’s a little claustrophobic as I slink down the passage, a group of already drunk men behind me, and some gaggle of young women ahead of me. The place is newly done up, so at least it doesn’t smell like split beer or piss yet, and nothing’s peeling or dripping off the walls, which is always reassuring. The corridor opens up into a large space, with a curved, dome ceiling; the décor is all wood and granite, very swanky, very warm, with the bar stretching up one wall, audienced by square, black stools. Individual booths and tables scatter the rest of the floor, most already occupied, even if it’s only just gone nine.

I feel like I probably should’ve dressed up a little more, or at least could’ve Googled this place before I came out, because maybe my tattered jeans and short-sleeve button up are a little too casual. I spot Sasha sandwiched into one of the black-leather booths across the floor, and begin to weave my way through the crowds of other people (weirdly excessive for a Monday night) to make my way to her; her head pings up like a jack-in-the-box when she notices me approaching, and grins wickedly.

“Jeanbo! You made it! I was just about to text you asking where you got to,” she babbles, scooting up a bit and patting the seat beside her; I slide in, the leather under my butt squeaking. She wraps me up in a sideways hug, overbearing as usual, but I return it none the less. When she pulls back, she scrutinises my face. “Shit, your face is gross. And I thought Connie was bad.”

I scrunch my nose and pull a face at her. I didn’t think it looked that bad when I checked myself in the mirror before going out … the split on my lip is just a thin, red line, and the bruising on my face not so violent, only a kind of sickly yellow across the bridge of my nose. (I guess it just doesn’t look so bad to me because I saw what it looked like _before_.)

“Your face is gross,” I mutter coolly, which earns me an elbow to the ribs, just as I spot Connie winding himself through the maze of tables and chairs, precariously carrying three beers, every ounce of concentration in his body focused on keeping them all upright. I don’t think he evens notices I’m here until he reaches the table and sets the bottles down with a clank.

“Oh, hey man!” he chirps, as Sasha dolls out the beer. He reaches across the table to clap me on the shoulder, before scooting in on the other side of Sasha. I reckon they’ve already had a few rounds before me, because his coordination isn’t all there. I take a sip of whatever beer I’ve been brought – it’s cold and crisp, and a lot better than Ymir’s shitty cat piss from the weekend before last.

“So what d’ya think of this place then?” Connie continues, gesturing widely, “It’s pretty swank, right?”

He’s right – it is a nice bar for Trost. Most of the other stuff in our price range is always firmly squatting on the wrong side of gritty, so it’s nice to be hanging out in place where I’m not questionably stuck to my seat.

“Music could be a li’l better,” I remark crassly, pointedly vaguely in the direction of the speakers overhead. Some generic chart stuff that I firstly, don’t know, and secondly, don’t like. It’s the sort of stuff Con likes though, with a booming chorus and some non-descript rapper butting in after the second verse.

“By the time we’re done with you, you won’t even care what the music is,” Sasha chimes in, clinking her bottle with mine, before throwing back at least half of the drink down her throat. “If aaany of us can still walk by the end of tonight, it will be a col… coloss…”

“Colossal failure?” Connie serves, and Sasha smirks at him. I almost can’t believe she’s slurring her words already. _Almost_.

I take another sip, musing on Connie’s fingers tapping along to the synth beat of the background music.

“So what’s the occasion?” I ask plainly, as the two munchkins exchange a mischievous sort of look. Great.

“You mean you _don’t_ believe that we’re eager to party before results on Thursday?” Sasha chirrups, amidst a hiccup.

“No, I believe that,” I say, leaning back into the plush leather of the booth. I swirl the beer around in my hand. “But you guys are all about ulterior motives, so … yeah.”

“Ulterior motives?” Sasha feigns an affronted gasp. “Hoooow rude! You make us sound like h-hardened criminals or … or something!”

I’m not convinced, and quirk an eyebrow in her direction disdainfully. It’s all just a playful act, of course. I can already feel the warm atmosphere adsorbing into my system, and it’s like a huge flush of relief. I feel more at ease, and it’s because I know that despite everyone else in my life, I can always be myself around Connie and Sasha. Well, sort of.         

“Okay, so _maaaybe_ a little bird on the wind told us you were down in the dumps and needed cheering up this week,” Sasha gushes; Connie buffs her on the arm, and mouths something that looks like: _hey, why’d you say that_?

I narrow my eyes at that. _Say what now_?

“A little bird on the wind?” I repeat sternly. “Did that little bird happen to have … _freckles_ , by any chance?”

“We are not at liberty to disclose that information,” Connie interjects sharply, nodding his head once, folding his arms across his chest, beer still in hand. He’s trying to bite back his grin, but fails miserably.

Okay, so maybe sometimes I can’t be myself around Connie and Sasha. I focus on schooling my expression to give nothing away.

So much for an excuse not to think about Marco. Does this mean, what … he told Connie and Sasha what’s been going on with me? He told them what we talked about last night at the outlook?

He wouldn’t do that. No, he wouldn’t just spill that sort of stuff. I think I know him well enough to assume _that_.  

 _He’s just looking out for you, Jean_. _Making sure you’re okay, even if he’s not here_.

I take a long swig of my beer, and mull over this information.

My Marco-predicament is … not helped. In the slightest.

“You … okay man?” Connie asks, spurring me out of the old internal monologue. “You look like … uh, you look like you’re drifting there.”

“Yeah. ‘M fine. Want me to get the next round?”

I throw back the last few mouthfuls of my beers, and get to my feet before Connie even answers. I’m gonna drink a lot of beer tonight.

 

* * *

 

I’m kinda glad at the state of my face in a way, because it makes me look more pissed off than usual, and I don’t get asked for ID any of the times I approach the bar that night. It only takes a few more beers to get the hazy buzz going in my head, and Connie and Sasha are quickly very boisterous, rambling on about God knows what, singing along to _God knows what_ , but I’m okay with just floating on the peripheral, flitting in and out of listening to their conversation. My mind is too bleary to focus on just one thing for too long, so whenever things seem to drift towards my dad, or towards Marco, I’m able to pull it back with a few, heavy blinks.

I start when Connie buffs me in the arm, the dredges of the beer in my grip sloshing up against the inside of the bottle – Sasha absent from the space between us. Whoops. Guess I really zoned out this time.

“Ground control to Major Tom; your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong.”

I swat him away, and rock forward on the seat, leaning my elbows on the table in front of us, crowded with empty beer bottles and tumbler glasses.

“Piss off,” I say – and I’m pretty sure my words don’t garble… I think, “I’m fine, dude.”

“I dunno, man, you’re being one hell of a s-sp… space cadet right now,” Connie muses with a slight slur, leaning into the table too. “You can … tell the Con man anything, yeah? I won’t … y’know. Y’know.”

“ _Y’know_ ,” I mimic crassly. “It’s cool. I just need more to … drink.”

“I can _definitely_ help you out with that.”

It’s apparently Sasha’s round, but I’ve been losing track – how many of the empty glasses on the table are mine, I literally have no fucking clue. She returns to the table with six tequilas, garnished with a slice of lemon each, and a shaker of salt balanced in the crook of her elbow.

I eye up the nasty tasting spirit with more than my fair share of derision.

“Do you want to remember tonight or not?” she says, sliding me two of the stout glasses, and then pulling one of my hands into her grip. She takes the salt shaker, and sprinkles a patch on the back of my thumb, before doing the same to Connie, and then herself.

“Salt, tequila, lemon, alright boys? Let’s get this party started.”

It all goes very quickly downhill after that.

 

* * *

 

I’m not sure how we end up leaving the dive bar, but we do after a few hours of loud laughter, obnoxious drinking games, and Sasha chatting up the table next to us to get some free drinks for herself.

I remember my head spinning when I finally got to my feet, after the neighbouring table managed to persuade us that going to the club across the road, _Survey_ , I think it is, would be a good idea. I remember Sasha latching onto my arm, and Connie head-butting me in the back for … some reason, but I can’t for the life of me remember how I got from there to here, navigating the narrow corridor, crossing the road … none of it.

I stare up at the flashing, ice-blue neon sign above the doorway to the club, fizzing in the dark. I’m surrounded by noise: shouting, laughter, drunken bubbling, but it all goes in one ear and out the other. Something, something. Something—

I sway on my feet – or at least, I think I do. Think a lot of things. Think … think, think. Lots of thinking. What was I thinking about again?

Brown haired girl – probably Sasha, hopefully Sasha – tugs me forward; did we cut the queue? I don’t remember, but whatever, my ears are quickly assaulted by the thudding vibrations of drum and bass, and roaming strobe lights, and the smell of sweet alcohol mixed with sweat.

The ceiling is low, all the walls black, and the floor packed with bodies moving in sync (and also not in sync, swaying and grinding and writhing), enslaved in an electronic trance. My feet stumble over scattered plastic cups, and the floor seems to rock, to bubble. Everything is a blur of bright colour in the dark, and I’m pulled past so many strangers’ faces, deeper and deeper into the throng, trusting whoever has my hand to guide me to wherever we’re going – where are we going?

Something flat and metal presses into my hip – the fence? I look up, the DJ on stage, towering above with speakers flanking his either side like some barricade; thick, padded headphones are slung around his neck. Someone tugs my sleeve – it’s definitely Sasha, her eyes wide and bright, reflecting the neon strobe, with a grin like a Cheshire cat. Connie appears at her side, with three plastic cups; one is shoved in my hand, and I chuck it back without second thought. My throat burns and my eyes water, and the music makes my ears ring – but I don’t mind, because I can feel the guitar riffs and the electric beats taking control of the fibres of my body. The others are laughing, infected by the song too, and they’re dancing: Connie, Sash, the people we met at the bar, whoever they are, everyone’s moving, and I’m forgetting—

I drown in the song, and it’s the only type of drowning I could ever like. It’s liberating.

I can feel whatever spirit Connie fed me working its way into my system, boiling in my blood, clouding my vision; it’s like an out of body experience, a dream, like you’re moving without really meaning to. Your mind goes nowhere, that feeling of when someone wakes you in the morning, but you’re not _really_ awake yet, just clinging to the threshold this side of sleep.

Lights, laughter, bass, smiles. I’m lost in it.

I catch the glint of olive green eyes across the shoulders and the bodies pressed into mine: sleek and catlike, and the woman who owns them, on the prowl through the throng of dancing people. She slides forward with each heavy beat, everything about her slick and sharp; her smile is feline and predatory, her fallow-brown hair cropped neatly at her chin, the fabric of her dress painted onto the harsh curve of her hips. I feel her sharp edges despite the cushioned fog that shrouds my head. I feel like I know her.

I’ve lost Connie and Sasha to the wave, and my eyes are locked with this woman’s own as she slinks closer across the crowded space; I definitely know this electric greenness. Just can’t place it.

The song changes, the rhythm harder and faster, and I’m pushed towards her by the spinning, drunken masses. Our bodies meet in front of the DJ, and I feel her hands on my hips, tugging me closer to her angular form, manoeuvring me to sway in time with her.

I close my eyes, and let the feeling flood me, the numbness in my limbs and in my head, the sharpness of her nails holding me close, the stench of her aldehydic perfume heavy over the sickly sweet waft of spilt beer. Too metallic, too loamy, too _something_ … not delicate like earthy camomile.

I imagine the fingers on my hips aren’t hers. I imagine they’re his.

It’s both my salvation and my ruin.

I snap out of the trance when the music mixes, and push the woman away by her shoulders roughly; her glare is like a switchblade, but I can’t care less – suddenly it’s too crowded, too cramped, I can’t stay here much longer, not like this.

I plough my way towards where I think the bar is, or where the vibrating mass of people is the thinnest. The air is cooler, and less muggy, and I try to subtly suck in as much of it as possible into my lungs, finding how it clears my head like a gush of cold, cold, cold – _cold water_.

The sobriety doesn’t last long, as I’m hounded by Sasha throwing her arms around my neck, Connie staggering out of the throng not far behind. I very nearly pitch forward onto the sticky, beer strewn floor.

“Heee~eeey, space cadet!” he cackles, as Sasha inflicts me with … some sort of drunken noogie? “That chica getting too friendly back there? You bolted like hell, man!”

I don’t reply, finding the edge of the bar with desperate fingers, and using it as much needed leverage from falling on my face. One of the staff slides a cup of water in my direction, because apparently I look like I need it. I take a sip to quench the dryness in my throat, but pass the rest of it off to Sasha, who may or may not be falling into no-man’s land, half wrapped around my torso.

“You wanna cut loose?” I ask Connie, straining over the pounding music, “This place is beginning to suck, and I dun’ wanna dance anymore.”

And I’m a thirsty asshole who did not just fantasise about _Marco_ on the dance floor.

Connie eyes me strangely, or maybe that’s just a combination of his drunkenness and my drunkenness talking. But he folds.

“Yeah, drinks are fr-freak … freaking expensive here,” he agrees loudly, taking out his phone (and almost dropping it) to check the time. “Place blows, let’s bail.”

 

* * *

 

By the time we stagger out of the club, and figure out which way is _definitely the way_ we need to walk to get to the taxi rank, it’s gone three – or at least, according to Connie’s watch, but I swear that shit’s been broken since … since whenever. I don’t know. My brain is still kinda mushy.

The minute we’re out in the night air, Sasha perks right back up, her sleepiness gone, but her obscene inebriation not; she grips my hand in a death vice, and swings my arm so violently I’m pretty sure it’ll rip out its socket. Connie holds her hand on the other side, and there’s no doubt about it really … we look like a bunch of fucking _clowns_ parading down the cut through between Rose Street and whatever road is the next one over.

Sasha starts humming, intelligible at first, but then I begin to recognise the trumpet loop from a very questionable choice of song.

“Please tell me you’re not humming what I think you’re humming,” I say, as she waggles her eyebrows audaciously. This, apparently, is an invitation to start singing _very fucking loudly_ in the middle of downtown Trost.

“All we need is music, sweeeeet music!”

I genuinely face-palm with my free hand, dragging my fingers down over my bruised face. A group of people smoking outside one of the local shit-hole bars are eyeing us dubiously, some whispering, some _laughing_.

“Please shut up now before I abandon you on the side of the road.”

 _I am not drunk enough anymore for this_.

Sasha is _more_ than drunk enough, dragging me back and forth across the straight line I’m trying to walk. Her screeching bounces off the tarmac and the overseeing buildings.

“There’ll be music, everywhere!”

“There’ll be swingin’, swayin’ and records playin’, and dancing in the street!” Aaand there’s Connie.

“Not you as-fucking- well, Connie!”

Connie screeches with laughter, and whisks Sasha away from my grip, twirling her around in the centre of the street, elaborately dipping her, spinning her around by the wrist as he continues to belt out the David Bowie part of _Dancing In The Street_. She laughs brightly – and clumsily – and leans up to peck him sloppily on the lips.

They look so fucking _dumb_. But it makes me laugh, and laugh _hard_ , almost doubling over then and there with the sudden peals of laughter that are probably not helped by my light-headedness. Oh God, my stomach _hurts_ , man.

“Hey, I should sing the Bowie parts!” Sasha exclaims wildly, as the two of them keep spinning in front of me. “I’m the hot one, I have to be Bowie!”

“Like hell am I being left with being Mick Jagger – fuck you, Sash!” Connie jibes, flicking her in the forehead.

“We have to ask Jean! Jean – which one of us is more like David Bowie? This is important!”

I catch up with them as Connie swings Sasha around by the waist, and hell, I’m seriously impressed by their motor ability right now, because they are _stinking drunk_.

“Hmm,” I muse, pursing my lips and tilting my head mockingly. “Well, if we’re talking about who’s the most attractive out of the three of us … guess _I_ should really be Bowie.”

Sasha scoffs in protest, and grabs my hand, dragging me into the dancing disaster, as Connie starts doing some strange sort of skipping move straight out of the offending music video, warbling at the top of his lungs the second verse.

“If you’re gonna be Bowie, you gotta dance like him, Jean! C’mon, let’s see those hips move!” Sasha giggles, holding both my hands as she tries to get me to sway in time to the non-existent music. “Dance with me, Jean! Connie won’t mind – he knows about our true love, it’s okay!”

“You’re so fucking drunk, Sash.”

“I know I am! And so are you! It’s great! Hey, Con – our boy’s got hips! Look at him go!”

Well, at least I can now say that I’ve helped recreate a very poor rendition of Jagger and Bowie’s 1993 hit in the centre of Trost on a Monday night. That’s one for the story books.

We dance our way to the taxi rank, Connie bunny-hopping all the way, whilst Sasha spins me around and around haphazardly, singing at the top of her voice. The taxi driver barely bats an eyelid – probably deals with drunken students on a nightly basis, no big deal.

We fall into the back seats, Sasha sandwiched in the middle, and someone instructs the driver with my address, amidst a fit of sloppy giggles. My head thumps back against the headrest as the laughter bubbles in my chest, and Sasha starts pulling dumb-ass faces, sticking out her tongue and pulling at her cheeks.

“Think we can call tonight’s mission a success,” Connie grins, jostling his girlfriend. “Operation: cheer Jean up has been a res-res—”

“Resounding success?” Sasha finishes for him, sniggering candidly.

“Yeah, that! Resounding success!” Connie tugs his phone from his pants’ pocket, and clumsily types in his passcode. “I will text Marco … right now … and tell him!”

I’m one-hundred percent sure they both see my expression fall away in an instant. They both lose their broad smiles in an instant.

“Jean,” Sasha starts, immediately in control of the tone of her voice, with her magic ability to be entirely sober and serious when the occasion calls for it. “What’s… what’s happening, Jean? Marco wouldn’t tell us.”

I stare down pointedly at my hands resting in my lap, considering how much I would die if I leapt out of a moving vehicle to avoid a conversation. Probably a lot. I would die a lot.

Sasha squishes herself closer into my side, and rests her chin on my shoulder affectionately, batting her eyelashes. My best response is just to flick her on the nose.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, Sash.”

It’s like it always is – I run away, I cower into myself, I avoid addressing the fucking problem, because then … then it’ll go away, right? Doesn’t help that my head is beginning to throb, and my buzz melts away into a cesspit of nausea.

“If I guess right, will you tell me?” Sasha chirps, gently nuzzling my arm like some cat or something. Connie still seems to be navigating the testing process of sending a text message on her other side, apparently paying attention to this conversation too taxing to deal with at the same time.

“If I say no, will it stop you trying?”

“Probably not.”

“Well, knock yourself out.”

Sasha’s following suggestions of: my dog dying (despite not having a dog), my dad throwing out my record collection, or my mom taping over my recording of this week’s _Big Bang Theory_ , bring back the whisper of a smile, especially when I deny all of her suggestions, to her frustration.

“Ugh, you’re being so difficult!” she wails, cuffing me on the arm with a clenched fist. “I’m going to have to get creative here! Are you planning on immigrating to Brazil? Have you been diagnosed with terminal cancer and have one week to live? Have you suddenly realised your undying feelings for someone and are going to elope? Are you taking drugs? You’re taking drugs, aren’t you?”

I sigh heavily, and shake my head, turning instead to look out the window at passing Trost – a general blur this time, and not a string of colour like I usually enjoy – as Sasha pouts furiously.

Suddenly realised my undying feelings … well, I wouldn’t call them _that_ , but— yeah. Yeah.

Marco. I like Marco. I like him a whole bunch, and it’s really making it difficult to think straight right now. Everything winds back to him. Or perhaps that’s just early onset hangover. Or maybe just both.

“Don’t give me that face,” Sasha chides, “Makes me think that one of those suggestions is actually— _wait_. One of those suggestions _was_ right, wasn’t it? Oh my God, Jean! Please tell me you’re not dying?!”

“I’m not dying,” I snap briskly, as Connie finishes his text message, and re-joins the conversation.

“Jean’s dying?”

“I’m not dying!”

“Well then, what?” Sasha pouts. “You wouldn’t immigrate to Brazil, because you hate hot weather. And I don’t think you’d take drugs, because you never smoked grass with us back in high school, so— oh. Oh! Oh my God!”

 _Damn fucking straight_.

“You _like_ someone?!”

I fold my arms across my chest, and lean away from her, pressing my cheek against the window of the taxi; the glass is cold, and the reverberations over the pot-holed asphalt make my temple vibrate uncomfortably.

“Ten bucks it’s Marco,” Connie remarks brashly, “Wait, no, fifty bucks! Fifty bucks he likes Marco. Like hell I bought any of that crap on Friday. Definitely Marco. It’s Marco, right?”

“Oh my God, it totally is, isn’t it?” Sasha chimes in – and wow, isn’t it just _great_ how I haven’t even fucking confirmed or denied anything? Apparently I read like an open book. Great. Fucking peachy. I wonder if Marco can read me that easily. “You like Marco? Marco, the pool boy, Marco?”

Pretty sure we only know one Marco.

I’m appalled to say that the God-damn _taxi driver_ saves my life, when he taps on the divider loudly, interrupting our conversation. We’ve pulled up the curb outside my house without any of us even noticing. I scramble for a tenner from my pocket, and shove it into Sasha’s hands, before practically flinging myself out of the side door. The air is way colder than I remember – or I guess I’m just much more sober now, but it’s whatever. Standing up straight without wobbling is still a bit of a challenge.

Before I slam the door in the faces of thing one and thing two, I lean in, and give them a good warning.

“You guys say anything – and I mean fucking _anything_ – about that, and I _will_ come to your house in the middle of the night, slit your kneecaps, and mail you to Timbuktu. You got it?”

I don’t wait for a reply to that, slamming the door on Sasha’s agape face, and slapping the side of the taxi to tell the driver he can go. The car pulls away from the curb-side, and I’m pretty sure I can see Connie and Sasha twisted around in their seats, faces plastered to the back window, watching as I disappear as a pale blob into the night.

When the taxi rounds the corner of my street, I start up the driveway to the front door, plonking each foot steadily in front of the other, focusing on how the letters on the license plate of the Jag still swim in my vision. Dad’s car is back, parked behind mine – he hadn’t been back from work when I left for the bar earlier this evening, so I briefly wonder when he decided to show his face, and whether he’ll pull another runner in the morning again. I hope so. Still not ready to deal with that pile of shit.

Still not ready to deal with a whole bunch of shit. Maybe if I just pass out for twelve hours, I’ll wake up with some miraculously clarity. No doubt Connie and Sasha will have their two cents to give me, any of my threats of grievous bodily harm aside.

I slide the key into the front lock, jiggle it around as quietly as possible, and am drawn back to wondering how much it would cost to post two bodies to Africa. Hopefully not too much.

 

* * *

 

There’s something about Marco’s hands: the way they dance feather-light along slick skin, skimming over every smooth ridge and indentation of my collar bone, my chest, my ribs, my navel. His fingers press – _hard_ – red poppy marks along pallid flesh, drawing my hips closer to his. My chin falls heavily onto my bare chest, and something inside me hitches.

Our chests pressed flush, I feel his breath, I feel his friction, and I roll upwards seeking more contact, more contact, because fuck, that’s hot, that’s really h-hot—

My eyes flicker open, and burn into those dark and bright that hover over me; a smile graces Marco’s lips, the corners quirking upwards, hiding freckles in cheery dimples that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. He is beautiful.

His hands dance in caressing circles across my hips – I’ve not had this before, this intimacy. It’s nice. Real nice. Makes my heart go, the vice in my chest tighten, the heaviness of my panting labour. I can’t stop myself from shifting into his touch, seeking more – I want the hardness again, against mine. I want it.

“Jean.” My voice on his lips, and I can feel that thing he does to the vowels of my name become pressed against my neck in languid kisses, slow and soft, the gentle nip of teeth a spark through my system. He traces the swell of my throat, and I lift my chin to give him more room to explore – _please, Marco_. The small noise I make it a surprising whimper. I didn’t expect to be this swept away, but … the way his tongue laves across my skin, trailing over my jaw, licking all the way up to my earlobe … it smothers my already hazy mind. His nibbles lightly at the tender skin below my ear, and that does it – I whine for him. His hands pull my hips closer, our legs tangled in a mix of claves and blankets, and I suck in a sharp breath when I find the friction I’ve been seeking. My dick twitches in my pants – I bet he feels that – hell, I know he feels that, he smirks into the curve of my jaw between the smatterings of affection. Asshole.

I try to press his name out between my gritted teeth, but all that I hear in the heated space between us is a desperate keen – did that come from me? I guess so, because it makes Marco rut harder against me, and he bites down on my shoulder, sucking hard. My back arches off the bed, the mattress, the floor, wherever he has me pinned down beneath him. I let my hips roll with his, my dick flush with his through the combined barriers of our pants – who knew dry humping could feel _this fucking good_.

I slide my hands up over his back, his shoulders – broad and powerful – to card my fingers through his dark hair; I tug a little, and he gives up an obscene sort of moan, diving quickly in to lock our lips together. I’ve been waiting a long time for this, and I’m eager to swipe my tongue along his lower lip, to make his mind swim. His fingers sweep across the sharp vee of my hips, twisting the button on my jeans, and dragging his fingers over the fly, tugging down the zip. He hooks his thumbs around the waistband of my pants – and where he pulls, they slip down over my bony hips. Marco doesn’t stop, kisses hot and wet, one hand coming down to cup my cock through my boxers. F-fuck. I scrunch my eyes shut, breathe sharply through my nose. So good, s-so _good_. I can feel my unravelling emotions flooding my system.

I arch off the bed again, throwing my head back into the pillow as our lips separate with a lewd pop; Marco pants above me, his fingers deftly curling around the length of my cock through my boxers, his pupils blown so wide that his irises are almost all black. He looks so fucked out, and we haven’t even—

We haven’t even—

“M-Marco, c’mon.” That’s my voice, I think, coarse and raspy. Marco watches my lips through heavily lidded eyes now, curving his palm around my cock as I rock into him – and as good as this feels, I don’t want to fuck myself into his hand. The tension pools in my thighs as I tighten them around his hips, his hand trapped between our bodies; I trail my fingers down his spine, over the smoothness of his back and the swell of his ass, copping a feel through the cotton of his underwear. He hums appreciatively, and drops a peck to my lips, which I all but lap up.

“ _Jean_ , I want you s-so bad.”

 _Say it again, say it aga— actually no, don’t, it’s taken long enough_.

I move my mouth wet down his throat, his skin seeping heat, and he slips his hand beneath the waistband of my boxers. _Good God, yes, that’s it, that’s what I_ —

His fingers slide lovingly down the length of my dick and back up again, and how shameful exactly would it be to come just from this, just from a touch because—

“Is that … is that good, Jean?” he rasps, my open mouth still pressed against the base of his neck, my breathing hard. His thumb finds the slit in the head of my cock, and smears through the bead of precome already leaked – a shockwave of pleasure jolts through me, and I bury my nose into his skin with a keen, both my palms flush against his smooth, freckled back. Closer. I want him closer.

He starts up a steady rhythm, slow and deep,  fisting my dick, squeezing and stroking, whilst peppering my hair with little kisses and breathy moans, telling me over and over again: Jean, you sound  so good, so good—

My hips buck into his hand again, and both of us quake, me biting back moans of his name, Marco, Marco, Marco—

 …

“M-Marco—”

I start awake. Ribbons of hot, sticky cum spurt down the inside of my thighs, gluing my sweatpants and my boxers to my legs. I shoot upright, and throw back my covers, but fuck, my fucking head _kills_ , and _fuck_ , it’s sept through the fabric of my pants and—

Oh God.

Not again.

I smear my hand over the grey jersey fabric, trying to – well, I don’t exactly know what I’m _trying_ to do, but now I’ve got the sticky residue on my hand and _oh Jesus_ this is not how I wanted to wake up, hell, this is not what I wanted to dream about, this is not—

My room is empty, save for me, covered in my own jizz, and the mammoth weight of my own crippling shame.

I did not just have a wet dream about Marco.

 _Hell yes you did_.

This is the fucking worst.

 _But I thought you liked him_?

I bow my head, and grind the heel of my clean palm into the socket of one eye, wincing at the state of my hangover and regretting every day I’ve been alive on this earth. Wet dreams about best friends are not cool. Not even if you have the hots for them. _Not cool_.

What sort of a friend can I call myself now, huh? Jesus.

If only I could go back to sleep – ‘cus at least that would save me from wallowing all morning – but no, can’t do that, not unless I want my boxers and sweatpants to be board-stiff by the time I wake back up again.

I hate my life. I hate my _dick_.

 

* * *

 

I end up forcing myself to take a shower – and as cold a one as I can manage without feeling sick to my bones. Whilst I’m scrubbing one leg particularly furiously, determinedly not looking at the pile of jizz-strewn clothes in the corner of the bathroom, I really hope there’s still aspirin left in the medicine cabinet, because I’m going to fucking _need_ those today.

It’s almost impressive how long I force myself to stay in that shower – anything to keep my dick limp and my mind … away from the thought of receiving _hand jobs_ from a certain freckled pool guy.

This never happened before. Why does it have to happen _now_?

Please let it be the alcohol from last night talking. Please, oh fucking _please_. That’d be great.

Despite everything, I can still remember more of last night than I’d care to remember – although then again, at least I know I didn’t say anything … incriminating to Connie and Sash. (Oh no, they figured _that_ out all by their fucking selves.)

I remember the bar, I remember … a good deal of the club, or at least the green eyes of that woman, still so painfully familiar, but God only knows why, I remember … I remember imagining what it would feel like for Marco to have his hands on my hips as she had.

My dick fucking _twitches_ at the thought.

 _No. No, little man, we are not going there again. Once is enough for one day, thank you very fucking much_.

A-after that … I remember leaving the club, I remember all the fucking dancing in the middle of the street, and I remember … Connie and Sasha guessing my, uh … _affliction_. Yeah, that definitely happened. Definitely didn’t dream _that_ , unfortunately.

My head protests at the thought, a pretty severe pounding in my temples turning my brain mercilessly to dust. This is about the time where I swear off alcohol for life. Happens every time.

I climb out of the shower, wrapping the towel around my waist, as I bundle up my dirty clothes, debating whether to go ahead and wash them, or just bite the bullet and fucking _burn them_. I guess that would be more obvious. But then so is washing two loads of laundry in the space of two days, right? Let’s just hope mom’s out of the house today.

I waddle back to my room, throw the clothing into my hamper, and open up my laptop ready to check this morning’s Facebook news, when … I hear something strange.

 _Tip-tip-tip_.

Light tapping against my window.

This has happened before.

I freeze in the middle of my room, suffering some sort of minor heart attack, judging by the way my chest constricts painfully.

 _Is … is that Marco_?

Probably for the first time since I met him, I find myself praying to every God-damn deity that it’s not him outside my window. Come on now. I can’t have this much bad luck in one day, right? No. No, it’s not fucking fair.

 _Tip-tip-clunk_.

Whatever is thrown – a stone, a pebble, whatever – misses the window, clanking onto the roof tiles, and bouncing down into the gutter, echoing as it ricochets off the plastic. Voices accompany the noise.

“You missed again! C’mon, give it here, I’m a better shot!”

“Shut up, it’s not easy!”

That’s not Marco. I don’t know whether or not to be insanely relieved, because, well … I don’t think I want to be hearing Connie and Sasha outside my bedroom window at whatever-o’clock on a Tuesday morning, especially considering what happened last night, _either_.

Maybe I can just feign being asleep? Or just not in? I could just hide and wait for them to go away, right?

My phone decides at that moment to start ringing very loudly. And I definitely don’t jump a fucking mile into the air, swearing violently.

“S-shit!”

I scramble to hold my towel up around my hips, as Connie’s voice echoes through the open crack of my window.

“Totally heard you, Jean! We know you’re in!”

Oh, for crying out fucking loud. I hate everything today. _Everything_.

I shuffle reluctantly over to the window, dipping under my curtains, to see, sure enough, Connie and Sasha, standing in the middle of the lawn; Sasha has a small pile of pebbles in her hand, and Connie has one foot propped on top of … on top of a … _is that a boom box_?

Maybe I was wrong before. Maybe I do live in an eighties movie. Just not a good one, where I end up being serenaded by John Cusack. No, he sent Connie Springer in his place.

I push the window sash as far up as it’ll go, and lean out, one hand still holding the towel around my waist firmly in place. Connie’s grinning like a rabid animal down there.

“Mornin’ princess,” he chirps, hands on hips. “Sleep well?”

I have about a hundred and one different question I want to ask, as well as a hundred and one different insults I want to throw at him, compiled with the fact that _no, I didn’t fucking sleep well, thank you very much. I’m trying to have a crisis of conscience right now, so please get the hell off my lawn!_

“How to I tell you two succinctly to get the hell off my property, huh?” I scowl, wincing as the sunlight hammers into my hangover. “What do you want?”

They exchange an evil look, and I’m left briefly wondering how _they’re_ not hung-over as fuck right now, but that thought passes instantly, when Connie leans down to press a button on his tape recorder-boom box thing.

The song starts out as a strange piano tingle, fuzzy with white-noise, until Connie gives it a shove with his foot, and the singing starts.

I’m going to fucking _murder_ him.

After I curl into a ball and die of embarrassment, I course.

“ _I can't fight this feeling any longer_  
And yet I'm still afraid to let it flow  
What started out as friendship, has grown stronger—”

Connie and Sasha are both sniggering intently, as I’m serenaded with REO Speedwagon’s motherfucking _Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore_.

“I’m gonna fucking skin the two of you alive!” I shout over the building chorus, as their snickering descends into peals of hysterical laughter, almost drowning out Kevin Cronin’s vocals. I storm back into my room, flinging my bath towel to the side, and grabbing any stray items of clothing I can find, entirely intent on some _justified homicide_.  

Sasha’s squeal reverberates in my ears as I pull on a shirt over my ears: “Time to go, mister Springer!”

 _Not if I catch you fucking hooligans first_.

I tear down the stairs in literally two or three massive strides, and skid into the kitchen, just in time to see Connie and Sasha piling out of the back gate, boom box tucked under Connie’s arm. Throwing the back door open, I race across the grass as the rumble of Connie’s truck starts up on the other side of the hedge, and it heaves away from the curb-side, Sasha leaning out the open passenger window as I’m left on the sidewalk both agape and fucking _fuming_. She waves wildly, chestnut-brown hair sprawling all over her face with the speed of the truck.

“We love you, Jeanbo! Say hi to Marco from us, okay!”

Connie slams his foot down on the gas, and they go shredding down the asphalt, way too fast for me to even consider running to catch up and drag them back here kicking and screaming.

I think saying I’m fucking _mortified_ doesn’t quite cut it. My face is flaring, and it feels like my cheeks are on fucking fire, and— fuck, I wonder if anyone saw that? I really fucking hope mom isn’t in, Jesus Christ. A quick glance around spares me the humiliation of having any neighbours watch that spectacle, thank God, and as I traipse back inside, shoulders dropped, I’m also incredibly thankful to see a note from mom on the kitchen counter saying she’s gone to get her hair done this morning.

I march back up to my room, making sure to kick my door back open with as much brute force as possible (and consequently stubbing my toe in the process, God fucking dammit), and slump down in my desk chair in front of my laptop. A new notification on Facebook flashes up in the corner of my screen: _Connie Springer tagged you in a post_.

I click on the link – why, I have no freaking clue – and it takes me to his wall, where he’s linked a Youtube version of the REO Speedwagon song, alongside my name and a winky face in the caption.  Of course it already has a like from Sasha.

I furiously type into the comment box: _u two are fuckin dead to me_ , and a grand total of two milliseconds after posting, it gets a like from both Sasha and Connie, followed shortly by Reiner. I mentally add him to my hit-list as well.

I slide down lower in my wheely chair, my hips and butt practically off the seat, and stare intently at the Youtube video in the centre of my screen, before moving my mouse to click play.

The melody is much sharper and clearer through my laptop’s sound system, but it doesn’t make me not want to slam my head into the nearest wall any less.

It’s so fucking ironic.

“ _I said there is no reason for my fear  
Cause I feel so secure when we're together—_ ”

I’m going to fucking punch Connie in the face next time I see him.

“ _Baby, I can't fight this feeling anymore—_ ”

 

* * *

 

I think I probably deserve an award for surviving the rest of Tuesday without self-combusting, because that’s sure what I feel like doing.

I don’t stick around on Facebook for very long, what with every other fucking notification someone liking or commenting on Connie’s video. The worst is when Marco likes the video, and then Connie comments a split second later with: _OH MY GOD_ , which Sasha, Reiner, fucking Eren – basically _everyone_ then goes and likes. Well, great. Please tell me they don’t know as well.

I do my laundry, a real ball of fun that, as I shove my shame into the washing machine for the second time in two days. I sit cross legged in front of the circular window, watching my boxers, shirt, and sweatpants get flung around the drum mercilessly, kinda wishing I was in their place.

I take my time with the tumble dryer, choosing a particularly long cycle, and then even going as far as to crack out the iron once that’s done – anything to keep my mind on the mundane thoughts right now.

I can’t for the life of me remember the last time I did my own ironing and that’s … probably pretty shitty.

It’s obviously more than a little bit odd to mom as well, because when she comes home from her appointment, hair smoothed and sleek and freshly highlighted, she asks me if I’m feeling okay, pressing the back of her hand to my forehead when she sees the ironing board set up.

“Your face is a little red, honey. Are you coming down with something?”

 _A little red_. I scoff internally, and press the iron into my shirt aggressively.

After that, I try to draw, but that fails, because what do I normally draw? I draw Marco. I end up staring at a blank sheet of paper what literally must be hours, twiddling a pencil between my thumb and forefinger, until my phone startles me out of that stupor.

Marco’s everywhere, apparently.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
Hey! How are you feeling today? :’)

 _Pretty shitty, Marco. Pretty shitty_.

I don’t reply to him.

 

* * *

 

Wednesday morning is the most nerve-wracking experience of my life. Being thrown in a pool is nothing compared to this feeling, how it swirls in my stomach, and creeps like a million tiny insects over my skin. I can’t sit still from the moment I wake up, legs jittering, feet tapping on the floor … I’m wired, and I haven’t even had a drop of caffeine yet.

I’m nervous for the most stupid of reasons. Nervous, because suddenly I don’t know how I’m going to face Marco, talk to Marco, be within the same vicinity as Marco. Marco, the nicest, kindest, most understanding person in the history of the known universe – who, after the last two days of avoiding all responsibility like the pro I am, I have realised I have the henchest crush on.

Crush. I hate that word. It sounds so middle school, right? It sounds so: giggling with your friends in the corridor every time said person walks past, having awkward movie dates where one person yawns and stretches their arm over the other’s shoulders, doodling names and hearts in notebooks under your teacher’s nose in class—

 _Not that you wouldn’t do any of that_ —

Shut up. No. I’m an adult. I’m gonna deal with this in an adult way. God dammit. All this lovey-dovey crush crap is supposed to end when you’re a teenager.

I say that to myself, but it really … doesn’t help in the slightest.

I spend the entire morning, before Marco arrives for pool duties, pacing erratically around my room, intently debating how the hell I ever got away with being so touchy-feely in the past. I rested my head on his shoulder. I let him sleep in my bed. I _held hands_ with him.

I blush furiously just at the thought.

Oh God, what if it was really glaringly obvious, and I was just slow on the uptake? What is he knows already? What if he knows, and he’s not cool with it, because this is Marco, and he’s always so nice and—

 _Jean, calm down. Jesus Christ_.

Okay. Okay, I’m calm. Totally calm. Gotta be calm, or Marco will definitely know something’s up. Wait, maybe I want him to know something’s up? Right? That’s how this is meant to work – I’m meant to want him to like me back, right? Shit, I haven’t even begun to think about that sort of thing. A relationship.

Oh geez, I’m going to have a fucking aneurysm here. I tremble violently.

Because, all that aside, there’s a lot of other stuff I’m overlooking here.

For, let’s see, nineteen years of my life, I’ve never thought about liking a guy – yet here I am. We’ve concluded that much. I don’t really know what proportion of straight, or gay, or bisexual, or whatever other words Eren might throw at me, I am; all this stuff is pretty new to me. I don’t know how I meant to react, I don’t know how this is meant to go (especially considering all my knowledge basis for relationships revolves around that car crash of a thing Hitch and I had going on in sophomore year of high school). What would it be like to be with a _dude_? I have literally zero experience in this sort of thing, fuck.

But I know I like Marco – I mean, two dodgy dreams about the guy later, and I don’t think I have a leg to stand on in terms of denying that fact.

I can try the word on my tongue as much as I want: like, like, _like_.

It’s odd, because on Friday, in the car with Connie, I’d denied the living daylights out of exactly the same thing. I was an entirely different person on Friday. That’s kinda weird, if you think about it.

And that’s not the only thing. Last time I spoke to my _dad_ , I was a different person. I still had one thing in my basket of failures that he could still count on. Bringing a girl home, introducing her to the folks, getting married, producing little sprogs to take over the company eventually … well, I’ve thrown another spanner into that equation now, haven’t I?

I shake my head firmly. No. Don’t think about that yet. There’s no reason why I have to tell my parents about anything yet. I don’t even know if there is an _anything_.

I’ve gotta act natural. Scope out the waters, maybe see if there could be … if there could be an anything. I can’t push it. I don’t know if he likes me like that – if he could _ever_ like me like that. Marco doesn’t deserve that – just because he’s gay doesn’t mean I can automatically assume that he might … well. And especially if he’s dealing with some personal shit, I can’t just go throwing on extra baggage in the light of some stupid crush. I can’t ruin our friendship like that.

Right. Yes. Gotta act natural.

What the fuck is _natural_?

 

* * *

 

Natural, apparently, is sitting on a bar stool in the kitchen, spinning around in endless circles, as my feet tap out an erratic beat on the metal bar half-way up the trunk of the stool. When my fingers aren’t trembling around the edge of the seat, they’re carding through my hair, as I catch repeated glances of my reflection in the window, making sure, _yes, my hair still looks good, it’s good, everything’s good, good, good_ —

The back gate swings open, and Marco shimmies his way through, arms filled with his cleaning equipment, pool net tucked under one arm, and hose pipes slung over the opposite shoulder. The pain in my chest twists, and I swallow forcefully, trying to push back the … the fear that has taken root.

The _fear_. This is a joke.

 _Act natural_.

I suck in a deep breath, straighten my back as I slip off the stool, and try to pretend I never had a steamy-as-fuck dream about the guy standing in my back yard.

I shove my hands into my pockets, and slip out onto the back patio, which instantly begins to bake the soles of my feet. Marco has his back to me, unloading his equipment onto the grass, and fiddling around with slotting the parts of the pool net together, whistling softly to himself some melancholic sounding tune. I creep forward wordlessly, until I’m not more than a handful of paces away.

I almost call out to him, but the words catch in my throat as a strange sort of cough that makes me sound like a dying animal. Well, I’m not far off. Marco prickles in surprise, but when he turns around, his smile is warm and welcoming.

I kinda wish it wasn’t. (If only he knew the … _things_ I’ve been dreaming of. Ha.)

“Hey,” he says, cheerfully. I don’t reciprocate it very well, my eyes flitting down to the grass that sticks up between my toes.  “You ... okay?”

“Y-yeah,” I manage, if barely. I’m stammering all over the place. “Good. Great. H-how’re you?”

His eyebrows pinch together, and he sort of juts out his lower lip, maybe in concern, maybe in confusion. Whatever, it’s fucking _cute_. I’m failing at this normalcy thing.

“I’m … doing good,” he says slowly, and it’s difficult to tell whether he’s being cautious with me, or whether he’s being trepid with the truth. Is he good? He hasn’t said anything about _himself_ since Sunday. Has what he was dealing with gone away? Has it gotten worse and he’s just hiding it? He’s only been worried about _my_ wellbeing. “I, uh … Jean, are you _sure_ you’re okay? You look … a little bit red. You might have caught the sun.”

My hand shoots up to cup my cheek, feeling a blazing blush already there. Fuck it.

“Ha-aa, yeah. Sun. Caught the s-sun.”

I am a hot fucking mess. (In all senses of the phrase.)

Marco frowns, and drops the pool net in his hand, approaching me warily. Oh man, come on, this is not fair. Look at how well his shirt fits him, this is totally not—

“You’ve gotta be careful, Jean, you might end up with sunstroke if you—”

I know I should be listening to what he’s saying – and normally, I’m so caught up in the smoothness of his voice that I wouldn’t miss a word – but I’m distracted by the solid shape of his arm as he stretches a hand out to me, first pressing his fingers to my forehead (which pretty much stops my heart), and then dropping his grip to my shoulder, which he gives a gentle squeeze. I know I should probably be reeling away at this point – you know, what with the personal space boundaries I’d like to ideally maintain today – but I’m frozen to the spot, my legs and arms like ice, despite the sun glaring down on the back of my neck. His mouth moves with words I’m not paying attention to, and I’m way too caught up in how his jaw rolls over each syllable.

“— are you feeling dizzy at all? Maybe you should— hey, Jean, are you listening?”

“H-hah?”

Marco puffs out his cheeks playfully, and bats me on the arm. I tense up, and hope he doesn’t notice.

“You just zoned out, didn’t you? What time did you go to bed last night, huh?”

Good question. Can’t remember. Late, probably?

I manage an eloquent “uhhh” whilst Marco rolls his eyes. He seems … kinda chipper today, right? That’s good. I’m glad. For him.

Not for me.

It just drags me deeper into that whirlpool of freckled smiles, the current too strong to swim against right now. I swallow forcibly, and grit my teeth.

REO Sweedwagon plays on repeat inside my head.

 

* * *

 

I take up my usual spot on the steps of the pool shed as Marco works, him chatting pretty amicably. It’s nice to see that he’s not shouldering so much weight today – maybe it’s worked out, whatever it was, or maybe he’s just strong enough to keep it all down, and put on a cheerful façade. I hope it’s the first option, and not the latter, but I don’t think luck is all that kind.

He talks about Mina, about his mom, about Sunday night at the outlook – but all I hear are words strung together, and not full sentences, dipping in and out of paying attention to him and paying attention to _him_. Mainly his butt. He has a really nice butt; his shorts fit the curve very nicely indeed. Why haven’t I noticed that ‘till now?

Anyway. Great butt. Me, on the other hand? Well, I’m trash.

 _Stop checking out your best friend’s ass, Jean. You thirsty bastard_.

I blink rapidly a few times, and cover my mouth with my hand casually, nibbling on one of my fingers, as I train my eyes on a parade of ants attempting to climb up onto the first of the concrete steps.

One, two, three ants … I steal a glance up again. Marco’s watching me curiously.

“Are you sure the heat’s not getting to you?” he laughs hollowly, leaning his weight on the pool net, and jutting one hip. “You’re not really … being _yourself_.” He looks like he wants to say something else, what with the way he runs his tongue deftly over his lips and—

No. Stop.

I scratch the back of my neck awkwardly; it’s already sticky with a film of sweat. The knot in my stomach wrings itself tighter, and word vomit begins to creep up my throat. I say the first thing that comes to my mind.

“H-heh, yeah. It is p-pretty hot out here.” Smooth, Jean. Smooth. “You, uh, well I was thinking, ‘cus you’re— _it’s_ so hot out and, uh … you wannamaybetrythepooltoday?” Yep. The word-puke. It all comes out at once, in one, barely intelligible ball of crap.

 _Try the pool? What the actual living fuck, Jean_.

Marco’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline, mouth falling agape, before he quickly shuts it again.

This is why I should probably never talk. I say dumb things when I panic.

I don’t think Marco notices my intense internal frown though, because his faces lights up, a broad, ecstatic grin stretching over his lips. He’s like a dog who’s just seen his owner come home after a day of work, I muse to myself.

“The pool?” he practically chirps. “Are you sure? You want to give it another go?”

No, not really. But maybe I can scare all these other feelings out my chest if I go into the water. Great plan, right?

“S-sure,” I say, my voice a little weak. “Why not?”

 _Why not. Let me tell you why not_.

Marco practically bounces on the spot. “O-okay! I’ll … I’ll go get my trunks, alright? I’ll see you back here in a few!”

I wander into the house in a daze, passing my mom in the kitchen, as she pours over some glossy magazine and nurses one of the dumbass health smoothies that does absolutely nothing to help her lose weight or whatever it claims to do. Pretty sure she says something, and I’m _pretty sure_ my ears have just stopped working today.

 

* * *

 

Standing on the edge of the pool, staring down into the barely lapping waves that lick the top step, I regret everything. I hug my bare chest tightly, willing away the hot flush that creeps up the inside of my knees and elbows, slick and sticky.

Marco hops down into the water, two, three steps deep, before he turns back around to face me.

I could almost start liking the pool, you know, with him standing in it like this. I mean, I know I’m an irrevocable piece of _shit_ of a friend right now – literally the human embodiment of a God-damn pool noodle – but dang son. You look good.

(I push the thought to the back of my head that maybe mom and I have more in common then I’d necessarily like. Hmm.)

“How far do you want to go?” he smiles broadly, pool water seeping into the hem of his swim trunks, just above his knees.

 _How far do I want to go? Ha. Hahaha. I need to remove my mind from the gutter. Period_.

Whatever bravado I have inside me doesn’t translate too well, and I sort of mumble something unintelligible in response, shuffling awkwardly on the spot, before I brave one foot, and then the other, down onto the top step. The water is fucking freezing today, and I wince as it seeps between my toes. My breath hitches painfully, deep inside my throat. It hurts.

There’s a feeling that coils itself in my feet, sprawling up my calves, around my knees, that’s like wire cutting into my skin. It has nothing to do with Marco. Or maybe it has everything, I don’t know. This … this was not a good idea today.

Marco reaches out to take my hand – like normal, fucking normal – and that taught feeling extends all the way down my arm, twisting around my wrist, each and every finger. I want to say I’m blushing, or there is a cacophony of butterflies flinging themselves around inside my stomach, or something along those lines, but as he gives my hand a gentle tug, and guides me onto the next step, I know it’s none of those things.

I’m not flustered. I’m _starting to panic_.

I’m surprised I haven’t started shaking yet, but it’s really only a matter of time.

“Are you okay, Jean?” Marco says, and I watch the crease appear between his eyebrows. _Come on, Jean. Pull yourself together. The guy you’ve suddenly realised your pretty-fucking-gay feelings for is standing shirtless, literally centimetres away from you, with your hand in his, and you’re not making the most of this._

_Stop thinking about the fucking water._

I try to avert my eyes, from both the water and from Marco, focusing in on the stretch of lawn on the other side of the pool, and the hedge beyond. Push it back. Push it all back.

I let Marco guide me as I force myself to take another step forward, the water sploshing up around my knees now. Cold. Really cold. I freeze up.

My stomach churns, and I feel sick. It’s not right.

My mind’s not in the right place for this today. Not at all.

I know the taste of panic on my tongue.

Maybe I squeeze Marco’s hand a little too hard, because he squeezes back, his smile wide, but wobbly, I think. Uncertainty seems to flash across his expression, his dark eyes large, brown and bright against the sun. I feel the lump in my throat grow like a tumour in size.

I think calm and natural are about to be thrown out the window.

Marco’s other hand ghosts over my ribs, not quite touching, but enough to send some violent electric shock coursing through my system, as he seems to want to guide me further, deeper into the pool. He tries to steady me.

No. Can’t do it. It’s too much water, Marco. It’s too deep, too deep—

A gentle touch, as his fingers press into my side. A small tug of encouragement. It’s not enough.

Marco, stop.

 _Marco, stop_.

I find my voice, hoarse and stuttering, as one foot hesitates on the brink of the step, suspended in the water, suddenly so thick and viscous around my leg. There’s a symphony clashing inside my head, cymbals booming together in my ears. The crescendo of white noise surges. I can’t.

“M-Marco!” Quiet first, then louder. “Marco, s-stop!” The ebb and flow of panic makes everything quake. Marco’s hands are firmly on my sides in an instant, holding me still, still as stone – but the proximity brings with it a flush of claustrophobia that makes my heartbeat sky rocket.

“You’re okay, Jean,” he breathes, soft and warm. Too close, too close. Still too much water. “Nothing’s going to happen, I’ve got you. We won’t go any deeper.”

Yean, no. No. Nope. Na-ah.

One step forward, two steps back. The words from that time – so long ago now – echo around inside my hollow head.

 _How can you be scared of water, Jean_?

And then—

 _You like Marco? Marco, the pool boy, Marco_?

Oh man. I don’t like this. I gotta get out. Gotta get out. Too much, too quick.

But then, it gets worse.

“Jean, sweetie, was that you shouting?”

Oh no.

 It’s mom – mom’s standing on the patio, mom’s watching, mom doesn’t _know_. Mom thinks I don’t go in the pool ‘cus I’m lazy. ‘Cus I don’t like the outdoors. “What _are_ you boys doing?”

Mom doesn’t know.

It’s not really much of a surprise that I bolt, ripping myself out of Marco’s grip, and leaping back up the pool steps like my life depends on it – and well, it really does feel that way, you know? My heartbeat thunders at one hundred miles an hour inside my head.

 _Pathetic_.

I want to run, I really do, but something holds me back, and measures my paces as I stalk hurriedly back across the lawn, fists balled at my sides to stop them shaking. Marco splashes out of the pool behind me, and I hear water splattering across the concrete, but I can’t look back, not at the moment.

My throat is taught, my breathing strained, and I thought … I thought I’d seen the last of this feeling. I was hoping for too much. As usual.

This is a relapse. You can’t cure me. I’m broken.

“J-Jean?” my mom asks warily, as I pass her by, across the patio. She half-extends a hand to catch my shoulder, but drops it when she realises I don’t want to be stopped right now, that I’m vibrating with bubbling, _rippling_ energy.

I know I’m over-reacting. I know, I know, I _know_ – but this is what it does to you. You don’t get to control when it gets switched on or off. That’s not a switch you get custody over. You just have to deal when it happens.

 _Phobia_ probably beats _crush_ in the list of words that I hate.

“I’m … gonna change,” is all I say to mom as I pass her, welcoming the feel of cold tile on my bare feet as I step into the kitchen; cold, _dry_ tiles. I exhale deeply, my breath, my lungs, everything shaking as I expel the air from my body. The focus I grasp onto, in order to not puke my guts up all over the floor then and there, is extraordinary. _Don’t be weaker than you already are_.

I keep moving, not looking back – and it’s not ‘till I’m halfway up the stairs that I realise _this is the second time I’ve run away from Marco because I’ve freaked out about the water_.

Oh. I think I feel my heart lurch.

I remember his face from the first time this happened, how hurt he was, how confused, how he had only wanted to help. I’m kinda glad I didn’t look back at him this time. It’d be worse now, all newly realised things considered. Worse for him, worse for _me_.

My foot comes down too heavy and I almost trip up the stairs, only saving myself from face-planting on the hard wood by catching myself with my hands, my nose centimetres away from being broken a second time in too few a days. I could probably cry, if I wasn’t so highly strung.

“ _Jean_.” Gentle, hopeful. _Worried_.

 _Oh, come on Marco, can’t you leave a guy to wallow in peace_?

I pull myself upright on the bannister, and turn to face him – he stands at the bottom of the stairwell, his face flushed and earnest, his legs still beaded with water droplets, slowly trickling down onto the floor. He wrings his hands in front of his bare chest. It’s too much.

Never have I been so conflicted as to whether I genuinely want to throw myself at someone and kiss them, or run for the fucking hills. Can I do both? Kiss him first, then run the hell away. That’d be great.

Apparently my legs want me to do neither, and give out beneath me; I flump down onto my ass with a more than fucking painful _oomph_. Excruciating pain seizures through my tailbone, and I hiss, moving my hand to hold the small of my back.

Great. Fucking great. As if I didn’t look like enough of a loser before.

“F-fuck. That _hurt_.”

Marco doesn’t move much, concern pricking his eyebrows, and some daft, empathetic smile on his face. Maybe he’s laughing at me – on the inside. Wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe I was a hot mess before, but now I’m just a _plain mess_. I don’t want him to see me like this.

“Sorry I s-suck so much,” I growl, feeling heat welling behind my eyes. It stings, even more so when I know what tends to happen after I have any form of panic attack – I cry. Fucking cry like a kid.

Marco surprises me when he scoffs, too loud and too brash for him, and runs a hand through his hair as if exasperated. I would be. _I would be_.

“I’m pretty sure you don’t suck,” he says firmly, but the words are hollow to me. He says this sort of stuff all the time – it begins to lose its meaning. “And even if you do – it doesn’t matter.”

Pretty sure it does matter. One step forward, two steps back. Motto of my entire existence – except it’s more like, I dunno, half a step forward, and at least ten or so back. Maybe more. Right now it feels like I’ve run a whole God-damn marathon in the wrong direction. I’m definitely tired enough.

Marco moves slowly, as if he’s afraid he’ll spook me – which is understandable, I guess, seeing as we’ve done this scenario before, and last time I did run – and he gradually climbs the stairs, before crouching down and sliding onto his knees on the step below my feet. He gazes up at me, and gently, he rests his hands on my knees, cautiously testing the water with the most gossamer of touches – _but it’s okay, you idiot. You’re perfect. I fucking like you_.

It’s me. I’m _not_ perfect.

The taste of those words is bitter as I swallow them.

But Marco’s words taste like sunshine does on a dewy, autumn morning. Fresh, crisp, clear, and warm. They always fucking do.

“It’s okay if it’s still bad,” he hums, squeezing both my knees reassuringly. He doesn’t have to voice it, but I know he’s not just talking about the water. He’s talking about all the other things – the stuff he knows, and the stuff he doesn’t know – the stuff that riles me up to breaking point. This wouldn’t have happened without _that_. “It won’t just go away, I know that much. It takes time to beat this stuff.”

But I’ve been willing it all away for _nineteen years_ , Marco. Isn’t that enough time? I don’t know if I can beat the fact that water makes me want to throw up, or that I’m my parents’ disappointment, or that I can’t stand up to my dad’s expectations of me, you know?

I also don’t know if I can beat the fact I want to slam you into that wall there and kiss you.

Wait, no. _No_. This is not the fucking _time_.

(But yet, it sort of _is_.)

“I-I … don’t think I can be fixed,” I murmur, and please, _please_ Marco, don’t notice the way I’m staring at your lips now. “Bit of a—” Hiccup. “Bit of a … lost cause, r-right?”

Whichever deity – God, Buddha, coincidence, whatever – decided to create Marco … well, I’d like to personally tell you that you gave him too much power. He shouldn’t be able to stop my heart with just one touch, but he does, he fucking _does_. I think I’m going to implode, or maybe self-combust, or both. Whatever. It’s going to be messy.

Marco lifts one of his hands carefully, and guides it to my cheek, his thumb resting just under the sickly, yellow bruising caused by my fracture. It’s the same manner as before, on Friday, but also, entirely not. Last time, at the gas station, he held my face and this felt clinical. Last time, he was playing doctor.

Not now, not here. This is completely tender. His thumb sweeps across my skin, and I wonder – really, truly – if he’s going to kiss me. Or maybe I’m going to kiss him. I know I want to. Such a shame my soul has evaporated from my body somewhere along the way, and now I’m just an empty shell of a carcass labelled Jean.

Fuck. This is a good chance. Why can’t I move?

“Even if you never get over it,” he breathes, so, so fucking quietly, that the words are little more than fluxes of breath against my face as he rises a little higher on his knees, our eye-lines now level. I recall the memory, the _dream_ , of his breath against my neck. “I guarantee, Jean, that you will make it to that place where it won’t bother you so much. For now, _we_ just learn how to live with it.”

Over the last few days, I know I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m probably fucked more than a handful of times, but _this_ time, I know, for certain, that I am absolutely, irrevocably _ruined_. Because I really want to kiss Marco – that thought like a broken-fucking-record inside my head – and how do I go about living with _that_?

 _You’re ever the optimist, Marco_.

The feeling that burns in my chest ignites the stagnant pools of fear and anxiety, and incinerates them to ashes. I know at this moment that there’s no way I can pull away from this now – even if I like him, even if he doesn’t like _me_ – it doesn’t even matter, because I _need_ him. I need his friendship. Wanting is irrelevant now. I need him so fucking much. He knows exactly where to dig to pull me out of the hole I’ve dug for myself over the years, because I haven’t yet learned how to drag myself out alone yet. I will. I will learn, Marco.

I’m just really, really selfish sometimes. I need your help a little longer.

I sniff loudly, snorting all the crap back up my nose – which kills like a bitch, I might just add – and Marco drops his hand from my face, moving to pat me affirmably on the shoulder. It’s not the same, and … and it’s okay if I push what I want a little more, right?

“Can I … you know?” I mumble, pathetically, training my gaze on the way one of his palms still lingers on my knees. “Do you mind if I—”

“Mind if you what?” I steal a peek at his face, and find it flushed, prettily pink. It’s my favourite expression of his. But he doesn’t need to be embarrassed, fuck. I won’t make this awkward, don’t worry Marco. I just really want a hug.

I kinda, sorta awkwardly wrap my arms around his neck, and press my face into the well of his shoulder, feeling him instantly stiffen up beneath me, and then relax. That gives me some peace of mind, as his hands come to rest on my back, both of them smoothing concentric circles on my bare skin.

It’s painful, but amazing. Mostly amazing.

 

* * *

 

It’s awkward when we pull away from each other, because it’s lasted too long to just be a casual hug. (And let’s not forget the both of us are wearing just our swim trunks.) Marco’s blush is bold, and he stammers over his words – I hold back how fucking adorable he is on the tip of my tongue – and I find myself unable to look him in the eye for much longer than two or three seconds, finding it much easier to stare holes in the floor instead.

We share a sheepish chuckle, and then Marco motions for me to scoot my butt up on the stair, so that he can slide in next to me. It’s happened like this so many times before, the two of us shoulder to shoulder, but now I can put a name to the feeling of the static that jumps from port to port between our arms and across our skin.

But it can’t last forever. Eventually, he has to go, and I see he’s reluctant to leave, unwilling to let me have the last, awkward goodbye, but I give him a gracious kick in the butt as he descends the stairs.

“I’ll see you Saturday,” I say, like always. It’s sort of become my promise though – my promise to him. _See you Saturday_.

For a moment, everything is okay.

 

* * *

 

I go upstairs and get changed after that, flinging my swim trunks under my bed with little regard for them. I pull on my most comfortable pair of pyjama pants, and an oversized Misfits shirt from the bottom of my wardrobe, and pad back downstairs, still with the unconscious feeling of water swelling around my legs at the back of my mind. It’s tough.

Everything feels quiet and subdued, even the buzz of the TV seeping out of the living room, where mom is perched on the edge of the sofa, but not really watching whatever flickers across the screen. I pause in the doorway and watch her for a while, how she picks at her expensive manicure, and repeatedly smoothes out the creases in her creaseless jeans.

I clear my throat abruptly, which startles her – she jumps like she’s just been zapped with a sharp shock of electricity.

“Hey,” I say softly and apologetically, slipping into the living room, and diving onto the sofa next to her. I grab one of the pillows, and encircle it in my arms, squishing my nose down into the white cotton drill. Mom studies me in silence for a while – I bet she’s _completely_ lost this time, the fault both mine and hers, really – but she evidently decides not to ask about it. She seems to know that’s what I want, and leans over to press a lipstick-kiss to my forehead.

“I’m going to make you a grilled cheese,” she says. “Is it a ketchup day today?”

“Yeah. Lots of ketchup.”

 

* * *

 

Throughout that night, the anxiety in my system ebbs and flows without Marco there to counteract it. I eye my phone on my bedside table, and pick it up multiple times, start messages, and delete them, never quite reaching send. Part of me knows I want to talk to him. Part of me knows I shouldn’t, that he’s given me enough of his patience today.

None of the feeling that tightens in my gut is helped by the knowledge that my exam results go live at ten in the morning tomorrow.

I end up dreaming about report cards filled with Cs and Ds, and disappointed mothers, and angry fathers, and endless oceans of inescapable water, and can’t quite decide if it’s worse than the rest of this week’s more memorable dreams.

 

* * *

 

Thursday happens, whether I want it to or not.

I wake up early, feeling groggy and exhausted, eyelids heavy and crusted with sleep. My comforter and duvet have fallen off the bed in the night – I must’ve been shifting and fidgeting a lot. Ten o’clock comes and goes before I even roll myself off my mattress, glaring daggers at my laptop on my desk across the room, it taunting me.

Not yet.

I check my phone, to see if anyone’s already nosey enough to start pestering me about how I’ve done – and I’m right, with a text from Connie and a text from Ymir sitting unopened in my inbox.

 **From: the coolest guy youll ever meet**  
i fuckin choked math i am a dead man :(((((

 **From: Ymir**  
see u all next year bitches!

The words fly over my head, if I’m honest, feeling too apathetic to care or reply. Sucks to be Connie. Good for Ymir. I’m about to hit the sleep button, when a third text arrives out of the digital blue.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
Good luck for today! I know you will do well! Let me know how it goes! :’)

He even remembered about that. This slays the man. But also, ironically, gives me the kick up the backside I need to shimmy off my bed, and stagger over to my laptop, where I flip the lid and log in to the university portal.  

Sure enough, the email from my tutor is chilling in my inbox, waving a metaphorical middle finger in my direction. I literally close my eyes as I click it, reeling back as far as possible from my laptop. Don’t want to look, don’t want to look. Probably have to look.

Nothing explodes, my heart doesn’t stop, the world doesn’t spontaneously come to a fiery end. The house is just quiet around me. I open one eye, just a crack, and bravely steal a glimpse at my sentence.

It’s not bad. It’s not great either.

Two As in French and Math, a B-plus in History, and a B-minus in Philosophy. Ah, and then the glaring C-grade in Chemistry. That’s … not good.

But it was expected. That Chemistry exam was a disaster – two days after my panic attack by the pool, also known as the worst forty-eight hours of my life so far. I say that a lot, but I really think those days took the biscuit for hell on earth.

 _What grade would I have got if I hadn’t been such a_ —

I stop myself. I don’t follow that train to its destination, not this time.

 

* * *

 

I pluck up the courage to tell mom my grades over lunch; even she can’t hide her disappointment behind a lively bravado, and that feeling is like a knife to my side, twisting like a corkscrew into the hollow pang of shame that rests there.

It makes her congratulations feel phony, and her offer to do something that I want to do today feel like a forced suggestion, but I need to stop thinking like this – because she’s trying her best. I know that, I do. I’m working on my cynicism.

“When do you have to confirm your major, honey?” mom asks, as she loads the dishwasher after lunch. I perch on one of the bar stools, spinning listlessly from side to side, but stop when she raises her question. Ah, yes. That.

“S-soon,” I say. I’m pretty sure the deadline is the beginning of August … so in around a week. I don’t know the exact date – I’ve kinda been avoiding the responsibility of looking it up, because that means it’s real, and it’s happening, and I have to be proactive.

“Do you think you’re ready to make the decision yet, or—” She stops herself, and I think I know what she was going to say: _or are you going to talk to your father about it_? No, mom, I don’t think I can. I’m too fucking scared to do that; what do you take me for?

Decisions are not my forte.

“Not yet … I’m still thinkin’ about it.”

Mom starts rabbiting on about me maybe picking French as a major – she’s never raised the possibility before, and that’s purely because of dad, but I can tell by her face the enthusiasm she has for the suggestion. French is something _she_ taught me.

I give her a vague nod, but don’t share in her excitement. I can’t. Something’s changed. I visualise the little slip of paper, and I see myself writing a three letter word: _Art_.

“Mom,” I say, interrupting her train of one-sided conversation. “Sorry, I … I gotta make a quick phone call, I just remembered.”

 

* * *

 

I dial Marco’s number as soon as I’m safely upstairs again, suffering the dial tone at least half a dozen times, before I get an answer, and a breathy version of my name. It does stuff to me, man.

“J-Jean? Is everything okay?”

“H-hey, hi! Yeah, everything’s okay, sorry!” I cheep, almost dropping the handset as I juggle it to the other ear. _I just wanted to tell you my results_. How domestic does that sound? “I, uh … I thought you— I mean, I just wanted to— uh—”

“How were your grades?” Marco’s voice fizzles in my ear, making up for my articulation, or lack thereof. “That’s … what you want to talk about, right?”

“Uh, y-yeah! Yeah, sorry!”

“So? Are you going to tell me or keep me in suspense?” His chuckle prickles the hairs on the back of my neck, electrically.

“O-oh, well, I, uh … I did okay? I guess? French and Math were good—”

“Ah, congratulations!”

“—but Chemistry was a bit of a bummer.”

Marco end goes silent – no background chatter from Mina, no muted hum of his speakers playing in his room, not even a baited breath.

“Marco?”

“S-sorry. I was just … your Chemistry exam was your first one, wasn’t it?”

I know what he’s thinking about – and if I can push the guilt back, so can he, because it definitely wasn’t _his_ fault. He didn’t know. He didn’t know what would happen when he pushed me in the pool. He didn’t know it would fuck me up.

“If you’re thinking about what happened,” I say in a low voice, “I’m going to punch you square in your p-pretty, freckled face next time I see you.” (Whoops, _word vomit_.)

Marco’s laugh is dry and tinny across the line, and I know for a fact he’s just laughing to mask his concern. Dumb-ass idiot. Stop it.

“No, I’m serious,” I continue sharply, pressing the phone harder against my ear. “I was responsible for messing up that exam. My head wasn’t in the right place. Wasn’t your fault, man. You got that? _Chemistry doesn’t matter anymore_.”

Marco makes a noise of disagreement, something like a huff that just sounds like white noise over the phone line, but then picks up on something I didn’t quite realise I’d said.

“Wait – Chemistry doesn’t matter anymore?” he repeats, his voice rising a little towards the end.

“Y-yeah,” I say. This is it. If I say it, it’s real, right? “I was … planning on putting down for an Art major, actually. Uh … scrapping the Chemistry. And the Math. And everything. Yeah.”

“Are you serious?” Marco gushes, barely pausing for breath. At least one us can be excited about this – and it probably won’t be me until after I tell my parents. Way after. Still though, Marco’s enthusiasm tugs out a broad, giddy smile on my face.

“Yeah, I’m serious,” I beam, and I can hear how my grin stretches my words.  And then, in a quieter voice, I add, “This is my first step towards beating things, you know.”

…

“I’m so proud of you.”

He’s said that before, I know he has, but this time it stuns me. Am I still breathing? Is my heart still beating? I bite down hard on my lower lip until it hurts, totally _not_ blushing like a God-damn school girl.

“Your art is so good, Jean, I’m so excited for you. You’re going to have such a good time! Think of all the people you’re going to—”

I’m too happy. I’ve got to put a downer on this conversation, quick.

“I’ve got my dad to go through first, remember.” Ah yes. The anchor that wraps itself around my legs and drags me under the waves of Marco’s brilliant eagerness.  “You think I can declare without him finding out? Get my degree and then go: “surprise, dad?””

“… Jean.” A heavy sigh. I know, Marco, I know.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“Have you … spoken to your dad since … since you know,” he probes; I flump down onto my bed, sick of pacing the room, and flop one hand over my eyes.

“No. Not yet. He hasn’t been home, or at least, not when I’m awake. Probably avoiding me or some dumb shit.”

“Are you going to talk to him when he does come back?”

“Probably should.”

Marco makes a noise of assent in my ear, before I hear the familiar holler of his little sister in the background. His time is probably up.

“That Mina?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have to go?”

“… Yeah.”

There’s a weird moment of silence between us, where I’m waiting for him to say something more, and he … I don’t know what he’s doing. I do catch an intake of breath, though.

“H-hey, Jean, I—”

“Yeah?”

“… Sorry, it’s nothing.”

I scowl, and use the free hand splayed across my face to rub the skin between my eyebrows where frown lines appear. It pulls a little too much on the sensitive skin on the bridge of my nose, but it’s not pain worthy of the seventh circle of hell today. That’s good, at least.

“You were totally going to say something. C’mon, spit it out dude.”

I hear Marco gulp, and steel himself. _What the_ —?

“Jean, I—” He hesitates for a heavy moment. “Just … good luck, Jean. With your dad. I believe in you.”

For some reason I’m not entirely convinced that’s what he wanted to say, but it doesn’t overtly matter, you know? Because his belief in me resonates louder than anything else he could’ve whispered into my ear.

 _Thank you, Marco_.

 

* * *

 

My dad doesn’t come home ‘till Friday evening – he’s got pretty good at this whole sneaking around thing, but it’s down to the fact I’ve got Dead Kennedys spinning on my record player at top volume that I don’t hear his car pull into the driveway just before dinner.

I don’t realise he’s back until I’m thumping downstairs to fetch the box for one of my Xbox games, and I hear his voice resonating through the hall, from the living room.

I haven’t seen him since Sunday – which, ordinarily wouldn’t be anything new in the grand scale of things – but considering the last words he said to me were that I was throwing away my opportunity, that my behaviour was disappointing, that I was acting like a child … well.

 _We’re both just tall children, aren’t we, dad_?

I pause at the bottom of the stairs, keeping my back pressed against the wall, and training my ear to catch his conversation. He’s on the phone, it turns out.

“Yeah, in Chemistry. I was considering approaching the university about a remark at first, but then— yeah, exactly. He’s been playing up a lot lately. Mm, disappointing, I know. Wasting too much time playing video games, and watching television, and being generally _ungrateful_.”

I feel my heart plummet inside my chest, and his words wound me. He’s not angry – not the traditional type of anger, at least – and it’s the displeasure in his voice that drives the knife in deeper and violently twists it around in my gut. A claw to my skin, a blow to my face. I feel winded.

It’s easy to know what he’s talking about. What else was I expecting? Tch.  

“—you don’t happen to have the details of any good tutors, do you? Yes, I was considering it. Right – well yes, obviously there’s something wrong with the calibre of teaching there. I should’ve pushed him harder to aim for a better university than Trost – it’s become a bit of a cesspool lately. Jean would’ve been much better off following in my footsteps and going to study at—”

I feel nauseous – nothing new – and my stomach churns uncomfortably. I’m torn between sinking down against the wall and banging my head repeatedly against it, or scuttling the fuck out of here and locking myself in my room for the rest of the night, dinner be damned.

Sounds like a plan.

One foot on the first stair, and I’m stopped, when mom pokes her head out of the kitchen, her eyes popping wide when she sees me standing at the far end of the hall, one leg raised.

I can see it cross her mind to call out to me, but she stops – she knows now, and she understands whatever look is on my face. She glances between me and the doorway to the living room a few times, before pressing her claret-red lips firmly shut. She points at me with her index finger, and then mimes for me to stay here, as she steals another look at my dad, wherever he is, and quickly scurries across the wooden floor, footsteps light to keep her heels from clicking too loudly and too obtrusively.

“ _Mom_ ,” I say hushedly – don’t really know what else there is _to_ say. Her face is unreadable.

“You should go sit down for dinner,” she says plainly, but her words are just filler in the empty air. I know she’s been listening to this conversation going on in the other room just as much as me.

“I don’t think I’m hungry.”

“Jean,” she sighs, sweeping her hair behind her ear. “Don’t make it worse than it already is. It’s not worth it.”

My mom is the sort of person you’d probably expect to be as thick as two short planks, if you go by first impressions – but sometimes, especially lately, she knows what she’s talking about. I know she’s right. Don’t make it worse. Shame that I’m stubborn as fuck, and I don’t really care right now about _making_ _things worse_.

She can clearly see my resentment and reluctance as plain as day on my face.

“Listen to me, Jean,” she says, her voice lulling into a low whisper. “Life is easier when you learn to accept an apology you’re never going to get.”

Maybe I would, if there was even the slightest essence of a possibility of there being an apology. I don’t think the thought will have even crossed dad’s mind that it might not just be me in the wrong.

“Please go sit down, honey. It won’t last long, I promise.”

Some promises are weaker than others.

 

* * *

 

I wish the courage I find to join my parents at dinner was something I knew the taste of well. I could sure use it from time to time.

I help mom with a few of the dishes, so we only have to take two trips to and from the kitchen – and I only have to pass dad by two times. He remains on the phone – I don’t know if he sees me, I don’t know if he _ignores_ me – he doesn’t help us lay the table, regardless.

Mom and I sit down, her opposite me, and whilst I poke at the food on my plate with a fork and no appetite, she sighs heavily, and calls for my dad to come and join us.

Not once, no. She calls him three times, and each time, we hear him stop talking for a second, listen, and then merge seamlessly back into conversation without a single apology. The food is beginning to go cold.

“Mom, we should start eating,” I murmur quietly, stabbing a potato in half. It’s not like a particularly want to eat, but at least having the cutlery in my hands will give me something to do. But I know that mom wants more than me to make this work – to pour caulk into the cracks of this family – even if that’s just having everyone sitting ‘round the table together for half an hour.

“Robert! Dinner’s ready!”

This time, we finally hear him hang up his phone call, and the thud of the shallow, square heels of his dress shoes on the floor makes it feel like the stale air around me shakes. I stare fiercely at the pile of boiled potatoes on my plate, and count inside my head. It feels like something’s squeezing me in a giant fist, what with all the pressure constricting around my lungs.

Dad strides up to the table in silence, and pulls out the head chair with a screech of its legs across the floor. It makes me wince. He doesn’t spare either mom or I a single look, shaking out his napkin, and draping it across his lap, before taking up the mantle of his knife and fork, cutting into the food mom’s made whilst we wait with baited breaths. He says nothing as he does this.

The quiet is practically throttling me. This might just be worse than if he’d jumped straight into giving me a verbal beating.  I really feel like I might want to puke any second – the anxiety churns my stomach like butter; I pinch my eyes closed for a moment, and pretend … pretend I can get through this.

 _I believe in you, Jean_. I have to remember those words.

Dad breaks the silence when he drops his knife onto his plate with a shrill clatter of steel against china. Both mom and I start – don’t think I don’t notice that.

“I’m not happy about your results, Jean.”

Tell me something I don’t know.

Actually, yes, something I _don’t_ know – how did you find out? Did mom tell you? Did you phone up the God-damn university and force them to tell you? Did you throw around your weight a bit, because how else are you supposed to get your way? I’d really like to know.

I set down my cutlery, and press my palms flat against the table top, seeking some deep rooted stability from who-even-knows where. Dad keeps prattling on.

“I think you should consider finding a summer tutor. You’ve already thrown away being able to continue Chemistry next year, so make the most of the time you have left before the semester starts to polish up your Math.”

I swallow heavily, and don’t look at him when I speak, focusing all my efforts into controlling my voice.

“… I got an A in Math.”

“There’s still room for improvement.”  

Ouch. Fucking _ouch_. So what _is_ good enough for you, dad? I don’t exactly know what else I can give you here, so throw me a God-damn bone.

Across the table, mom is sawing up her food into smaller and smaller pieces, barely chewing as she forces herself to gulp them down. She keeps her head bowed low.

“Have you handed in your declaration of your major yet?” my dad continues sternly. Even now, his tone of voice seems to be laced with disinterest, stern and ice-cold as he continues to refuse to look me in the face. He doesn’t care for _me_ , no – he cares for his sake, for the sake of appearance, for the sake of caring.

“No.”

“Why not?”

My mouth goes dry, all my saliva suddenly sucked clean out, my throat like sandpaper. Words scratch, make me feel like I’m bleeding.

“I haven’t made a decision yet.” White lie, _white lie_. I’ve decided, and it feels more firm than ever inside my mind now.

“There’s nothing left to decide,” my dad declares opaquely. “You need to stop dawdling with these decisions, son. The real world won’t wait for you like this. Especially when it’s as clear cut as it is now; there’s really no reason to be this idle. Majoring in Math will be good for you. And it will _look_ good to employers as well.”

“Robert, is it really the time to be discussing this—” my mom cuts in bravely. “I’m s-sure Jean understands how serious this is.”

“Céline, please.” My dad spares her a look, at last, but I resent it, I resent it _so much_. He looks at her like she’s not worth his time. “Saying that is what encourages him to think that being this _negligent_ is acceptable in this house. Your babying of him is half the problem here.” I watch as mom recoils in spite of herself.

Again, they’re having a conversation about me whilst I’m sitting _right here_. Always talking about me, at me, never _to me_. I don’t think dad will ever talk _to_ me.

I’m not the person he wants me to be.

And I know I have to be the one to tell him this.

“I’m not going to take Math next year.”

My dad genuinely rips his gaze away from mom – not sure I’ve ever seen him move so fast. His head whips ‘round, and now … _now_ he’s looking at me. At last.

 _C’mon, Jean, stay strong. Keep it together_.

I feel like I’m plugged into a timer ticking down. The red numbers are approaching zero too soon, too fast.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, Jean.” His voice is rising. My control wavers.

“D-don’t pretend,” I say, resenting every note my own voice rises in octave. “I’m serious.” I find that I’ve pushed myself into a standing position, both my hands still pressed flush against the glass table top, anxious energy pulsating through either arm, gripping my shoulder, making my spine quake.

 _Use it, control it. Don’t let it get the better of you this time. Not again_.

Dad’s glare is irreverent.

 _Beat this_.

I will not shrink myself for his comfort; I will not become small, when there are people out there who encourage me to grow.

 _I’m done_.

“I’m done, dad. I’m d-done with Math, with Chemistry. I’m d-done … with your life plan for me. Next year, I’m—” I hack back the lump in my throat, fist my hands on the table. Keep going. “I’m going to pick Art as my major next year. I love drawing, I love painting. I’m going to do it, and _Marco said_ —”

 _Zero_.

I’ve made a mistake. I freeze, my words dissolving in my mouth like salt – makes me heave. I didn’t just say Marco’s name, did I?

Dad notices. Of course he does.

“Who’s _Marco_?”

“He’s the pool boy, Robert,” mom intercepts with the truth – why is she telling the truth, she could _lie_. I don’t lie.

“He’s my friend.”

My amazing, perfect, stupid friend who _believes in me_ without question, without hesitation, who smells like camomile and smiles like my own personal fleck of sunlight and lights lanterns along my skin with even the briefest of glances. He’s the person with who I want to drink wine out of the bottle in the bathtub, or eat cereal on the bedroom floor when there’s a perfectly good meal in the fridge, or slow dance in the living room when there’s no music. He’s the person I hope to one day want to hold me for twenty minutes straight, without words, without looks, without kisses (even though I want them) – wrapped in his arms without an ounce or essence of selfishness in it. That’s Marco. Let me tell you about him, dad.

My dad doesn’t listen to me. Instead, he spits out words bitter and spiteful, pressing them out flat between his clenched teeth.

“I wasn’t aware we _had_ a pool boy, Céline.”

This … this wasn’t how this was meant to go.

“We need _someone_ to clean the pool, Robert,” my mom bemoans, finally setting her own cutlery down. Now none of us are eating. I’m still standing. This has turned into some bizarre Mexican standoff. “Do you expect me to do it myself?”

Dad’s chair scritches across the floor once more as he abruptly gets to his feet. He’s always been tall and broad, and now is no exception, as I feel my shadow shrink standing beside him. He wipes his mouth once on his napkin, and then dumps it in a scrunched-up ball beside his plate.

“Céline. Can I talk to you in the kitchen? Alone.” His voice is controlled and measured and stony and fucking _scares_ me. He leaves without another word, and mom is so confused, eyes wide and glossy, like a startled animal. Mom. _You don’t have to do what he says, mom_.

She does though, because she doesn’t know it any other way. She leaves the dining room in timid silence.

I’m left alone at the dinner table.

And then the shouting starts.

To hear mom’s voice raised like that – it sucks all the energy, all the boldness out of my system, my legs, my arms turning to jelly. I sink back into my seat, and everything seems to whirl.

That was careless. I was _careless_.

Remember what dad did to the pool boy we had last summer. Remember how he ripped up his pay cheque, remember how he booted him off our property, remember how he phoned up the agency and got him fired.

Remember how mom didn’t even lay a finger on him, and all that still happened.

Remember how my father is the biggest fucking _hypocrite_ who walks the earth.

How ironic would it be, I wonder, if dad knew _I_ am the one who likes the pool boy, huh? The one who wants to kiss Marco all over, to drag him up the stairs and into _my_ bed. Maybe he’d kick me out of the house as well. I’d probably welcome it. Laughter escapes my mouth, bitter and dry. Oh God.

Something smashes. More yelling. I want to leg it, I’m going to leg it.

Can’t. Dad returns to the dining room, his dress shirt ruffled, his tie askew. He palms a hand through his hair, tries to flatten it. It’s unruly, like mine.

I stand again, not to greet him, but to show him I’m ready to get the hell out of there. He doesn’t seem to care, slipping back into his chair and unfolding his napkin onto his lap once more. He picks up his discarded cutlery, and slices into his now-cold dinner before acknowledging me.

“Sit down and finish your dinner. I’m not done talking to you.”

 _Oh dad, but I am. I really am_.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” I say stiffly, though the words don’t really sound like they’re coming out of my mouth. I’m drifting again. I scoop up my plate, food uneaten, untouched, and leave for the kitchen. I don’t grant him the satisfaction of me looking back.

 

* * *

 

Mom has her back to the island counter, gripping the edge of the marble surface with white fingers. She’s shaking, staring intently at the shards of a broken mug on the floor. Ah. It’s the mothers’ day mug that I bought her.

She doesn’t look like she’s hurt though. That’s what’s important.

I slide my plate and its contents onto the closest sideboard, and then take a cautious step closer to her. I don’t trust my voice, and I’m right not to do so, because it breaks.

“M-mom?”

She springs into action with a shock to her system, whatever film that shields her vision suddenly disapparating with the sound of my voice. She gasps when she lays eyes on the pieces of ceramic that scatter around her feet.

“O-oh! I’m s-sorry, this was … this was my fault – let me just—”

She goes plundering for the dustpan and brush beneath the sink, pushing bottles of this and that aside unsparingly, and all I can do is watch. I don’t know what else to say, I don’t know how to comfort her – this is like how it was with Marco, again. _Again_. When do I get to level up enough to get that upgrade, huh? The ability to comfort people with _my_ words.

“A-are you alright, m-mom?”

 _No Jean, she’s obviously not alright_.

“Don’t worry about me, h-honey.” The dustpan clatters out of her grasp and onto the floor. “Oh, shoot!” She reaches for it, but I beat her to it, seizing the mottled plastic handle away from her.

“I got it, mom.”

She straightens out of her crouch in front of the cupboard awkwardly, clutching the brush to her chest; the way her shoulders dip, and her knuckles are near translucent around the handle … it hurts. I was meant to be looking out for her, but I’ve only caused … this. She’s so shaken.

I want to fix this.

I pull mom into a rough, one-armed hug, pressing her into my chest, and burying my nose in the crown of her neatly-styled hair. For a second, she tenses, her hands fisting into the back of my shirt, but then she lets slip a fragile, little sob.

It’s okay, I didn’t need my heart anyway.

“You … you deserve better than him, mom,” I hush, stroking my hand up and down her back. There’s a dampness spreading across my shoulder. _Even if I don’t, mom, you do. You deserve so much better_.

That’s the truth, the real truth – because all she wants is everyone to be happy, really. She’s crying here, in my arms, because we’re not happy.

Me, though – I have only a selfish wish.

“What did … what did dad say about Marco?”

My priority isn’t the happiness of this family, and I know, I _know_ I don’t deserve my mom, and how good she is to me, but … sometimes I think happiness is too far a stretch to hope for. I don’t know if I _can_ be happy when my dad is involved. But I know I can be when _Marco_ is.

Mom pulls back from my hug, holding me back by my shoulders; her makeup is smeared, tear-tracks through her foundation, and black flakes of mascara silted below her waterlines – and I’m getting Deja-vu here. There’s been too much of this over the last week. She sniffs heavily, and moves to run her fingers through the coarseness of my undercut; her touch is comforting, and quells the blueness that roots inside of me.

She smiles a motherly smile.

“It’s okay, baby, we’re allowed to keep him on. I won’t let your father fire him – I told him he’s your friend. Nothing more.”

She wraps me up in her arms, and her in mine, and we sway in the middle of the kitchen, again, surrounded by remnants of the shattered mug.

I can’t help but think, despite everything – and even though it’s not what mom means by her words – I really don’t want to be _just_ Marco’s friend.  

It feels like all the courage has been brutally sapped from my system – but I did it, I told my dad how I feel. I managed that.

So why does telling Marco how I feel about him require _more_ courage?

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yoooo, this chapter is 26.2k long ... that's 55 pages of painful proof reading I went through. Truly the seventh circle of hell.
> 
> So! It was difficult to figure out how to top the last chapter, which really went down a storm with everyone ... so much crying in my inbox ... it was glorious. The emotional punch wasn't as much as last time, but that's okay, because sometimes rollercoasters have to take a dip before a steep climb. And there will be a real tipping point in CH15, believe me, as Marco's story finally comes to a head. It's going to be emotional.
> 
> Having Connie and Sasha was pretty fun though! And Jean's ... indelible thirst. I was cringing when proofing the, uh ... yes. The hanky panky. 
> 
> it was hard getting into Jean's head this time, because his internal monologue is literally all over the place. He's so bewildered, the poor trash baby. Hopefully he'll learn how to be smoother in the future. (Who am I kidding ...)
> 
> Other than that ... I know I'm a tease. It was so bad this chapter, wasn't it? 
> 
> Oh! And the woman in the club was Hitch, because I love her.
> 
> Super thank you for the wonderful fan art from the last chapter ... they have been some of the most beautiful yet! And for all the feedback too ... it was absolutely wild. I just love it, so thank you so much. Please leave me more comments about what you like and don't like, and what you want to see happen! Place your last bets on what's wrong with Marco!
> 
> Until next time!


	15. One of These Nights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An eccedentesiast is someone who fakes their smile or hides their pain behind a smile.

Courage and fear tend to go hand in hand. Some famous dude said that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it, the willingness to work through things despite how difficult they might seem. Life likes to throw challenges at you, obstacles to test your courage and your want to change – and those challenges do not wait. They happen, and then they pass, not looking back at you who are caged by your fears. You’re the only one with the key to that cage, with the legs to jump over those hurdles, and it’s up to you to decide how to use those things you’ve been given.

I think I’m still learning, and boy, it’s taken a long fucking time, but I feel like I’ve finally managed to pick the keys I need from my key ring, and I feel their brassy weights in my palm now. Just gotta figure out which locks I need to use them in.   

Sometimes unlocking doors is scary though. _Change_ is scary.

Painful, even.

But dealing with the fall out of change is probably the worst.

 

* * *

 

The fall out of Friday night goes like this.

Mom and I sweep up the shards of her broken mug in a companionable silence – she presses kisses into my hair every time she leans past me with the dustpan and brush, and I consider the locks of the cages I still have to open. Of the three keys I’ve laid to rest in my open hand, the ugliest one I’ve jammed firmly into the lock that represents my difficulties with dad, and given it a good wriggle for extra measure. It’s turning – if a little slowly.

The second key I’ve found is the water-rusted, silver key that corresponds to the … to my _aquaphobia_ , and I’m working up the courage to try it in a few locks – even if it’s taking some time.

The final key is the smallest, but some part of me is beginning to realise that it’s the most precious of the lot. The lock on Marco … it feels like I’ve been clutching that key to my chest for a really long time, but now that I finally realise what and how to unlock the door it matches, I don’t, I can’t do it. I’m too afraid of the things on the other side. _If_ there are things on the other side. What if there aren’t? What if this time it’s worth just staying as I am?

Everything is changing. I know I want it, I really do, but – _but_ it means I have to grow with it. And growing hurts, I’ll have you know, and it makes me feel that maybe all I want is for it to go back to how it was before: the pretence of happiness and simplicity. Three or four months ago, at least I could still pretend, you know?

That’s my cowardice talking again. Falling at that first hurdle.  Ugh.

Maybe these metaphors are getting out of hand. Maybe it’s not this complicated. Maybe things just happen, and there’s not really anything to unlock. Maybe stuff just happens.

When I look up to tip the last remnants of shattered ceramic into the trash, I see my dad standing in the doorway to the kitchen, his eyes focussed on me. The cold chill of fear ripples down my spine as I slowly right myself to my feet, wiping down my hands on my thighs. Mom goes quiet behind me somewhere, not even a tempered breath in surprise.

Dad studies me through squinted eyes that flit over my expression, trying to grab hold of a tendril of how I could _possibly_ be feeling right now. But, to me at least, he feels deflated somehow, just standing there under the arch of the door – maybe his anger has left him, maybe his bravado has all slipped away. I swallow forcibly, and mentally coax him on.

Maybe stuff just happens. Maybe you can’t do anything about it, so you just have to close your eyes and grit your teeth through it.

 _Come on then, lay it to me. Let’s get this all done in one day_.

He doesn’t even attempt to beat about the bush.

“You will get nowhere in life majoring in Art. I hope you realise that.”

Those are his final words to me for the rest of the night, because with his two cents shared, he leaves quickly, footsteps clunky on the floorboards of the hall and up the stairs. I wince when the door to his study slams shut overhead and shakes the house. I’m briefly overcome with surprise that he didn’t just march out the front door and leave the house all together. Or maybe that would wound his pride too much.

Mom and I both stand in a stunned silence for a while in the middle of the kitchen, ears pricked to see if he does anything else, to see if we hear the sounds of anger, but there’s nothing more. It’s over for tonight.

I help mom clean up the remnants of half-eaten dinner – neither of us are particularly keen to finish up the now-cold potatoes and slightly wilted veg – so as mom packs the leftovers into the fridge for another time, I shove a tray full of fries into the oven.

We end up curling up on the sofa with a platter of fries drenched in ketchup between us – which you _know_ means mom’s a bit rattled, because she’d never dream of any tomato based condiment going anywhere near her white sofas on a normal day – and we scour Netflix for some shitty movies to watch. Mom becomes quickly involved with whatever Hugh Grant is up to on our fifty-inch screen, but I find myself drifting.

Dad’s words begin to echo in my head, increasingly loud and hard to ignore – it’s a like the small seed of doubt and self-depreciation he planted there has begun to sprout.  It’s the fear of change that ripens as fine, green leaves above the soil of my mental image – and I know this change is a big one.

Art is very different to what I’ve known before. It’s always taken second place in the grand scheme of things: a hobby, a past-time, something that I keep tucked down the side of my bed out of sight.

Is this ... am I doing the right thing? Am I making a good decision?

It’s hard. This is what you’re supposed to be able to ask your parents about.

Am _I_ good enough?

I find myself wondering if I’ve picked the right metaphorical door to unlock after all.

 

* * *

 

When mom goes to bed, I laze on the couch for a little while longer, channel surfing through a whole hoard of programmes that just don’t pique my interest. Shopping, shopping, news, cooking, news, storage auctions, chat show, _no_.

I yawn dramatically, stretching my hands up and over my head; it’s been a long day. Or a long few hours, and I definitely could use a good period of uninterrupted unconsciousness right about now. Not having to think about stuff is high on my list of current priorities.

I roll clumsily off the couch and courier the remnants of our replacement dinner into the kitchen, loading it all carefully into the dishwasher. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the morning – and to be honest, I’d rather not think about it – because Marco’ll be around, and so might _my dad_. But the least I can do is leave mom a clean kitchen for when she wakes up. I breathe deeply as I survey the clean surfaces, and find that there’s a tremble to the air I exhale. Great.

Do you ever feel so detached from everything that your brain could almost trick you into thinking it’s all not real? That’s me right now. It feels like I’m floating, suspended in that strange purgatory that appears after you’re shouted at by a parent, or in my case, told you’ll amount to nothing. It’s a weird sort of numbness that seeps its way into your system, and you don’t notice it at first because of the shock maybe – but it’s there. _Floating_.

I drift through the house in silence, padded footsteps not making a sound on the hard wood nor on the stairs that I know usually creak beneath my weight. The house feels quiet, sharing in the same feeling as the dense fog that seems to shift around inside my head, cocooning all my thoughts in some disconnected, unearthly silence.

I sneak along the landing, dancing across the dodgy floorboards. Dim, yellow light seeps out from beneath the door of my dad’s study, and it makes my step falter just so as I catch the tenor of my dad’s voice on the other side.

“—hmm, say that again, Charlotte—”

Words are faint and mainly indiscernible, but I make out that much. It churns my stomach. My foot comes down on the floor in the wrong place, and the floor complains loudly. I freeze up, but the conversation on the other side of the door continues on.

Some things don’t change. This is still going on, and I still haven’t done anything about it. I’m still his accomplice, unwilling or not.

I hurry along the landing, barging through my bedroom door; I have the university portal open on my laptop in an instance, and I pull up the tab for registering subjects for next year.

It’s spiteful to do it now, I know it is. But my spite overwhelms my fear of change and my fear of growing up and my fear of not being good enough.

I choose French as my minor, and Art as my major. And I click submit. Just like that.

It’s not much, but it’s something. _It has to be something_.

 

* * *

 

The detachment doesn’t fade when I wake up the following morning – I’m still sifting through a haze, my morning routine programmed to autopilot, saving me from having to _think_.

From the bathroom window, as I attempt to shave the last few days’ worth of stubble from my chin, I can see the front drive; dad’s car is gone, and mom’s too. Maybe it’s a relief, or maybe it just adds to the sense of negative space that looms over this Saturday morning.

I flit downstairs after that, make a pot of coffee, pick at some leftovers in the fridge, and read the post-it mom has left me, telling me she’s gone to the grocery store. I pull up one of the stools in front of the breakfast bar beneath the window, and take up roost, swiping my finger around the lip of my coffee mug until it becomes cool enough to drink.

There’s something that doesn’t taste quite right about it today, but like hell can I put a finger on it. Too strong? Too bitter? Slight after taste of dishwashing soap? Can’t really tell. Just like everything else right now … not saying that the after taste of my fight with my dad tastes like _Dawn_ liquid but – yeah, reality tastes a little off today.

I take a few more sips of coffee before I’m too aware of the way it slides down my throat and the remnant taste that stays behind in my mouth. The rest of it ends up down the sink with little regret.

 

* * *

 

Marco arrives bang on time, a little before midday.

The movement of the back gate as it clatters against the hedge row is what catches my eye as I’m hurriedly cleaning up my mug under the faucet stream. I’m not really sure if I’m glad of the company and someone to keep me preoccupied, or if him being here is just another thing I have to worry about.

No. No, I don’t mean it like that. It’s just—

I sigh deeply, and drop the mug onto the draining board to dry.

It’s hard being normal when your whole, God-damn _life_ has turned into some great depression.

Marco’s holding the back gate open with his hip now as I watch him through the kitchen window – he’s chatting amicably to someone just out of sight on the sidewalk. He hoiks up the equipment bundled in his arms, and presses the gate open wider as what really looks like a pile of hoses with skinny legs comes staggering into the back yard clumsily.

_Huh?_

I’m leaning up against the window now, palm flat against the glass, peering out into the sunlit space as _Mina_ dumps her share of Marco’s pool cleaning equipment onto the grass with a humph and subsequent hands on bony hips. Marco laughs brashly – it lights up his face – and Mina scowls, buffing the pool sweeper on the ground with the toe of her Converse, before pointing at my face and mouthing something unreadable. Marco’s eyes follow his sister’s outstretched finger, before his smile melts into a God-damn _beam_ when he sees me pressed up against the glass. Tch. Control your schoolgirl blush, Jean. Geez.

I slip out of the back door with my hands shoved deep in my pockets and my shoulders hunched, listening to Marco’s melodic lilt instructing Mina to pick up the stuff and move it over to the pool. She’s mid moan by the time I reach them, my last few steps more hesitant than the rest because—

Well, because _Marco_. My third, locked door.

I’m quickly distracted from my apparent thirst, however.

“—oh, your face isn’t as ugly this time, weird hair guy!”

 _Excuse me_?

“Mina!” Marco pricks up, shooting her a disapproving frown as she shrugs. “You can’t say stuff like that!” He turns to me, sympathy rooted in his expression. “I’m sorry Jean, she didn’t mean—”

“Nah, it’s cool,” I say, waving him away. “My face _does_ look better. Uh, thankfully.”

It’s true. My lip’s completely healed up, same with the gashes along my hair line. The bruising’s gone down, and the only remnants of the football stadium scarper are the thin scab across the bridge of my nose and a few tender spots on my ribs.

“Still,” Marco frowns, causing Mina to roll her eyes and scoop up the equipment she’d unceremoniously dumped on the grass. “I’m sorry about this – I’m on babysitting duty today and—”

“I’m not a _baby_!” Mina squawks in protest.

“—and I couldn’t leave her at home because mom wasn’t in.” Marco scratches the back of his neck sheepishly as both of us turn to watch Mina set down the sweeper and all the hoses at the top of the pool steps. She then folds her spindly arms across her t-shirt and shoots the pair of us a look that could curdle milk.

“I could’ve stayed at home with dad, Marco,” she grouches loudly. I wouldn’t have picked up on that – the dad thing – if Marco hadn’t automatically tensed beside me. I watch him curiously from the corner of my eye as he nervously swipes a finger over the point of his nose and chews the inside of his cheek, much like I do when I’m uncomfortable. There are dark bags under his eyes – more pronounced than normal. Has he been sleeping? “I wouldn’t have burned the house down! Not with Mister Schultz coming ‘round so often!”

Marco sighs exasperatedly, and sets down his own share of the pool equipment tiredly. He doesn’t spare me a look, but I still think I see the twitch that tells me _he wants to_.

“You know that’s not fair on Gunther, Mina. He’s got his own things to do, and he can’t be looking after you _as well_ all day. It’s just easier this way.” I watch him scrunch his lips up into a purse – and I definitely don’t think about kissing him (which, to be fair to me, is quite good, because I haven’t actually thought about that in, what, a few days, right? Considering my distractions and everything.). He runs a hand through the strands of his dark hair, raising a field of dorky cowlicks, and continues with a bit more humour in his tone – even if it sounds a little bit forced.

“Plus, I thought you were excited about asking Jean if you could go in his pool?”

I’ve never seen Mina blush before, but wow, I can see how red she is from all the way across the pool. She puffs out her cheeks and folds her arms tighter across her chest, forcefully kicking Marco’s equipment again out of embarrassment.

“Sh-shut up! I wasn’t!”

Marco laughs musically, and so _whimsically_ that he actually clutches his stomach – that makes me smile, even if I don’t realise I am until it’s a full blown _grin_. Haven’t done that in a while – feels weird to feel my lips stretch into some semblance of happiness, _woah_. Their domesticity is _refreshing_. The trivialness of their conversation is like an anchor that ropes me to the ground, and prevents me from floating off further into the realm of despondency.

Mina is seriously not impressed at being mocked by her older brother, and she crouches down to fiddle with the sweeper robot, angrily stabbing at the blue buttons on its back; Marco mimes wiping tears from his eyes as he  rights himself. He turns to face me, open and earnestly – and I’m not gonna lie, his expression kinda makes my heart do a few somersaults.

“That’s okay, isn’t it Jean? You don’t mind her being here, or—”

“Marco,” I say plainly. “Dude, it’s cool. Of course it’s okay. Why wouldn’t it be?”

He does the nose thing again – _cute_ – and trains his flaxen gaze on the grass at his feet with a dumb sort of smile. I roll my shoulders and notice just how much nervous tension I’m still carrying there.

C’mon. It’s Marco. _Be normal_. _Take a leaf from his book and learn how to be cheery once in a blue moon_.

“—but,” I continue, “I, uh … I don’t think I have anything for her to do …”

Marco’s smile flashes wickedly.

“Oh, it’s okay. I had some _slave labour_ in mind.”

 

* * *

 

Marco’s right on the money, of course – he has Mina helping out with the easier cleaning chores: passing him things that he needs, showing her (however disinterested she is) how the chromatography works, and using a shortened pool net to fish out a few hedge leaves (I guess it’s begun moulting for real now) from the gently lapping water.

I feel mildly guilty – because even walking around the edge of the pool makes my legs shake, and I’m more than relieved to feel hard concrete under my butt as I draw my knees up into my chest on the steps of the pool shed. Kinda feel like I should be helping somehow – it’s reached that stage, I think. Marco’s not just coming over here to clean our pool any more – I mean, yeah, we’re still technically _paying him_ and all that jazz, but I think everyone knows that it’s not about that these days. We’ve got the friend thing going on.

Sucks that I can’t just settle for that though, doesn’t it?

I wonder if he knows how good his ass looks in those shorts – hell, I wonder if he chose them deliberately for that exact reason. I can dream, right?

I have to keep my checking-out-of-great-asses under the radar though, as Mina’s stare bores into me from across the yard as she stiffly shoves her pool net back into the water.

 _Okay, Marco’s nine-year-old sister did not just catch me checking him out. Nope. Nu-uh. Why am I even trying to check him out whilst she’s around? Isn’t that a bit low? Yeah, it’s totally low. Jesus Christ Jean, you’re trash. Stop it_.

“Marcoooo,” Mina whines, carelessly swirling the net in the water as if an extension of some sort of coyness. For a brief second of indescribable fear, I think she’s going to tell him that I was staring at his butt. “Why doesn’t Jean have to help?”

Oh thank God.

Marco pricks up from where he’s knelt on the edge, pushing the pool sweeper away from the mosaic wall. I know he heard her the first time – I can tell by his face – but he asks again none the less.

“Sorry, what was that?”

Mina pouts and blows out her cheeks.

“Why doesn’t Jean have to help? It’s _his_ pool.”

I should probably, you know, be finding satisfaction in the fact she didn’t just refer to me as _weird hair guy_ for once in her short life, but I’m distracted by the tightening in my chest. My eyes zip to the water sneaking up over the top step of the pool, and I gulp audibly.

 _Oh right_.

“M-Mina,” Marco stammers, looking constricted. His eyes flash to me, so I just … duck my head.

So … this conversation is probably not going to go well – I can tell you that much. _What do you mean you’re a nineteen year old man who’s terrified shitless of water? That’s not a thing_. You can’t just explain that to a kid and expect them to get it, can you?

“What?” Mina quips, staring her brother down. Marco sighs and rubs his temples in small, concentric circles. He opens his mouth to speak, and then closes it quickly again.

 _Right_.

Somehow I find the sudden peak of courage to interrupt before he can speak. This is my issue, after all. I shouldn’t be leaving it to him to cover up.

Not when I can … _cover it up just as well_.

“I don’t like the pool,” I say, trying to stave off as much of my bluntness – and the shake in my voice – as possible. I lean back against the wooden slats of the shed, trying to feign some casualness. “I mean like … I just don’t like going near it. There could be man-eating _sharks_ in there.”

Mina’s scepticism could probably make me snort if it weren’t for the situation. She narrows her dark eyes and scrunches up her freckled nose. I think Marco chuckles – he sounds relieved.

“… You’re _dumb_ ,” she scowls.

“Dumb people get eaten by sharks. As you can see, I’m still living.”

“… _Whatever_.”

I fold my hands behind my head with a self-satisfied smirk, but it doesn’t placate the guilt that rests uneasily in my stomach, I’ll tell you that. Maybe if there _were_ sharks in my swimming pool, my reasons for avoiding it wouldn’t be so irrational.

Mina resorts to a brittle silence, and after Marco’s had a good giggle, he begins to whistle as he finishes cleaning; it’s not the amicable – and dare I say it, mildly _cheeky_ – conversation that we usually fall into, but it’s okay, because I’m not sure I’d be able to keep a straight face without spontaneously combusting with my own aggressive blushing. And that’s even _without_ Mina scrutinising my every move.

I’m not really sure if I miss the option of chatting to Marco freely – considering that hey, I think I’m _pretty happy_ with the view I’m getting right now.

Okay, okay, so that sounds pretty leachy. I promise I’m not. I should really just—

“Okay, I think we’re done here, Mina.”

I’ve never seen someone throw down the pool net as eagerly as Mina does; she brushes off her cold-shoulder attitude in a flash, and springs to Marco’s side, grabbing a fistful of his polo shirt and tugging on his sleeve excitedly.

“Can I go in the pool now?!”

Marco chuckles and pets his little sister on the head whilst she stares up at him with the biggest, most intense eyes knows to man, her expression entirely serious. Marco’s cheeks are a little red – I should really get a closer look at that – so I guess he’s … embarrassed? Why would he be embarrassed?

“You’ll have to ask Jean, Mina. It’s his pool,” he advises gently, and fuck, the softness in his eyes is literally like an arrow to my heart. Wow. Please look at me like that. That’d be great. I think I’d probably—

“Jean?”

Whoops, back to reality.

“H-hah?”

Marco bashfully scratches the back of his neck, eyebrows pulled up in the middle to make his smile look slightly sheepish. Mina still holds firmly onto the side of her brother’s shirt.

“Would that be okay? Can Mina go in the pool?”

“U-uh, yeah! Yeah, that’s cool!” I rock forward, pushing away from the slats of the shed, and card my fingers through my hair. “D-do you … uh, does she need a towel, or – or anything?”

Marco and Mina exchange a really cheesy grin with each other.

“Nope, we’re good.”

 

* * *

 

All the tension that I didn’t realise rested itself in Marco’s face literally melts off when he sees how excited Mina is to go swimming – I think it’s his relief I can see, to see his sister having fun, _being a kid_. He’s mentioned before that she has the tendency to be closed off, not having many close friends at school, so I can see how much of a weight off his shoulders it must be to see her happy. And even if she did inflict that demon _Furby_ on me that one time, I think I’m happy for her too.

It’s nice to see what a happy family is meant to look like.

After she’s changed into her swimsuit – which of course Marco had brought with them in the van, the devious bastard – she catapults herself into the deep-end with a loud whoop, water splattering in high waves over the sides and onto the grass. She surfaces again with her thick bangs plastered to her forehead and a massive, toothy grin, treading water as Marco dips a leg into the water to splash her with a kick.

“Marco, Marco, look how deep I can dive!” she enthuses, seizing a massive gulp of air and dropping below the surface, legs kicking wildly as she pulls herself deeper. There’s a twinge in my ribs as I watch – it’s not fear for her, no. Nothing like that. Maybe it’s just envy.

“I’m watching!” Marco hollers, making his way over to me on the steps of the pool shed, with Mina’s clothes slung over his forearm. I slide up a little on my stair – even though there’s plenty of room – and he parks himself next to me, our arms brushing up against each other. There’s that jump of static between us that I know well.

Mina surfaces again with a loud gasp for air, and Marco paints the picture of the proud older brother.

“Wow, that was so good!” he calls, and Mina seems chuffed, puffing out her chest and announcing she’s going to dive even deeper this time. Marco is practically radiating delight, and it too difficult an ask for me to pull my eyes away from him. My gaze on him is shameless as I lean forward, elbows on knees and chin in my palm, face tilted towards him. He peeks down at me out of habit, and literally double-takes at my expression. Guess I’m not hiding my adoration all too well, judging by the flare of colour that lights up his cheeks again.

“W-what?” he stammers, and I try to school my face into something more neutral. I don’t think it takes very well. I bite the inside of my cheek and cover for myself.

“Go in the pool as well. I know you want to.”

“N-no, I— it’s okay, honestly—”

I can’t help but roll my eyes.

“Marco,” I repeat sternly. “You suck at lying to me.”

He tries to say something witty back to me; I can see the cogs whirring in his mind, but ends up resorting to just sticking his tongue out at me. Wow. Nine-year-olds really do rub off on him, I see.

“Mature,” I scold, giving him a nudge with my shoulder. “Go on, you goob.”

He considers it, glancing at the water where Mina’s having a great time splashing around and preforming all sorts of forward rolls and tumbles, before looking back at me. There’s a minor hitch in his countenance, for a second.

“Is that alright?” he asks softly. I frown.

_Alright? Why wouldn’t it be alright? I can clearly see you want to go play in the water, and I know you really like swimming, and I mean, it wasn’t my first intention, but this is an excuse for you to take your shirt off, and— oh. Oh, I get it._

He’s worried about me being by myself. Ah.

“It’s fine,” I murmur. “ _I’m fine_. Go have fun, idiot.”

I stare him down until he concedes with a sigh and a small smile for my eyes only; neatly folding Mina’s clothes to the side, he hauls himself to his feet, and approximately _all_ the blood in my body rushes to my face as he peels his work shirt up and over his head.

Freckles. There is a whole _pool_ of freckles cradled in the small of his back. Damn.

He looks back down at me, over his shoulder, and drops the cornflower-blue shirt onto my lap with a cheeky smirk totally unbecoming of him, but _totally hot_. I barely have time to raise my eyebrows in a look of _did-you-just_ before he takes off down the steps and launches himself into the pool, splashing face-first into the water with a broad laugh.

I clutch his shirt in my hands as he swims languid strokes towards Mina who wastes no time in demanding to get on her brother’s shoulders. She scrambles up his back, holding onto his head for dear life as he decides to dunk them both at the same time.

I feel momentarily weightless watching them play in the pool. It’s more than easy to forget about everything that’s going on in my life – and in his life too, I’d imagine. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard laughter coming from the pool that makes _me_ feel like laughing too.

Mina challenges Marco to dive in with her – the pair of them scramble out of the pool at the deep end, Mina’s long hair having fallen out of its ponytail, and beads of water rolling down the slope of Marco’s shoulders and spine in a way I can definitely appreciate. Mina shows Marco how it’s done, of course, with a shallow dive into the water than errs just about on the right side of a belly flop. She swims around underwater in a circle, and then pops back up by the side again at Marco’s feet, curling her fingers around the tiled edge.

“Now you!” she demands, jabbing his foot with her fingers, and Marco makes a show of flexing in preparation for what clearly is going to be the best dive of the century. I deliberately press my knees closer together as he rolls his shoulders and stretches. Ahh. Nope. Remove all inappropriate thoughts.

I try to distract myself by smoothing out Marco’s shirt and folding it neatly – but I’ve never been very good at neat. Whatever. I try my best and lay it next to Mina’s clothes, patting the blue fabric, satisfied enough.

My gaze drifts back to Marco anyway, just as he looks like he’s about to commit to a dive – but at the last second, he changes his mind, and cannonballs into the water, throwing up a tidal wave of backsplash that soaks his little sister.

He’s chuckling when he surfaces, and although Mina immediately tries to dunk him retaliation, she’s giggling too.

It looks fun.

I wish I could join in.

 _Why_ can’t _you join in?_

Oh shut up, we all know _why_ I can’t join in.

 _What’s_ really _holding you back?_

Marco hoists Mina up above the water from under her arms, and then drops her back into the pool with a mighty splash and her excited squeal.

Oh man. I want that. I really fucking do.

…

It’s a moment of realisation.

…

I move to roll the legs of my jeans up around my knees; a couple folds of the fabric feel stiff enough to not fall down. I stand, balancing with one hand against the shed behind me, and breathe deeply. It doesn’t take long to feel the sun heating up my bare calves – but it’s not too hot today. Maybe this bodes well for a storm or some rain. I hope.

It’s five paces from the pool shed steps to the shallow end of the pool – I take those paces slow but purposefully. I do not tremble, or shake, or any of that. It’s not much, but I step down onto the top step of the pool, water licking the gaps between my toes, and I perch my butt on the mosaic-tiled edge. Reminding myself to breathe – and not pass out, ‘cus that’d be pretty bad – I stretch out my legs, submerging them beyond that top step in the deeper water. With my palms resting behind me, fisting in the grass, I adjust to the feeling of water pressing against my bare legs.

It’s manageable. I can do this, I can beat this, I am more in control than before.

 _I just want to be a part of things_.

I swirl my legs in the water, and it’s not like normal – not as constricting, or as suffocating. It just feels a little thick, cold, yeah … just _different_. I glance up, and Mina’s raising her hand to point at me whilst she hangs off Marco’s shoulder. His back is still to me.

“Hey, Jean’s getting jealous!” she chirps, batting Marco on the arm. “I thought you said there were _sharks_ in here!”

Marco whips around at the speed of light, and the expression on his face is unreadable – somewhere between shock and disbelief, I guess, considering how wide and bright his eyes have become. There’s barely a moment to stare intently at each other though, because Marco slips out of Mina’s grip and immediately wades over to me; I’m frozen solid, clutching fistfuls of grass, left gaping like a fish as concern pickets his face.

“Jean?” It’s a frantic sort of whisper – he doesn’t want Mina to hear, but at the same time … yeah. I can see it. Last week’s panic attack doesn’t just weigh on my mind. _It’s okay, Marco_. “Are you alright?”

I breathe. Blink slowly. Look him in the eyes again. He has fucking beautiful eyes, even when he’s stupidly worried about me. I’ve done this _before_ , I’ve been this far into the water _before_ , Marco. I can do this.

“I’m … okay.”

In this moment, right here, right _now_ , I’m okay. I’m holding onto that and it really means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things … but it means everything to me. I’m okay.

Some strange pride swells in my chest – drawn from the knowledge that I did this, I did this myself. I managed. I think I can see that same emotion swirling behind Marco’s eyes too, golden-brown in the sunlight, and I catch the corners of his lips twitching upwards.

Mina paddles up behind him, her head bobbing along the surface and her long hair spread out like a mane in the water behind her, with some sort of disgruntled pout on her face. She eyes me narrowly, before looking up at Marco, so low in the water that she’s really just a hair’s breadth from snorting chlorine up her nose.

“Can Jean give me a piggyback now?”

I snort bitterly, whilst Marco tries to diffuse his apprehension.

“Maybe later, Mina – how about _I_ give you a piggyback?”

Mina vehemently doesn’t want _that_ – and she tells us this firmly. Piggyback from your uncool older brother … _totally gross right_? I can’t help but snigger quietly to myself as Mina swims off, back down the length of the pool, and Marco feigns throwing his arms up in the air in despair.

“Apparently you’re not cool enough for her majesty’s time,” I snicker, buffing him playfully with my closed fist; he sighs deeply, expelling a puff of breath. “I think I’m inclined to agree with her, y’know.”

“Ouch, Jean,” Marco jibes through a dumb grin directed down at me, “She clearly just doesn’t know that I give the best piggybacks.”

“Uh-huh. Do you now?”

“Yep,” he chimes, carding a hand through his wet, tangled hair, plastered the protruding licks back against his head. “It’s science. _Maybe I should show you_ —”

So … the noise I make inside my head then and there is pretty fucking _tortured_. I don’t know if my external expression is much better, because I feel my cheeks blaze hot and red – much the same as Marco, actually. He’s quickly blushing from top to tail, the tops of his ears particularly pink. Oh wow. Okay.

“U-uh,” I manage, fucking eloquently. “D-did you just ... uh …?”

Marco clamps his jaw shut as tight as physically possible and nods once, briskly. I’m pretty sure he makes some sort of odd squeak of a noise as well. O-okay.

He takes one step closer to me in the water, and I subconsciously draw my legs back into myself even though my heart is thundering somewhere close to a hundred miles an hour inside my chest.

“I… I won’t drop you,” he says, with an audible hitch in his voice. Is he messing with me? He’s gotta be messing with me. Oh, but geez, he’s so fucking red. And he’s biting his lip. Is he trying to kill me? Come on Marco, this isn’t fair. I’m going to fucking _combust_.

It’s not fire that escapes my mouth, I’ll tell you that much. It’s more of a squeak, around three octaves higher than anything that I’d normally allow myself to say.

“Okay.”

“W-what?”

“I said okay! G-geez, Marco.”

 _I-it’s … just a piggyback, right_?

It takes a second for Marco to register this, I think. He wrings his hands a few times, but I’m too distracted by the way colour spreads down onto his neck and collarbones. F-fuck, man. He’s too much.

“A-alright!” he pipes. Why is he so nervous? I know why _I’m_ so fucking nervous. He has no excuse. He offered. He _offered_. “S-so, uhm, if I just …”

He turns his back on me, and peering over his shoulder, he crouches down a little way in the water and holds out his arms behind him. I’m hesitant. Who wouldn’t be? This is the guy I get boners over. What if I get a boner now? Oh God.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

Maybe I should just leave the universe now.

“H-hop on?”

 _Hop on_. He did not just say that.

I’m going to get a hard-on against your fucking back if I just _hop on_. Oh my God. I stare down at the water – which is beginning to feel uncomfortably thick around my calves again, and gulp down the lump in my throat. The more I focus on it, the more the uneasiness in my stomach ebbs into less of a _boner-inducing_ uneasiness, and more just a standard _why-am-I-knee-deep-in-the-pool-again_ uneasiness.

Better. I can’t believe that’s fucking _better_.

Fuck it. Think of yourself, Jean. This is a good chance to test the waters with him. Ha. _Waters_. Good pun. Fuck. I’m so fucked.

“J-just … I don’t wanna get my jeans wet,” is what I manage to say as I move to stand, stepping down onto the second step where water licks mid-calf height; I sling my arms around his neck and press flush against his back as I feel his hands grabble for the backs of my _thighs_ to hoist me up.

Oh wow. Okay. Think about the water. Don’t think about hand placement. B-breathe.

My heart is _hammering_ in my chest, but at least with me behind him, he can’t see how fucking flustered I am.

“I can’t believe that’s what you’re worried about,” he breathes softly, his fingers pressing firmer into the backs of my legs as he tries to get a good grip. “Up we go!”

He pulls me up onto his back, and I automatically tighten my arms around his shoulders, and my thighs around his waist. He chuckles breathily and I have to fight hard against the temptation to bury my face in the back of his neck out of embarrassment. O-okay. Shit.

“C-can you loosen up a bit?” Marco croaks, giving my legs a squeeze that shoots the _wrong_ sort of electricity sparking all through my system. “Breathing … breathing is something I-I’d rather not give up.”

“S-sorry,” I stammer, trying to relax my hold around his throat. It’s hard. I’m probably going to need to be _chiselled_ off.

“N-no, it’s okay,” he says, as I drop my chin over his left shoulder – it’s only to hear him better. Honest. “Don’t … worry about it.”

He takes a few steps deeper into the pool, water lapping up over his knees and seeping back into the hems of his shorts. My toes, and then shortly all the way up my ankles become submerged again. Cold. I can’t help the involuntary shiver that creeps up my spine, but it’s kinda counteracted by how _warm_ his skin feels where I’m pressed against him.

If I wasn’t so … _on edge_ about the gradually deepening water, I probably should’ve made the most of appreciating him up close. Copped a casual feel of his shoulders. Counted the freckles on the back of his neck. You know. Totally, non-creepy stuff.

Mina surfaces from a dive a few feet in front of us, and quirks her eyebrows when she sees our arrangement. She doesn’t look overly impressed.

“You guys are both really red, by the way.”

 _Oh come on, tell me something I don’t know_.

Marco, apparently, _doesn’t_ know. I hear – and feel – the breath catch in his chest.

“M-Mina!”

His grip on my thighs loosens momentarily and I slip an inch or two; I can’t help but tense up, muffling a pretty shameful-sounding noise in the inside of the bicep I have slung around his neck. Wow, that’s cringe worthy.

Marco immediately squeezes my thighs in reassurance.

“I-I’ve got you, don’t worry.”

Well, now I just feel like slamming my head repeatedly into a concrete wall. Ugh.

“If you drop me, I swear I will go find some _actual_ sharks and throw you to them,” I mutter close to his ear. His dry chuckle is mainly masked by how flustered he still is, and how hard he’s trying not to _show me_ that he is. I can feel how tense he is where my knees squash against his sides.

I wonder what that means.

Mina doesn’t have the time or day for her brother’s embarrassment, I figure, as she proudly announces that she’s going to show us her handstands. Marco wades a little further out, and I’m still clinging to his back for dear life as the water gradually creeps up my bare legs – but it stops its climb when Marco stops, him making sure we’re still shallow enough that my butt or the rolled up cuffs of my pants don’t trail the surface. He shifts me in his grip, and the drag of his thumbs over my thighs is— _oh Jesus fuck, why is life this unfair_.

Mina plunges down, points her toes above the water, wobbles a bit, and then topples over backwards. She bobs back up to the surface and snorts water out her nose.

“Wait, I can do it better!”

She shows us a varying degree of inelegant handstands, which all end up in her flopping over backwards – even _without_ our help, what with Marco encouraging me to reach out and push her over. (I don’t do that, of course, and stay thoroughly stuck to Marco’s back.) Mina’s disgruntled every time she pops back up, and promises again and again to show us how it’s done properly, and you know – once the initial fear of being suddenly dropped into the water subsides – I find myself laughing along with Marco at her performance, and my grip around his neck slackening.

When he laughs, his entire body seems to vibrate, and it’s a feeling so warm, so candid, that I—

I’m almost tempted to crane my neck a little and kiss him, press my lips against his cheek, the corner of his mouth; whisper in his ear: _Marco, I really fucking like you_.

…

I don’t, of course. ‘Cus that’d be dumb. And he’d definitely drop me if I did that. So I bottle it down, and try to enjoy what the moment is. I don’t need more than this. It’s enough.

I can’t risk losing what _this is_ by confessing to him. Not yet.

The stability that he is – the constant variable – I need that. Especially at the moment. So I can deal with anything else that hormones throw my way, and I can cage it up, and steal away that key for safe keeping. Keep it close to my heart.

Mina’s next handstand topples forwards, and narrowly avoids hitting us as Marco quickly sidesteps out of the way. Her legs crashing down into the water cause a wave of a splash to splatter up Marco’s side – and me – droplets of water pittering against my arms and face.

Some things are harder to bottle down that others though.

I gasp, and there’s no stopping the automatic reflex of squashing my face into Marco’s freckled shoulder and squeezing out a pitiful whine right by his ear.

“J-Jean?” His voice comes out hoarse and breathy, and he attempts to twist his head around to look at me pressed against his shoulder blade. “O-oh, uh … okay, I think t-that’s enough of this.”

I don’t even have to ask him before he’s wading back to the shallows, water sloshing up against his thighs and my calves, and twisting around so I can jump off onto dry land before we even reach the pool stairs. He does have to give me a bit of a nudge to let go though, because I’m not saying that having my face buried in the crook of his neck does stuff for me, but it _totally does stuff for me_ – but in the end I think the thought of solid, dry concrete under my feet wins out.

I’m not as on edge as I normally would be. No, it’s really _far_ from that actually, as I clamber off his back, unlooping my arms and levering my butt up onto the pool edge, making sure to cross my legs under myself, away from the water. I wipe my hand across my face, but all the droplets have since soaked in, and my face is _dry_ , and—

I glance up, and meet his eyes – he’s watching me intently, expression reserved and unreadable, but unwavering. My heart does a quick somersault for good measure.

“Are you okay?” he asks measuredly. I do a quick damage check, but … but there’s no queasy twist in my gut. There’s no hot sweat or cold flush. There’s no dizziness, or pain in my chest, or fear of the onset of panic. It’s … it’s just not there. My hand drifts up to my chest, and my fingers twist in the fabric of my shirt over my heart. I scowl, but I’m not angry.

I’m just surprised.

“Y-yeah,” I murmur, despite myself. “I’m … I’m fine?”

Marco releases a pent up breath, and allows himself to sink down into the water – it’s shallow enough that he can kneel comfortably on the pool floor and still fold him arms over the edge next to me, moving to rest his chin on the concrete.

“Sorry about that,” he says quietly. My frown deepens, and I’m not lying when I say I have an urge to like … pet his hair, or cup his face like he sometimes does to me. Geez. I settle for the best words I can find instead.

“’S fine. She doesn’t know. Can’t hold everyone who splashes me personally responsible.” I attempt a dark chuckle at that, but it doesn’t seem to placate him very much. His forehead is still lined with creases, and he’s not smiling. Not that he’s looking sad, or frustrated, or angry, or anything … just more … thoughtful, I guess?

There’s a blush still staining his cheeks though. It’s … well fuck, it’s cute. Really fucking cute.

Mina isn’t at all fazed by whatever just happened, and she calls out to us to watch her do a flip into the pool. Marco twists his head around, breaking our extended eye contact ( _damn_ ), in order to play the doting big brother.  

He applauds and congratulates her when she splats into the water, but I … I can’t take my eyes away from studying every contour of his profile. How the hell is it not illegal for someone this _perfect_ to exist? Look at that dumb-ass smile, look how much he just wants to please everyone and look after everyone, look at how I’m pretty sure my heart is shimmying its way up my throat—

I wonder if I should—

“H-hey, Marco—”

…

There should be an award given to my mom for being able to interrupt any and _every_ moment between Marco and me. This is no exception.

The backdoor of the kitchen clatters open against the side of the house and is accompanied by a shrill crow of both of our names. Marco starts in the water, and I let my shoulders drop, saying goodbye to what could’ve been a real nice, _tender_ moment. Thanks mom.

She teeters out of the kitchen balancing a tray in both hands – lemonade, snacks, the works – and I suppose I am a little relieved to see her back to wearing her impossibly dangerous stilettos and having her bug-eyed sunglasses hung over the low neckline of her top. _But still_.

 _How am I meant to get anywhere when this happens every, single time_?

She props her offerings on the patio table beneath the shade of the parasol, and then turns to make her way across the grass to us. Mina has stopped her splashing around, and is floating in the deep end, chin resting on the surface of the water – maybe she’s shy. I don’t know. My gaze doesn’t stray on her for very long.

“Hey,” I greet my mom, lolling my head over my shoulder to look at her. Make-up today too. She looks like mom again. When she reaches me, she bends to plant a kiss on my forehead – I catch the interest this piques in Marco, the slight shift in body language – curiosity, I guess?

“Hi sweetie,” she smiles, lips stretched claret-red across blinding white and perfect teeth. “Good day so far?” Her eyes then flicker down to Marco, still hanging off the edge of the pool, and the smile doesn’t falter. “And hello to you too, Marco, honey. I was just about to serve some lunch – would you like to stay today— oh! Who’s this?”

One thing that mom loves more than strappy shoes, or a face caked with makeup, or going shopping with my dad’s credit card … is little children. Specifically, little _girls_. She goes goo-goo over all of her friends’ young kids, and I can pinpoint memories, from various social functions she’s dragged me to in the past, where she’s gushed to other socialite moms how much she wished she’d had another child after me, a girl. She genuinely _fawns_ over the idea.

I watch mom’s eyes gleam as she notices Mina floating in the pool beyond us, and Marco, following mom’s gaze, chuckles lightly.

“Mina, come here,” he smiles, beckoning for her to swim over. Mina sharply shakes her head, still submerged under the water, and yep, she’s _shy_. Wow. Who’d have thought? Marco rolls his eyes, and turns back to flash a blinder at mom. “Sorry, Mrs. Kirschtein. She’s a bit shy around new people.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” my mom coos. “She’s just precious, isn’t she? She looks so much like you, Marco. How old is she?”

“She’s ten at the end of September,” he complies politely – but it doesn’t really matter, because I reckon whatever answer he could’ve given would’ve drawn out the same, gushing reaction.

“Only ten?” mom clucks, “Oh, what a darling, that’s so _cute_ —”

“Can you use any other word a part from _cute_ , mom?” I cut in, slyly. Mom quirks a neatly shaped eyebrow down at me, and rests her delicately manicured hands on her hips, likely condescending.  

“Are you sassing me, Jean?” she smiles knowingly, choosing _now_ to ruffle my hair stupidly. Thanks mom. Appreciated.

“ _Maybe_ ,” I say, feigning a nonchalant shrug and trying to flatten my hair back down unsparingly. “I thought you were doing lunch stuff.” That seems to put mom back on a more acceptable – and less embarrassing – train of thought.

“Oh, right!” she chimes, turning to Marco once more. “Marco, sweetie, if you and Mina want to stay for lunch, you’re more than welcome. There’s plenty to go around.”

“We’d really like that,” Marco concedes with his million-dollar, Hollywood smile. “Do you need any help?” I give Marco a less-than-subtle elbow to the arm at that suggestion, and shoot him a look. We all remember my culinary ability, right?

“No, it’s quite alright, sweetie,” mom –thankfully – digresses. “You’re our guest. If I needed any help, believe me when I say I’d drag Jean in there by his ear right now. You boys just have fun. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

She plants another messy kiss on my forehead for good measure, and then totters off back inside to finish up whatever she was doing before she so rudely (not really) interrupted. I twist my gaze away from the kitchen door when Marco disrupts the water beside me, and hauls himself out of the pool, strong arms flexing as he twists himself up onto the concrete slabs.

Oh God, we’re moving dangerously close to _boner central_ here. Noooope. Don’t look, don’t look.

Droplets of water like tiny, crystal beads roll down over the hewed lines of his collarbone, trailing over his chest in thin tributaries that race to be the first to reach his navel. Not that I’m looking. (I’m totally looking.) He shakes out his hair, littering the grey slabs with darker spots, and then tugs at an awkward cowlick hanging down over his forehead.

Ah. It’s the thing he does when he’s nervous.

“What?” I say teasingly, as he makes a fist in the bottom of his shorts and tries to ring out some of the absorbed water. A good few millilitres of water dribble out of the drenched, khaki fabric, absorbing into the cracks in the concrete.

“It’s nothing,” he admits, fisting his fingers in the fabric and squeezing again. “Well, I mean … no. No, it’s nothing.”

“Did I ever tell you that you were a shitty liar?”

“Hmm, about twenty minutes ago, yeah. You did.”

I make a huffing sound and show him that I’m unimpressed. He ducks his head, smoothes out his damp shorts, and plays with that flick of hair again.

“I was … just thinking that you and your mom seem … closer than normal,” he obliges me. “Did something happen?”

Ah. Right.

I begin to pick at the grass that creeps up over the edge of the concrete that circles the pool, tugging at clumps of green shoots. Marco lazily sifts his feet through the water, swirling his legs in meandering figures of eight.

“Some … stuff changed,” I say hesitantly – not that that really explains anything that’s happened recently. Do we have to talk about this now? I’d rather go back to laughing about Mina’s handstands and thinking how easy it would be to lean over and kiss him casually, here, on the pool side. I was doing a pretty good job of escaping all that thought about keys and locks and how things are very, very different in my family now.

Marco appraises me for a while, dark eyes flicking over every faucet in my face, trying to find some way around how elusive I clearly want to be.

“Changed for the best?” he offers tentatively, and I can’t help but sigh, leaning back on my palms, turning my face to the endless blue of the sky. Not a cloud out today.

“Not sure,” I confess. It’s true: I’m _not_ sure. There’s a great weight off my chest, you know – telling my dad the truth, finding some solidarity in my mom. That’s all good. I know it is. But hearing dad’s words from yesterday swirling around inside my head again … that’s not. I don’t think I can count that as I good change. I wasn’t second guessing myself about this before. I loll my head onto my shoulder and look at Marco again whilst I chew the inside of my cheek, weighing up my options.

 _What’s there to lose? You know you’ll feel better if you tell him_.

But how selfish is that?

“We don’t have to talk about if you’d rather not,” he says lowly. “It’s alright if you don’t want to, Jean.”

I purse my lips into a tight line and shake my head.

“No, no, it’s cool. I just—” I watch the sun glimmer in the flecks of colour in his irises then – the painter’s palette of browns and deep yellows. It’s nice. “I just had a fight with my dad. I told him about the Art thing. And then I did it. Declared my major last night.”

Marco’s eyes go wide, and it feels like all the breath in his lungs leaves his chest in one swell puff. I think ecstatic is an understatement. Shame I’m so hesitant about this.

“What? Are you serious? Jean!” he gushes, flailing his hands – one of them even comes to rest on my shoulder, shaking me excitedly – but I can’t quite attach myself to the feeling. I feel like I’m slipping again into that realm of despondency. Dad’s words slide through the cracks, and fill my head with that disgusting, _crippling_ self-doubt.

Can’t make anything of myself if I take Art at college.

“I’m so happy for you, Jean! This is great! I knew – I knew from that first time you showed me your sketches, remember? I was so impressed – well, I’m still so impressed, but I—” He stops, recognises the change in my demeanour. “Jean?”

“It’s nothing,” I mutter. It’s not though. It’s really bugging me. What if dad’s right? Art is a hard world to make it big in, a hard world to find a good paying job, or experience, or even an audience. Why should it be me who gets that? I’m not even that good.

Marco’s fingers tighten on my shoulder reassuringly, and he repeats my name with more grounding this time.

“Jean? What happened?”

I say this every fucking time this happens, but … I can’t help but give into him.

I sigh loudly, and sprinkle the clump of grass I’ve ripped out of the soil onto the ground.

“There are like … what? Seven billion people in the world, right? So … why should it me? Why should I be the one to get lucky and _make something of myself_? Maybe … maybe I will just end up in a dead-end job because of this.” I mull over the thought, imagining my dad’s sneer, wondering if he’ll stop claiming he has a son all together. I wonder if he’d go that far? “I don’t know if … if I’ve made the wrong choice. I just  have no fucking _clue_ what I’m doing, y’know?”

Marco frowns, paperweights dragging the corners of his mouth downwards, eyebrows crunching together as heavy-set lines appear on his forehead once again.

“I think that’s okay to feel that way, Jean,” he says slowly, staring at the ground in concentration. “Everyone’s … scared about the future. I know _I_ am. Growth is painful. _Change_ is painful. But so is being stuck somewhere you don’t belong. And … and I don’t want it to seem like I’m butting in to your life or anything but – well, I don’t think you belong in the life your dad seems to have planned out for you. You’re too much of your own person.”

I snort at that.

“And you’re a sap.”

“Jean! I’m being serious!”

I hear the battering of the kitchen door again, and the clicking of mom’s heels on the patio slabs, as well as Mina splashing her way over towards us. I let my shoulders droop, but a small smile blooms on my face somehow.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, Marco.”

Change _is_ painful. It’s scary – just another thing on the long fucking list of things I’m fucking terrified of. But it doesn’t mean it’s not necessary. I get that.

Marco pats me on the shoulder once more, before he pulls his sister out of the pool with an exaggerated groan at how heavy she is, and the three of us wander over to the table where mom proudly overlooks her impressive spread of food. I dip inside to grab some spare towels for Marco and Mina – Marco’s shorts are almost dry again as it is, but I throw the rough, white fabric at him anyway, despite his protests. Mina is like a hungry vulture, straight into some of the triangle-cut sandwiches mom has meticulously crafted, before Marco ever manoeuvers her into one of the wooden recliners with a cheerful laugh at her expense as he drapes the other towel I hand him over her head. Mom slides into the chair next to Mina – she’s bubbling with excitement, and begins offering Mina all sorts of stuff to try, piling food onto her plate without even a yes or a no. It makes me smile.

Marco pours out glasses of lemonade, hands one to my mom, and then one to Mina first, before handing a third to me. It’s so cheesy, but our fingers brush when the glass is exchanged from me to him, and he’s fucking _beaming_. When he finally deals himself a glass with the dredges of the jug, he raises it to me, and clinks the crystal together.

“To you,” he says, a voice so low and tender that I know – without any fucking second guessing or that sorta shit – that his words are for me, and only me.

It’s a one way trip, where I’m going. I’ve fallen for him so hard.

 

* * *

 

I don’t want Saturday to end, but it does. Marco and Mina stick around for a while – Marco lays it down to the fact that he doesn’t have any more appointments after us, but I think it’s more than that, or I like to think it’s more than that. I can see how much it means to him to see Mina having fun – and it means so much to _me_ to see him that happy when they’re messing around together in the pool. Mom and I dig out some of the old inflatable toys from the pool shed (save poor, unfortunate Nessie), and offer them to Mina, who’s begrudging in her acceptance (but secretly over the moon, I can tell).

It’s enough for me to sit on the edge of the pool again and watch them, and I manage to go as far as dipping my legs back into the shallows. Mom even ends up joining me, rolling up her white capris to her knees, and squishing herself into my side on that top step, joining in Marco’s cheering when Mina insists on making us all watch her dives again.

I want it to always be like this. I want this sort of summer to last forever.

Doesn’t work that way though. Saturday eventually ends, and Sunday comes around, bringing with it dad. It doesn’t even matter that I want to avoid him as much as possible – he ignores me completely the first time we accidentally pass each other in the house. And the second, and the third. In the end, it’s not his wroth I’m afraid of; it’s the awkwardness that comes with skirting around him in the hallway in silence.

On Sunday night, my parents argue again. I’m messing around on Xbox Live with Connie and Eren, and when I take my headset off for a second to give my ears a break from constant gunfire and Connie’s excessive squealing, I hear it from the kitchen.

You feel your heart in your mouth when your parents fight.

For the first time in the longest time, my dad comes home the following night, and the night after that. He misses dinner both days, not pulling into the drive until gone ten, but within minutes of walking through the door, the shouting begins again. Three nights on the trot.

I throw myself into killing enemies on _Titanfall_ , and drowning out my thoughts with my record player blasting _Ramones, Eagles, Dead Kennedys, anything_ at full volume. It works only to a point. Shrill shouting and gruff, booming insults still blast their way under the crack in my door.

I find myself slithering into mom’s room after it ends (because at least dad has the decency to move himself to the spare room to sleep) to make sure she’s okay. She’s shaken – it’s the same every night – curled up in her dressing gown and the covers drawn up over her knees, but she smiles at me when I poke my head around the door, without failure.

I’m getting better at the small talk thing too – I ask her about stuff I know she likes, because even though I still suck at offering advice, I know I can at least take her mind off it all. I end up learning a lot about Zumba through our late night conversations. It’s not as bad as you might think.

 

* * *

 

Wednesday has Marco, and it comes as a relief. He doesn’t even have to ask me before I’m spilling out the details of the last few days – being honest with him is easy, easier than it has ever been. In turn, it makes it easier to be honest with myself.

I tell him about how mom’s dealing with things, about how the shouting lasts for hours in the evenings, about how my dad won’t even look at me, let alone talk to me.

“Maybe it’s easier this way,” Marco says, as I’m helping him check some gages inside the pool shed. “If he’s not talking to you … he’s not pulling you down either.”

“I don’t think I’m happy either way,” I admit gruffly, running my finger across the dial I’m supposed to be reading. “The pressure looks fine, by the way. Anything else you want me to check?”

“Oh no, that’s great. Thanks,” Marco says, fixing some hoses together with some weird plastic connector. “What do you think would make you happy then?”

I wind my way through the piles of hoarded junk that we tend to shove inside the shed when we have nowhere else to put it, and step back out into the bright sun. I shield my eyes with my hand, and turn to Marco as he emerges as well.

“Closure, I think. Even if it sucks, I think I’d still rather have him yell at me, you know? At least then I know where I stand.”

Marco hums in assent, and wonders over to the pool drain, where he’s already unscrewed the plastic over.

“I … I don’t really know your dad, so maybe I’m wrong but … but I think you’ll end up disappointed if you go through this thinking that your dad has the same heart as you, Jean. I think you’re a lot more considerate than him – you care about other people. You—” Marco struggles with fixing the end of the hose into the drain, but it clicks with a good shove. “You’re very empathetic.”

“Is that some roundabout way of flirting with me, Marco Bodt?” I snigger, handing him the weird white-plastic machine he then points for. He snatches it out of my hand, and glares at me playfully, though the blush that battles its way onto the surface of his tanned skin is fierce.

“I-I’m not,” he stammers, flustered. It just makes me smirk more. “C-can you pass me that bucket there?”

I comply, but not before I hoist it out of his reach a few, teasing times.

 

* * *

 

Thursday is the first day of August. Last full month before the semester starts again, and a real warning that summer is nearing its end. That’s a pretty depressing thought, I guess – no more Wednesdays free to hang out with Marco, if what they say is true about sophomore timetables being ten times busier than freshman timetables.

There’s also something else nagging in the back of my mind – there’s only a month left of summer, and that in itself feels like some sort of deadline. I wonder what else is going to change before the fall.

On Wednesday night, the same thing happens with mom and dad – they argue in the kitchen, and then that’s followed by the slamming of doors of their respective bedrooms. I go to sleep frustrated, and I wake up early on Thursday just as equally frustrated.

Sometimes you just have those off-days, and this is one of those, where nothing seems to be quite right. I can’t find the shirt I want to wear, and my computer decides to play up, and the text message I send to Marco doesn’t get a response. No-one’s in the house when I venture downstairs, but there’s something suffocating about the empty, compressed silence – it’s enough to make me realise that maybe staying in today isn’t for the best.

I decide to go for a drive.

With a pack of cigarettes slipped into my back pocket, and my phone thrown onto the passenger seat of my Jag, I make the trip up to the outlook, both front-seat windows rolled down and the freeway breeze fluffing up my hair.

The air feels unusually dry – which sucks, because I’ve been hoping for rain – and the parched ground throws up orange dust that makes me hack when I turn off the asphalt road onto the dirt track that winds through the hills and the gorse to the old viewpoint.

Trost glimmers in the heat of the valley, sprawling masses of black and grey concrete and glass against the yellow earth, streams of cars snaking along the freeway that slices its way between here and the horizon. The dome of the Sina stadium in the distance is like the hard, waxy shell of a giant beetle, and the traditional, slate-grey roofs of Trost architecture remind me of a mill of little ants, baked into stillness by the harsh heat of the sun.

I pull up in front of the old information placard – all the words have long since worn away, but the stone lectern has survived the years, even if it’s a bit weather worn. I’ve lived in this city all my life, but I don’t remember a single sentence that was on that plaque. I slide out of the car once I drop the handbrake, pop a cigarette into my mouth, and wander over to the old stone monument – what did it once said about the city, I wonder – what sort of historical bullcrap did the city council decide was relevant for poor souls who stumbled up here probably looking to get drunk, or high, or laid, to read?

I light the cigarette in my mouth and take the first puff, watching the thin, white smoke dissipate in the still air. A couple leaves have drifted onto the information stand, caught in the cracks in the stone and the old, faded plastic placard, so I swipe them off with a stoke of my hand. Yep, definitely no words to make out; whatever shitty history Trost has has been lost to the ages and the crappy weather this city seems to attract.

Last time I was here, it was pretty fucking magical. All the stars and swirling colours of the night sky. Those God-damn fireflies. His freckles under the swipe of my pen. Today this place seems too stale, like it’s learning something from the rest of the city. That sucks. I really like it up here. I don’t want it to be infected by putrid, city smog.

I turn back to the Jag and stomp through the sandy dirt, the orange specks clouding over the toes of my sneakers – the hood of my car has already started to heat up under the glare of the sun and I come pretty close to deep frying my butt cheeks through my jeans as I shimmy on up to lean against the windshield, cigarette wagging between my teeth. Unhooking my sunglasses from the neck of my shirt, I slip them onto the bridge of my nose – which has healed well enough that this doesn’t hurt any more – and take a long, hard drag on sweet nicotine.

It quells the need to fidget that has been brewing in my limbs since last night.

I hear the ragged thrum of an engine out on the main road, coughing and spluttering as it slows, and pulls onto the dirt track, bumbling along against the rough ground. Great. Thanks for intruding on my silence, whoever you are. No-one’s supposed to come up here anymore.

I peer back over the roof of the Jag as the perpetrator rounds the heavy undergrowth – and I guess I am mildly surprised to recognise the muddy green pick-up that comes rattling to a standstill next to my car. I know those dust-caked rims and that shitty paint job anywhere. I steel my best deadpan stare at the two bumbling idiots who are singing along to the stereo in the cabin, slapping their hands against the dashboard to an ugly rhythm.

I scoot to the edge of the hood and slide off into the dirt, tapping the ash off the end of my cigarette, before striding over to the truck and raising my fist to wrap on the grimy window. I don’t have to though, because Sasha notices me, stopping her bad caterwauling to point at me dramatically, causing Connie to spin around in his seat and rapidly roll down the driver’s window (of course the truck doesn’t have electric windows – what do you expect?).

“Jeanbo!” Sasha croons, throwing herself across Connie’s lap to shout at me through the open window. “What are you doing up here?”

“Probably not the same thing you guys are doing here,” I say, leaning one hand against the door of the truck. Connie nods fervently at that, before pinching my cigarette from right between my teeth, stealing a quick drag for himself, blowing out the smoke in my face. I wave it away with a beat of my hand and a cough for good measure.

“We _were_ gonna make out, but _guess_ we can’t anymore,” he sighs theatrically, handing me back my cigarette. “Unless you want in on that. Always room for one more in the love wagon.”

“Please never call it that to my face ever again,” I say with a scowl, considering my cigarette for a moment before deciding that _no, I don’t want Connie cooties_. I extinguish it with a grind on the flaky paint of the door. “And I think I’m gonna have to pass you guys up on that this time. I’ll leave, it’s cool.”

I take a step back, away from the driver’s side, and flick the butt of my cigarette into the dirt, but Sasha shouts out to me before I get any further.

“Nooo, don’t leave!” she calls, “Let’s hang out! It’s been way too long!”

 

* * *

 

I don’t know how I manage to fold to Sasha’s demands _every fucking time_ , but five minutes later, I find myself tangled in a pile of legs in the bed of Connie’s pick-up, lying on my back and staring at the sky with a fresh cigarette between my lips, and the slightly sweet, slightly _nauseous_ smell of weed exhuming my senses.

“You sure you don’t want one?” Connie asks, sitting upright from where the three of us have laid back to sunbathe, holding out his spliff under my nose. I shake my head and bat him away.

“I’m fine with just this,” I reply, pinching my cigarette at where it meets my lips. “Thought you were quittin’ anyway.”

Sasha makes an approving noise at that (I guess it’s true she’s given up smoking – I’m genuinely surprised), and Connie rolls his eyes, lying back again, narrowly avoiding knocking his head on the protruding wheel arch.

I kick my sneakers off and let them tumble down to the end of the truck, and then flex my toes. Feels good to stretch. Or maybe I’m just getting a secondary high right now. Whatever. There’s something definitely freeing about lying on your back and staring at nothing but a plain sky. It’s uncomplicated.

I feel calm all the way down to my bones. Sadly it doesn’t exactly last.

“So whatcha really doing up here?” Sasha asks me, rolling onto her side and raising her head on her palm so she can get a look at my face. Playfully, she taps the end of my nose with her pointer finger. “Trouble in paradise gotcha down?”

“Piss off,” I retort, stealing a light drag on my cigarette. “I promise I will stay true to my threat of mailing you to Timbuktu if you’re alluding to what I think you’re trying to allude to. Not shitting you.” I slowly exhale the smoke in a thin stream. “What about you guys? You didn’t seriously come up here to make out, did you?”

“Hmm, well kinda,” Sasha muses, to which Connie quips: “What do you mean _kinda_?!” She chooses to ignore her boyfriend though, rolling back onto her back and kicking her feet into the air.

“Wanted to get out of the house,” she continues. “It’s not been great since results’ day.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask, “I thought you did good, Sash?”

“Mm, I did,” she agrees, absentmindedly picking at a fleck of peeling paint on the side of the truck bed. “It’s Connie’s parents. I’ve kinda unofficially moved in, and I don’t think that went down very well on top of Connie’s grades, y’know?”

“Please don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Connie jibes, sniffing loudly. “But yeah, that’s the gist of it. They want me retake Math and won’t get off my back about it. It fucking blows.”

“How bad d’ya fail Math?” I ask him casually, as he sets about rolling up another joint, the blazing one still in his mouth.

“If failure was a scale from uh, Chuck Norris to that Vine of the girl getting hit with the shovel, I’d be sitting at approximately the George Bush sort of level of fucking up. It was really bad, man.”

“I regret the fact I associate with you,” I murmur. “And not because you failed Math after I tutored you and everything. Because you just referenced Chuck Norris in two-thousand-and-fucking-fourteen.” Talk about being the walking epitome of out-dated memes, Connie Springer.

“Well how about you then?” Connie asks me, “How was Chem?”

I sigh, and remove my cigarette from my lips, resting it between my fingers languidly.

“Not great. My folks were disappointed. But I mean, that’s kinda my dad’s generic setting at the moment, so I don’t know why I’m surprised. Tryin’ not to think about it.”

Both Connie and Sasha murmur in agreement with me, and we settle into a companionable silence, punctuated only by heavy exhales and clouds of smoke drifting up into the summer sky. It doesn’t last long though – the quiet – when Sasha abruptly bolts upright with a metaphorical light bulb pinging above her head.  

“You know what this calls for, right?!”

I lower my sunglasses over the bridge of my nose and stare at her disdainfully. _Enlighten us then, Sash_.

“A road trip!” she squeaks, gesturing wildly with her hands. “We haven’t been on vacation together in ages! So why not now? Escape it all before school starts again, right? Oh man, what about if we went to the beach? I haven’t been _in aaaaages_!”

Not that I don’t like the idea of a road trip – the last one we went on in junior year of high school, just before shit hit the fan with Eren, was a blast – but me and the beach aren’t exactly on great terms. Well, not the beach. I don’t mind sand and all that shit. It’s the ocean I have a distinct problem with.

Connie distracts me when he starts singing – badly.

“Let’s go to the beach, each! Let’s go get a wave—”

“This isn’t even my truck, but I will kick you out of it if that’s Nicki Minaj you’re singing,” I grouse, giving him a good shove. He just cackles loudly, and takes a puff on the white paper joint, apparently finding himself extraordinarily funny.

“No, but seriously,” Sasha interjects, patting me on the arm so that I turn back to face her. “Let’s go to the beach, Jean! It’ll be so fun! We could invite everyone, and go up in Ymir’s van, and camp out— can you imagine? It’d be great!”

“Make bonfires,” Connie adds, leering across my chest, “Toast marshmallows, get smashed, have crazy beach sex. I am liking this plan already.”

“Keep in your pants, Springer,” I scold, smacking him upside the back of his bald head. I pull myself upright into a sitting position, shuffling backwards until I rest my back against this side of the pick up’s cabin. “You think everyone’d be up for this?”

“Oh, you bet,” Sasha grins, holding up her hand to count on her fingers as she begins to list our slightly incestuous pool of exactly the same friends. “Ymir would be up for it, and she’d totally drive us if we promised her beer. And then that means Historia would go, so that’s someone who knows how to cook. Armin loves the ocean, and I know him and Mikasa and Eren haven’t been on vacation is absolutely ages, so they’d be down for it! And if Mikasa goes, we might as well invite Annie, because they were _totally_ getting it on at your party whilst Marco was puking his guts up in your bathroom, and – and, well, Reiner and Bert will have to come too, because they’re strong, so they’ll be able to carry all the heavy stuff and put up the tents for us—”

“And what’s yours and Connie’s purpose in this grand plan, huh?” I jibe, cutting her off prematurely.

“We’re the entertainment, clearly!” she pipes, “But what do you think? This is a great idea!”

“But what about Maaaarco, Sash?” Connie drawls – and I literally want to slap my forehead in frustration. I should’ve bought those first class stamps to Africa. I’ll be needing those, it seems. “We’ll have to get Jean to invite Marco – maybe he’ll get – you know – a little lu~cky.” Connie winks crudely at me, so I shove him away with a groan. He falls back onto his ass, with the giggles.

“Fuck off, Connie. You _know_ it’s not like that.” As much as making out with Marco in the sand sounds like a blast, it’s just not—

“Wait, it’s _not_?” Sasha cries, “What do you mean? Have you not made a move yet?!”

 _No, I haven’t made a_ —!

Why am I having this conversation here, in the back of Connie’s pick-up truck? Why am I having this conversation _at all_?

“No,” I say sternly, “And I don’t want to, so lay off my case.”

Connie and Sasha both drag themselves closer to me, sitting attentively cross-legged in front of me like eager children.

“You don’t want to?” Connie questions, tilting his head like a confused puppy. “Why not?”

All that comes out of my mouth is a string of mumbled nonsense intercalculated with a handful of profanities. Connie quirks his short eyebrows in condescension.

“That wasn’t an answer,” he says crassly, folding his arms and flicking the joint between his fingers.

“It’s complicated,” I retort curtly.

“Well there’s nobody here but us chickens,” Sasha cuts in, petting her hand on my knee. “Why’s it complicated?”

Sasha’s intuitive – and we’ve known each other for a long time – so I can guess she’s got an inkling of an idea of what could be the problem. But in a sense, she’s a bit like Marco: she knows the benefit of saying things aloud. And she’s more than willing to beat that shit out of me, if it comes to it. Believe me, I know.

I roll my tongue in my mouth as I think, looking between the two, intense stares I’m on the receiving end of. There’s a long pause where no-one says anything, where I’m alone with my thoughts and hazy thrum of insects in the undergrowth around the truck. My stomach repeatedly knots and unknots itself with the reluctance that has built itself up inside me – but I know that my seams are close to bursting. Maybe I _can_ afford to let these guys take some of the load.

I take a deep breath, and slump further down against the side of the truck’s cabin.

“It’s complicated,” I repeat again, with a heavy sigh. Here comes the unavoidable word vomit. “It’s … it’s like … the last year has been so _shit_. And the only good thing that happened was him. When everything else was a mess – with you guys, and with Eren, and with everyone – I could count on him as a friend. And then all this shit came along with my parents and with school and I just – _ugh_. Marco was there. He’s great. I can tell him anything. I was just so fucking lucky to have him, and it was so uncomplicated and then … and _then_ I had to realise I have _fucking feelings_ for him. Way to ruin a good thing, you know? I can’t tell him – what if he doesn’t want to be friends with me anymore?”

 _It’s so selfish, but I need him. I need him because he’s the only fucking thing I can count on to be stable in my life. If I tell him how I feel, he won’t want to deal with that. It would make it so awkward. He’d leave. I don’t know how I’d cope with that_.

“Jean …” Connie starts, but then stops himself sharply, clamping his mouth shut. He exchanges a look with Sasha, who nods.

“I’m pretty sure Marco wouldn’t break off a friendship because of something like _that_ ,” she says softly. “From what I’ve seen, he’s a pretty good guy, Jean. And hey, maybe he might like you back? Surely that’d be even better than _just friends_ , right?”

I flick the butt of my cigarette over the side of the truck bed with a huff.

“I don’t see why he’d like me,” I pout. These guys only know the half of it. They don’t know the extent of how pathetic I can be.

“Well, you’re hot, so that’s a start,” Connie shrugs, causing Sasha to pull a comedically horrified face. “What? Can’t a guy tell another guy that’s he’s good looking? I’m just tellin’ the truth, Sash.”

“That’s not supposed to be the first thing you say!” Sasha complains, “You’re meant to say: _oh Jean, but you’re wonderful, and funny, and have a great music taste, so of course Marco would like you_. Duh!”

“Well, I was getting to that! Geez!”

I can’t help but chuckle dryly at their slapstick routine, but that causes Sasha to quickly school herself serious again.

“No, but listen to me, Jeanbo. As your unofficial parents, it is our sworn duty to tell you that there’s no way Marco _doesn’t_ like you, okay? Did you even see how touchy feely he was being at your party the other week? Come on. That’s more than just being _drunk_. And he was like a little lost kitten whenever you weren’t in the room—”

“—it was adorable,” Connie cuts in, but Sasha silences him with a glare.

“And that’s not even talking about the way he looks at you when he’s _not_ drunk, Jean. You’d have to be blind not to see that! The boy is _strung_.”

“You don’t know that,” I murmur softly, fishing for my cigarette packet from the pocket of my jeans – but it’s caught. “Marco’s like that with everyone.”

Sasha huffs, and rocks back, resting her weight on her palms. She chews her lower lip and considers me in a concentrated silence. I feel like wriggling under the weight of her dark brown stare.

“Even if that’s the case – which it’s not, by the way, seeing as I’ve decided it isn’t,” she begins carefully, whilst Connie nods along in a dazed agreement, “You said yourself that you guys are friends. Close friends. You should trust each other with the important stuff. If Marco told you that he liked you, and you didn’t, would you stop being friends with him? I’m gonna bank not. So give him the same courtesy in return, Jean.”

“… You want me to tell him, then.”

“Absolutely.”

 _Absolutely_. Talk about adding fire to the feeling of that deadline approaching with the end of the summer. I wonder if I could … could I tell him by the end of the summer? _S-shit_. I’m not ready for that, no. I can’t.

“You can do it, Jean. Take your time, and tell him when you’re ready. But you’ve gotta do it.” I blink rapidly out of the jumble of my headspace, and find Sasha smiling warmly – not wickedly – at me. F-fuck, Sash. You’re not meant to go sappy on me.

“And then,” Connie proclaims loudly, “You can join us for kinky beach sex. Wait. Not _join us_ , but— fuck, you know what I mean!”

I can’t help but snort loudly, and keel over at my stomach to press my sudden peals of laughter into the fabric of my pants.

 _Oh my God_.

With my head buried between my knees and my chest hitching and my eyes fucking _watering_ , Sasha tackles Connie on what is clearly a far more serious issue.

“I’m not sure if I’m okay with the idea of getting sand up my hoo-hah. I feel like we should discuss this plan more, Con.”

“Well, we can do it on a towel – we don’t have to do it on the sand, right?”

“But imagine if you got sand between your dick and the condom – wouldn’t that hurt or something? And what if there was like, a crab or something, and it decided to pinch my butt whilst we were doing it? What then?”

By this point, I’m fucking _hyperventilating_ with laughter. Breathing was overrated anyway.

 

* * *

 

Connie and Sasha manage to go through an entire debate on where exactly on a beach would be the best place to get down and dirty – not too close to the sea, because of the creepy crawlies, but not too far away because you get itchy dune grass and sand everywhere – but in the end, it just ends up with them deciding that maybe it’d just be best to do it in the tent, and thoroughly disturb _everyone_.

I laugh until my lungs give out and I need a good lie down to recover – but I can’t help but chuckle to myself every few minutes between cigarettes, shaking my head in disbelief at the pair of them. There’s a shift in the weight that’s been pressing down on my shoulders and chest – it feels good to laugh like this. I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to really just _let it all go_. Almost wondered if I’d forgotten _how_ to laugh, y’know?

Sasha and Connie derail the conversation off onto a tangent – or maybe they’re just returning to the original topic, having taken a short detour into the realms of sandy sex – but they start discussing plans for a road trip to the beach with the sort of suitable vigour you’d expect from them. I make noises of affirmation when it’s called of me, but other than that, I’m fine just lying between them in the truck bed, absorbing the sun and listening to them be excited and carefree.

It installs a quiet confidence in me, being around them – the sort of confidence that makes me consider those two words again, those two words I found swirling around in my head that night when Marco and I fell back on the grass to watch the stars at the party: _what if_.

There’s two days until I see Marco again. _What if_.

 

* * *

 

If only my _what if_ was the possibility of tackling Marco about my growing affection for him. If only.

Everything changes on Friday, August second, with the sort of _what if_ you never want to consider.

It starts no different from any other day. I make a trip to the store to pick up more cigarettes and fill up the Jag with gas (as I’d been too lazy to do it on the way back from the outlook yesterday), and then I spend most of the day on Xbox live with Connie whilst he grills me about my _plan of action_ – I remind him that I haven’t even thought about that yet.

When Eren logs on after lunch and requests to join our game, I sternly remind Connie to keep all topics of conversation concerning Marco strictly to ourselves, but five seconds into the first round of _Call of Duty_ , he exclaims loudly in our headsets: “Jean’s totally gonna tell Marco that he likes him!”

I make it my sworn mission to hunt both of them down and slaughter them with a bout of not-so-friendly fire whilst the pair of them cackle mercilessly in my ear.

This lasts for a couple hours, until Connie’s called away by Sasha, and Mikasa appears over Eren’s headset instructing him to help her make dinner – we call it a day, the pair of them wishing me good luck, and me returning the favour with a savoury: _I’m gonna kill the both of you_.

I wander downstairs after that to find mom chatting to the housekeeper in the kitchen – I try to slip by them to procure snacks from the fridge, but I’m seen and caught, with mom reminding me that dinner will be on the table within the hour, and that I shouldn’t stuff my face with junk food now.

I kill the rest of the time slouched on the sofa in front of the TV, channel hopping until I revert to the patron saint of Netflix for something not mind-numbing to watch. Two episodes into the bulk of _Person of Interest_ I’m trying to catch up on, mom forays into the living room with two plates, propping one on my lap, and we eat dinner together in front of the television (although mom makes sure to ask obnoxious questions at every interval, because she just “doesn’t get why this show is so popular”).

I excuse myself after the end of the fourth episode in a row to go upstairs and draw – it’s been a while since I took pencil to paper, and a while since I had the motivation to create something. I set some _Eagles_ spinning on the record player, and roll up my metaphorical sleeves, staring down at the blank canvas before me, but imagining the way the rough lines will take shape.

I draw for a few hours – it’s all Marco, of course it’s Marco – how did I ever _not realise_ I like him so much? I know how to draw his profile like I know the back of my hand, I know exactly where to dab each freckle, I know which strands of hair tend to fall over which side of his face.

In the moment of white noise that transcends between one track and another on the vinyl, I hear the sound of a car engine purring onto the front drive. I lay down some hatched marks on the underside of the neck of the figure I’ve drawn, and then check the time on my phone. Huh. My dad’s later than usual tonight.

I hear the front door close and start counting the seconds before there’s some sort of confrontation.

But there’s nothing. That’s odd. Maybe I’ve escaped the shouting match for tonight?

I wheel my chair across my room, using my feet to drag myself over to my bedroom door, which I creak open a crack, straining my ear to listen.

I can hear a lot of clumsy movement downstairs, someone moving from the hallway to the kitchen, and then quickly back across to the living room, where the TV – which was on low volume, gets muted – and then subdued voices creep up the stairs.

Huh. This is … new. I’ve kinda become accepting that yelling is now a custom in this house. I open the door a little wider, but the voices are still a little too quiet to make out.

I do hear the screech of a piece of furniture across the wooden floor, though.

And that makes the volume of the conversation get louder.

Something persuades me to slip out of the crack in my door, and tip-toe along the landing to the top of the stairs – some really dumb foolhardiness, clearly, because why … _why_ , when I know I’m not gonna like what I hear and it’s gonna make me upset?

Mom and dad’s voices are clearer now, and as I lower myself onto the top stair, clinging tight to the bannister, I make out the strings of a tense conversation.

“—not fair on him, Robert … you think this makes him feel—” Mom’s voice is too quiet. I lose half of her words.

I try and block out all the other sounds of the house creaking and groaning around me, and cars humming on the road outside, to try and understand full sentences.

“—already put up with so much in this family, and now you’re taking it out Jean—”

There’s always that twist that appears in your gut when you hear your parents talking about you behind your back – like that feeling when you overhear them on the phone to your grandparents telling them what you’ve been up to this week, but approximately one hundred times more anxiety-inducing. It places a strange amount of tension on your shoulders, and you find yourself holding yourself as stiffly still as possible.

“—what you’re talking about, Céline—”

Another piece of furniture screeches as it’s abruptly shoved back as someone stands – or at least that’s what I imagine.

Mom’s shrill voice ricochets up the stairs and makes me start. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle with her sudden shout. Now it’s all too easy to hear what’s being said. Time seems to slow down around me.

“You know full well what I’m talking about!”

 _H-huh_?

“I’ve been p-putting up with the _other woman_ for years, Robert! Or other _women_ , I don’t know! It’s not easy putting on the front of a happy family – but I can overlook it, because I know it’s for the best, but when you … when you treat _Jean_ like he’s not worth anything as well—”

_W-what?_

_What … did she just say?_

_Did she just—_

“What _are_ you talking about? How can you make accusations like, Céline? Do you know how that makes me feel, knowing you don’t trust—”

“Don’t! Don’t play dumb with me! Show me that much d-decency for once – _I know_. Who do you think deals with the lipstick on the collars of your work shirts, Robert? The phone calls you take in your study late at night? The business trips you take that your secretary has no idea about? I’m not an _air head_ – or … or whatever you might think of me.”

No. No, I’m not hearing this right. I can’t be.

“These are _paranoid delusions_ – do you hear what you’re saying—”

“Stop it! Stop it, Robert! Stop lying to us, to _me_ —”

This can’t be—

She knows? Mom _knows_ about his affairs?

But … but she can’t? If she knows, why hasn’t she— _why hasn’t she left him_?

It’s like my heart is dropped into a bottomless pit, and it’s all I can do to squeeze the rung of the bannister tighter in my palm to keep myself grounded to reality.

She can’t mean that? She _can’t_ know – can she?

This … I don’t believe this.

How can she still want to wash and cook for the man who’s disrespected her in such a way? What— doesn’t she have any pride? What the fuck, mom? How can you look him in the eye when you know … when you know he’s fucking every woman in his office when he doesn’t come home for dinner on time?

Why is she choosing to remain stuck in this _sham_ of a marriage? Choosing to live in it and participate in—

Fuck. What the _fuck_.

She’s an accomplice too. She could’ve – she could’ve gotten us out of this. She could’ve—

We’re both still stuck here.

How is that even _remotely_ fair?

She knew – she knows. She could’ve told me. Could’ve made it so I didn’t have to suffer under the weight of hiding it from her. Could’ve told me to pack my bag and up sticks any night. Could’ve fucking _left_.

Why haven’t we, mom? What the fuck is holding us here now?

What sort of fucking, _twisted_ pride is keeping you attached to this loveless marriage, huh?

My hands have balled into fists at my side – I haven’t noticed until now. Every muscle in my body is tight, clenched, the boiling desire to kick out, to punch, _to break something_ —

I’m _angry_.

I feel heat in my chest, like I’m burning from the inside. I think in the colour red.

But I’m also—

My breath comes out too short, and I wheeze.

Don’t cry, Jean. Don’t you fucking cry. Why the fuck are you crying? Be angry, _be angry_ – you should be fucking angry at how they’ve both kept you trapped in this mess for so long—

I stagger to my feet, and without thinking, I step onto the floorboard that I know _creaks_ – and I wince. Mom and dad both stop talking – _shouting_ – and there’s a really horrible silence where I know they’ve heard me out here. I hear mom’s heels clicking sharply, and as I peer back down the stairs over my shoulder, I see her face pop out from the door to the living room.

Her eyes go wide as she sees me standing awkwardly on the landing, holding onto the bannister with a white fist.

“J-Jean?”

Ah. She knows I’ve overheard. I wonder if she thinks if it’s come as a surprise to me.

“… I’m going to bed,” I mutter, and fuck— my voice is so weak, listen to that fucking _tremble_. Don’t fucking cry, you piece of _shit_. “’N-night mom.”

Her voice is hoarse from shouting – or is it just weak because she’s scared? I should really be able to tell, shouldn’t I?

Screw thinking straight.

“… Jean?”

No. Nope. I can’t, mom. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut and swallow the lump in my throat, before I flee back into my room.

 _Flee_. That’s what I do. Period.

I slam the door shut behind me, and sink down against the white grain, cradling my head in my hands. There’s whirlpool of … of _crap_ swirling around inside my chest, my stomach, my _head_. And at the centre of that vortex, a great, black abyss of a space, and it feels— it feels so—

 _How could she know and not tell me_?

There’s no sound of feet rapidly climbing the stairs, no footsteps outside my door – I think I’m safe. Maybe they’re still fighting. I don’t know, _I don’t know_ —

I feel suddenly so very far apart from the both of them.

 _How can she not stand up to him_?

I feel so angry. Fuck, no, you know what? I feel _betrayed_. Yeah, that’s it.

I grab my desk chair and slide it under the handle of my door – a poor barricade if ever I did see one, but they won’t be able to reach me if I go up on the roof, no. I seize my cell phone from my desk, and dig for my fresh pack of Marlboro’s inside my backpack, before I heave open the sash of my window.

 _How can we not just leave_?

The night air hits my face in a gust of mugginess, and the loamy, mushroomy scent of cooling earth. Comfortable, cold, and peaceful.  It calls out to me, and penetrates the chaos and confusion running rampant inside my head.

With my cigarette pack shoved between my teeth and my phone in my jeans’ pocket, I scramble out onto the roof, hauling myself up onto the slope of the gable, slinging my legs up and over. A resting pigeon startles and flaps its wings, rocketing off into the pitted sky to find somewhere else to sleep for the night. Good. Go away.

There are no swirls of blue and darker blue above my head tonight – or maybe I just can’t see them. The stars are dull and do not twinkle like they should, and the moon … the moon is hidden behind thin mists of high cloud. It kinda feels like there’s something stopping me from seeing them properly. There’s a film that’s been painted over my eyes, and all around me is that artificial orange-black, and I hate it. There’s no beauty in the night tonight.

I light up a cigarette, inhaling all the way down into my lungs the musky smoke, feeling the white tendrils wrap around my throat and squeeze. _Just choke me already_.

Between draughts, I mess with my lighter, rolling my finger repeatedly over the catch and watching how the flame dances into life and then extinguishes in a repeating cycle. I’m transfixed by the way the blue tickles the peak of orange and yellow, how the colours mix seamlessly with no conflict – something not quite real, _it can’t be real_ , not something that looks so perfect. I waft my fingers through the fire, the sharp heat a sudden exhilaration as I play with the danger of burning myself.

 _Jean, what are you doing_?

I’m feeling miserable, that’s what I’m doing.

 _No, Jean, what_ are _you doing_?

I have no fucking _clue_ what I’m doing. With everything. Anything. Mom. Dad. School. Marco.

I run my hands down my thighs firmly in despair, but when one palm squashes over the hard rectangle of my phone in my pocket, I stop. It’s like I’ve swum my way to the surface of the sort of vivid dream that comes with too much beer and too little warning, and I wonder how unspoken words can echo so loud. I taste clear air for a moment.

_You know you’ll feel better if you tell him._

Did I ever mention that I know his number by heart? Because I do.

It’s all product of my selfish wish.

Marco answers my call on the second ring: his voice is groggy and worn-out, from sleep, maybe. From other stuff, _maybe_.

I don’t know if I can afford to feel _guilty_ on top of everything else right now.

“Jean?”

“… Can you come over?”

 _I need you_.

 

* * *

 

Maybe him and me … maybe we are satellites. I can send signals to him when everyone else has long since fallen asleep, and he is the first person to hear me, without ever saying a word.

Maybe we are rivers. We start out as the tributaries of something better, and even though I have not met him for miles into my winding journey, when I did – when I _do_ , we fall off this waterfall together, and it’s weightless. We’ll think we are only paper-light when we impact the ground.

Not the stone weights of our burdens on our backs. Just paper. That’s what I want.

That dark, asphalt river beyond the hedge row is lit up by headlights twenty minutes after I end the phone call. I’m on my fourth cigarette, chugging out smoke like a struggling steam engine, breaths of white ash that take with them all the bubbling feelings of anger and sadness, and just leaves me feeling empty.

I feel cold, even though the air is warm.

The door of the van clicks open and then slams shut, and in the faint light that radiates from streetlamps, I watch from above as Marco slips through the back gate and into our yard. I pinch the cigarette from between my lips and let out a low whistle – or at least attempt to, because it just sounds like some messy, rasping noise, and I end up with a line of drool clinging to my mouth and chin. Great. I wipe that on the back of my hand – but Marco’s noticed me.

He doesn’t wave and he doesn’t call out – he knows better, that’s why. Just always, automatically knows _better_. I can’t judge his expression so far away in the dark, but I imagine it’s worn, I imagine it’s a tired, sympathetic smile, I imagine _he doesn’t deserve me and my problems_. My chest seizes at the thought, and so I take another puff of nicotine – not that it’ll help relieve the guilt or the cold, cold tension.

Marco scrambles up onto the roof of the pool shed like last time – so long ago – so much has changed since then, so much _hasn’t_ changed since then. He clambers up the drainpipe on the side of the house, slinging one leg up onto the slate-grey tiles, and then the other, rolling onto his back on the roof to grab a momentary breather before he wobbles to his feet again.

I want to drag my eyes away from him as he navigates the slant of the house beneath his feet – I want to stare emotionlessly out into the semi-dark with an angsty cigarette between my teeth – but you know the truth. I can’t pull my gaze away from him, however hard I try.

“I thought you were giving up,” is the first thing he says to me. I squint up at him, and then remove the cigarette from between my lips, watching as ash falls away from the burning end. His eyes follow the trail of smoke as it paints white through the orange-blackness.

“Thought so too,” I murmur, considering the thin roll of paper and tobacco for a moment, the crisp embers blooming in bubbles of yellow where lit. Marco sits down next to me, dislodging the blanket of stillness in the air – the hairs on my arm prickle as he brushes up against me. Last time we sat on the roof like this, there was a barrier of space between us. Occupied my clasped hands, but it was still space.

Not now. _Things have changed since then_.

I move to pop the cigarette back in my mouth, but Marco catches my wrist. My eyes flick up to meet his in the dark and I’m _surprised_ – surprised by the intensity that’s suddenly there, surreal and unreadable. It burns, like the flame of my lighter, but the feeling doesn’t pass as quickly.

“Don’t,” he says quietly, carefully removing the cigarette from between my fingers with his other hand. Ever had the sense of deja-vu?

He grinds it out on the roof tiles in a cloud of wispy smoke and a raspy hiss, and then flicks the butt down into the gutter. He scrunches up his nose and wipes his palms on his pants in apparent distaste.

Again, it’s like last time. Just—

I suppose abruptly kissing him is out of the picture then. He probably wouldn’t appreciate me stinking of cigarette smoke if I were to press my lips to his. Damn. I guess I really should think about quitting.

I ease the remainder of the packet out from beneath my thigh and hand it to him with as much cheek as I can manage.

“Suppose you’ll be wanting these as well,” I offer brazenly. Marco takes the pack from my open palm, the image of tarred and blackened lungs face up, but doesn’t crack a smile as he does. Oh. He doesn’t think twice about throwing it away as well – he lobs the rest of my cigarettes into the dark, and I almost expect to hear a splosh as they wind up in the pool, but I guess he misses.

This feels awkward. Something’s not sitting right, and as I scrabble for small talk in my mind, Marco sighs deeply and dips his head onto my shoulder much to my surprise. I’m assaulted with the smell of his laundry detergent, his shampoo, his aftershave – him. But even this … why does it feel like it’s just sucked straight into that internal, swirling vortex to no avail?

“M-Marco—?”

He nuzzles in a little closer. How can I still feel like it’s not enough?

“You can start from the top, Jean.”

“O-oh. Okay.”

He’s here. He doesn’t care if I need to stay up all night bitterly regretting my entire existence, he’ll stay with me.

I wonder which is worse – insisting he keep his distance from me and my chronic unhappiness, or dragging him down into it, time and time again. Which is more destructive?

I don’t know.

So I tell him. I don’t really know where to start – starting from top is a tall order when I don’t really know where the threads of my story even started from at times – so I stop myself and begin the tale again a few times. Once the words come tumbling out though … they don’t stop. I can’t will them to stop.

I tell him I was fifteen when I first got an inkling of my dad’s infidelity. But I should’ve seen it sooner.

I tell him about the phone calls and the business trips and the websites I’ve caught my dad on from out of the corner of my eye. I tell him about the secretaries and the young interns and the shameless lipstick prints on collars.

I tell him about the multiple nights I’ve fallen asleep feeling so fucking _guilty_ for hiding my father’s affairs from my mom, for being an accomplice to his shitty existence. How many days I’d trudged into school, into college, feeling like the human embodiment of garbage. How many times I’d had to pass it all off with a forced smile to Sasha or to Connie. How it made me sick to my stomach at times.

I tell him about tonight, how my mom has known for so long and yet has still done nothing about it, how it hurts to know that’s she willing to put up with this shit – for what? For the money? For the cushy life? I just don’t get it any more.

I tell him that I’ve lost the fine line I once had between anger and misery, and I just can’t tell what I’m feeling anymore. Am I even feeling anymore?

I tell him how it hurts to know I’m losing – if not already lost – any semblance of a father figure I once had. There was once a man who bounced his son on his knee. There was once a man who came to his son’s football games. There was once a man who bought his son a car without feeling remorse.

There was once a man. And now there’s just a growing empty space.

Marco murmurs in assent as the words just keep pouring out of my mouth, filtered down an insidious tunnel that seems to have no end.

“At least … at least I still had _something_ when we had the pretence of me following his life plan,” I say. “He still spoke to me, he still had an interest in me. Fuck, sometimes I even think I’d prefer it if he spent his time insulting me. That’s still talking. It’s not this stupid, fucking _silence_ all the time.”

I twist my head a little, and boldly press my nose into the crown of Marco’s hair. I inhale deeply, and pray he doesn’t notice. I want the smell of him to sooth me, I want the warmness of his body squished up against mine to quench the dark hole in my chest.

“I don’t know how to deal with this, Marco.”

There’s a moment of silence as those words hang in the air between us – not that there is much air _between us_ – I can feel the warmth that radiates from his skin, every rise and fall of his chest as he breathes … but yeah, the words still pendulate somewhere in free and timeless space.

“I know how you feel,” he murmurs, his words vibrating. “I don’t know if that’s any consolation though.”

I scoff bitterly. It comes out too severe – too severe when everything else is too … _nothing_.

“Your parents are nice though,” I remark crassly – probably much too crassly, but I’m not exactly watching myself right now. I’ve lost the depth perception that allows me to speak gently. If it doesn’t pack a punch, then what’s the point? You don’t feel it otherwise. “They don’t ignore you. Do they?”

“No, it’s not like that …” he replies quietly. His breathing has slowed, but become harsher. Don’t think I can’t feel that.

“… So what is it then?” Is that too forward of me? I know I’m not thinking straight. But that’s not too much, is it?

We’ve fallen down seven times and we’ve gotten up eight. We know each other well enough to be each other’s crutch when things are too difficult to deal with alone.

We’ve wondered how hands can be so warm when it’s been so long since someone shook them, and basked in our collective loneliness, and come out the other side with more trust in our bones than we ever dreamed possible after being put through so much.

We’ve been glass bottles, and shattered when knocked together in each other’s wake, but, by God, the fragments that we’ve left over have formed the constellations of good things.

We can tell each other stuff, Marco and I, we can—

Marco drops the game changer with a mixture of resentment and casualness, a solemn, quiet voice that barely punctuates the night, and everything – _everything_ I know about him – it shatters. It’s the _what if_ you never wanted.

Everything changes on Friday, August second.

…

“It’s cancer, Jean. My dad … has cancer.”

…

It’s the _what if_ that breaks you. What if he’s suffered more than you.

Silence. It hangs in the air like suspended glass the moment before it’s dropped and shatters. It’s like a gaping void, needing to be filled with sounds, with words, with anything. The air is not peaceful, it’s wretched.

What if he’s _suffering_ more than you.

How do you answer that when it’s not a question?

“M-Marco, I—”

“I’m sorry Jean.” He shifts against my shoulder, and raises his head. The tenancy of space between us is too large, too cold, too much. But it’s inordinate now. “I … I didn’t mean to make this about myself.”

My brain short circuits – literally. Flustered, panicky, stuttering – I don’t know how to deal with this, I _don’t_!

Marco … this – this is the thing, this is what he’s been dealing with? The medical bills, the falling off the radar with no warning, his dad coming home from the God-damn _hospital_ , the cigarettes – oh my God, _the fucking cigarettes_. How could I be so senseless? Fuck.

How do you tell someone that you feel sorry for them without it coming out like a load of crap, huh?

Humans have the innate ability to waste the shit out of their words. You tell people you’re sorry when you take the last newspaper from the stand on the street, or you bump into them on the train. Are you really sorry? No.

What’s meant to happen when you hurt someone irreproachably, or someone you know dies, or you find out your best friend’s dad has fucking _cancer_ , huh? How do you describe it? You already wasted _I’m sorry_ on a fucking newspaper.

I can feel my face crumble, in the way man stares in terror at the stars or the sea or the great unknown. This is my great unknown, for sure. What do I do?

Marco pulls his knees up to his chest and curls in on himself – he looks so God-damn small, and Marco … he’s not meant to look like that. He’s meant to be strong.

 _He’s meant to be strong_.

“Is … is it serious?” I squeak. Of course it’s _fucking serious_. But I just don’t know how to fathom any more words. I’m treading water, but slowly sinking, however hard I struggle against what’s suddenly an ocean of God-damn questions.

“Yeah. It is.”

“B-but, they … they have medicine for that, right?”

Marco takes a deep, wavering breath, and tilts his face to the sky. People write about how sadness is supposed to be poetic, or beautiful, but it’s not. This is not. There’s no moonlight to illuminate his expression – it’s the grimy, orange, city streetlamps that cast shadows on just how broken he is. And I just hadn’t realised.

“Not this time, Jean.”

Not this time. _Not this time_.

I don’t want to think about what those three words mean. Their severity is too much – too much for me who thought the fact my mom was keeping secrets from me was enough to make me cry.

“Stage four, non-small cell lung cancer,” Marco whispers with finality, eyes flitting from smog-shrouded constellation to smog-shrouded constellation, far, far above us. I wonder if his dad has freckles, and I wonder if he sees them, too, when he looks at the stars, and can never, ever _forget_. “From smoking. It’s a standard … a standard story.”

I don’t know what to do. I don’t. There’s nothing in my head. There’s concrete in my limbs. What do I do? _What do I do_?

“It appeared for the first time … just before Mina was born. In his right lung. But they got it. They got it… five years of chemo, and they got it.”

He gulps, and he tastes it, he tastes the fear, the despair. I read it in his face, and it’s all I can do to sit here stunned, like an animal caught in headlights, and stare at him with all the ice that’s ever frozen in my veins consolidating in this very moment so that I cannot move.

Marco scuffs his feet on the tiles, and draws his knees up closer to his chest. The words tumble out of him like free-flowing water, and I know, we _all_ know … water and I …

“B-but you don’t get miracles in cancer stories. They’re not _beautiful_ stories. We’re not in a John Green book. People get sad, people get angry, and there’s no great … _no great lesson to learn_.”

His voice is breaking.

“It came back … halfway through my first year of college. It … it came _back_. That’s not meant to happen, you’re not _meant_ to have to resign yourself to something like that _twice_. I didn’t know what to do … I should’ve … I was training to be able to do something about it, and— and it _came back_ and I was _useless_.  
He had more chemo, and Mina … all this time, she thinks it’s normal that daddy’s sick, that daddy can’t play outside with her like the other kid’s parents, that daddy can’t take her to school in the mornings – a-and how … how is that fair? How could I do _nothing_ about that as well? How …? Who gets to decide what’s _fair_?”

He clears his throat with a phlegmy, choking noise.  
  
“We got the all clear again in March. You start to believe in second chances again when … when that happens …”

You know when your heart splinters, because you feel it. You feel the shards slowly ripping you a part from the inside out, and there’s nothing you can do – because what can you do? Plunge your hand into your chest and pull all those fragments out? You’re bound not to get them all.

This is the moment when my heart shatters for good.

“Do you remember … the day you phoned me up because the dog peed in the pool?”

“Y-yeah,” I whisper, my voice raspy in my throat. “Yeah, I do.”

“That was the day after my dad had a PET scan,” Marco says quietly, “It lit up like his own personal city excavated inside his chest.”

 _Oh_.

“And then, do you remember … on my birthday—”

I don’t know if I can listen to this. My hands find the hard, rough roof tiles, and I curl my fingers around their edges, because the coarseness is _something_ to hold onto.

“—the doctor told us: it’s spread to the lymph nodes. It’s made it to his kidneys, to his liver. It’s only a matter of time until it reaches his heart or his brain. There’s no chemo regimen that can treat him now. B-but if he fights … if he fights … maybe he’ll live a little—”

His breath hitches and his entire back convulses as he presses out the smallest, most broken sob between his clenched teeth. There are no _what ifs_ anymore.

“But it feels like he’s just— dad’s just given … given up, and I—”

And then, Marco cries. Not a loud, wailing cry, but a sobbing that has no bottom and no top, just circles and circles of sorrow. Each heave makes his spine ripples, and each haggard breath tells me how broken he is, how much he’s been shouldering alone for so long.

I’m scared. Nothing prepares you for this sort of thing. _Nothing_.

Here’s the moment when I’m meant to kiss him, like in the movies. Kiss the pain away. But real life doesn’t work like Hollywood does. A kiss doesn’t solve sadness. To be honest, a kiss would probably make it worse.

Marco manage to choke his way through his tears – and how, _how_ does he still find the strength to fucking apologise?

“I’m … I’m— sorry, Jean, I didn’t mean to—”

This has been a long time coming. I can tell by the way he rubs the heels of his palms furiously into his eyes, trying to stem the flow of tears that trickle down his freckled cheeks. It’s a dam that’s be bound to burst for months, years maybe. He’s kept this all to himself for so long, and—

How he has not broken under the weight of the world before now?

Marco is so selfless. He doesn’t want to take away from my pain, to make my struggle any less valid. He has a burning desire in his heart to be perfect, to not cause people unnecessary grief. He wants nothing more than for people to be happy. He’s listened to me with a smile on his face whilst shouldering the weight of my burdens alongside his, because— because why, Marco? You don’t always have to be cheerful. You don’t. It’s only gone and hurt you.

I should hate the things that hurt you, Marco – but how do I do that when they’re parts of you?

I feel the pricks of tears in the corners of my eyes, but no. No, I can’t. He doesn’t deserve anything _else_ to be placed on his shoulders. He doesn’t.

“You … you don’t have to apologise for this,” I say, every syllable squashed out between my lips shivering. I heave myself across the few tiles that separate us, too many, _too many_ – and I wrap my arms around his shoulders as he shakes with the overbearing weight of all the things that should never have happened to someone as good as him.

I kiss him – not in the way I want, but in the way he needs – pressing my lips to the parting of his hair in a silent promise.

 _I won’t burden you with anything more_. _I am going to help you_.

 

* * *

 

We stay like that, wrapped around each other on the roof of my house, enveloped in this ridiculous movie cliché, for a while – until his haggard sobs become whimpers and then just heavy breathing. I suggest softly in his ear that we climb down from what will probably end up being our imminent death one of these days, and he laughs weakly.

I show him how it’s done, swinging down from the gable and using the upper sash of the window as leverage to wheedle yourself back into my room – and he does it with more ease than me. Of course he does. Droplet tracks down his face and cheeks puffy and vision blurred, and he still does it better than me.

Whilst he stands in the centre of my room, shoulders dropped and shirt crumpled, hands in his hair trying to flatten out the crow’s nest of haphazard spikes in front of my mirror, I set about digging through my closet.

I find him a clean pair of sweatpants and an old _The Smiths_ shirt that I find too big for my personal taste, and bundle them into his arms without a word.

He looks at my sceptically, eyes red and watery still.

“What?” I chew, “Like hell I’m letting you drive home. You’ll end up accidentally driving yourself off a bridge.”

Marco doesn’t need much persuading. He doesn’t need to say words for me to know that he wants to stay, and that’s fine with me. He changes in silence whilst I’m shutting down my laptop, and then he curls up on the wall-facing side of my bed (as I search around for a spare blanket to solve any cover-stealing issues), buried deep under the safety of my duvet and quilt, nose pressing into the heavy-worn fabric.

I strip down to my boxers quietly, fishing last night’s sleepwear off the floor where I’d unceremoniously dumped it, and wriggling into it as I shuffle across the floor to turn the light off. The room is plunged into a hazy darkness that has the weight of all the secrets shared tonight.

I clamber onto the mattress, feeling it squish under my knees – I’m not sure if Marco is asleep – his breathing is soft and not so laboured, so maybe he’s already passed out – but I don’t want to disturb him either way.

I lay back, letting my head thump into the pillow, and draw my spare blanket up around my chin as a protective force against all this immeasurable _change_. I glance over at Marco, where the duvet hangs off his shoulder and I can see how my shirt stretches thinly over his broad shoulders and catches the indentations of his spine.

Too much space between us again.

I roll onto my side and squish myself up against his back, nose in the collar of the t-shirt, and I lace my hands under the duvet and around his chest. He shifts, bringing fingers up to wrap around my arm, and he gives me a little squeeze in reassurance, even now.

I close my eyes, but it takes a while for sleep to find me, even once Marco’s fingers on my forearm go lax, and he begins to snore gently.

The hole in the centre of my chest is still gaping – wide and black. I nuzzle my nose into the fine hairs at the base of his shallow undercut, and will the feeling to go away, but it doesn’t.

This is an obstacle we’re supposed to be able to jump over.

We’re supposed to be given the key to this locked door.

This is supposed to pass.

It is said that pain is only temporary. But I just don’t think I can believe that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry.
> 
> I feel like an author's note is out of place, but I have things to say. Hopefully this revelation doesn't come across as too much of a shock. I've been leaving hints since CH6 about this - some more obvious than others. In CH11 I literally spelled it out in Jean's monologue, but ... still only three people guessed right. 
> 
> More details will be revealed in the next chapter, and the one after that. I'm sorry this story became so sad. And it's not even over.
> 
> The theme for this chapter was change - could you tell? I tried to cast that over all the scenes in this update. There's a lot of change going on right now. For the better and the worse. 
> 
> Thank you for all the positive feedback from the last chapter: all the comments, the messages, and the art. It means a lot to me. Please let me know your reactions to this chapter - I'm not completely happy with the overarching metaphors being all that smooth, or the pacing, for that matter.
> 
> As always, I love hearing back from you guys. It means the world to me to know how this makes you feel.


	16. Sedated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Something isn't right, babe  
> I keep catching little words but the meaning's thin  
> I'm somewhere outside my life, babe  
> I keep scratching but somehow I can't get in  
> So we're slaves to any semblance of touch  
> Lord we should quit but we love it too much."
> 
> Sedated, Hozier (2014)

It’s a strange moment, I think, the first time you realise you’ve been waking up alone for far too long. Not that there’s really anything _too long_ about it – I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve cracked open sleep-crusted eyes to see another face parallel to mine – and none of them have been romantic encounters in the slightest. A Sasha or two, maybe a Connie with marker-pen whiskers drawn on his cheeks, a hung over Marco …

Still though. There comes a point when you realise no, _you’re not a child anymore_. Maybe there could be someone sharing that bed with you.

You know you’re totally fucked when dreaming is better than reality, because in your head you can imagine opening your droopy eyes to the sight of a freckled face dozing quietly on the pillow next to yours. You imagine the murmured moans that creep from his parted lips as he stirs, the sound of him nuzzling further into the pillow. You press the back of your hand to his forehead; you toy with the strands of loose hair that flutter down across his eyes, rolling the thick strands between thumb and forefinger. He blinks open his eyes, and smiles, dopily, prettily. In your head, in the _dream_ – it’s too perfect.

But the dream has a tendency to fall apart when you’re awake, it seems.

Saturday morning drifts into my consciousness as a wistful melody that I’m not quite aware of as I hover somewhere on the threshold of a strange sort of sleep.

The rough fibres of my pillow tickle my nose where I have my face pressed into the comforting smell of my bed linen. I scrunch my mouth into a pucker and sniff loudly against the sleepy fog that swoops in around my thoughts – the haze is thick and lethargic.

Bright sunlight hits my eyelids and I feel them flicker involuntarily. Ugh. Too bright. Why is it this bright at this time of day?

A grumbled string of nonsense groans ambles its way between my pursed lips as I roll over further into the pillow, snaking my hands under the downy feathers as I try to squish the fabric into my face to block out the light of mother nature’s personal alarm clock.

Something. Something. _I swear I’m forgetting something …_

I flex my shoulders, feeling the knots in my back click wonderfully, and I stretch my legs beneath the blanket. _Blanket_? _Where’s my_ — My foot hits a thick pile of duvet crumpled up at the end of my bed at that moment.

“Mm—” The sound slips clumsily off my tongue, muffled by pillows and tiredness. I inhale deeply, humid air filling my lungs – humid air and something more, something languid. Smells like him. “Marco?”

I heavily blink open my eyes – a Herculean feat if I might add, because it feels like there’s a tonne of weight trying to hold my eyelids _shut_ – and in the crisp daylight that streams into my room, I’m met with the sight of wrinkled sheets and an unoccupied space. The mattress is empty beside me.

Memories of last night come pouring back into the forefront of my mind – a cluster of blurred images, of tears, of weights against my chest. Of pressing my nose up against the nape of his neck as I willed for sleep to find me in the early hours of the morning. Of words that I so fucking _wish_ were easily forgotten.

There’s no dream here. More like a nightmare. It just begs to stay with you.

I reach a hand out, and twist my fingers into the sheets where he isn’t. The bed is cold on that side, but it still smells so strongly of him. A pang of emptiness swells in the hollow of my chest, and I curl my fingers tighter, until my knuckles turn translucently white.

He’s not here.

He didn’t stay.

 _What did you really expect, Jean_?

I squeeze my eyes firmly shut again – maybe I’ll seize some glimpse of that pleasantly selfish dream of mine – but _no_. No, my reality is a different one. I’m remembering the way he shook when he cried on the rooftop, and the sound of the hitches in his breath, and I’m visualising the ghost of him in the bed beside me.

Marco Bodt _breaking_ replays in my memory like a broken vinyl spinning on the record player in the corner of my room.

Why did he go without waking me up, huh? I woulda thought after everything’s that gone and happened, he would’ve … _damn it_.

I unfist my palm from the empty sheets and sweep my arm across my face, shielding my eyes from the sun, before rolling over onto my other side, presenting the wall – and Marco’s side of the bed – with my back. 

I feel like shit.

It wouldn’t even matter if I wasn’t so much of a fucking insecure _wreck_ half the time. Nah, it wouldn’t stop the way the things that tumble into my head are all to do with _regret_ : does he regret telling me all that stuff? That’d be a plausible enough reason to hot-tail it outta here without a word. Regrets letting me see his weak side? Idiot. I don’t care about that stuff.

 _Regrets letting me get this close_?

I groan, and definitely consider suffocating myself in the pillow. Would be a great idea, if it didn’t smell so strongly of him, and therefore make the whole _dying_ experience one hundred times more painful that necessary.

I hope it’s not the case. I hope he doesn’t regret … _us_. I really do. But I guess your mind just rattles when you wake up having been _ditched_ by your bed-mate. Best friend. Guy I’m irrevocably in _… in like_ with. Fuck my life.

So maybe smothering myself with a pillow is not a _great_ idea, but I can always just go back to sleep for approximately three hundred years, right? Tune out the world and forget that everything exists? Sounds delightful. I draw the blanket up around my shoulders – it’s already too hot and too sweaty, but I really can’t bring myself to care – and wriggle down under the fleecy covers. As I move to pull the fabric up and over my face to completely conceal myself inside a cocoon of self-loathing, I hear my bedroom door creak; I go still, holding in a sharp breath. I listen intently for the tell-tale click of mom’s heels on the floorboards, but they don’t come – only soft, tentative padding which seems to stop at the foot of my bed.

“… Jean? You awake?”

 _Marco_.

I’m torn over breathing a huge sigh of … of what, _relief_? It’s pretty God-damn selfish to call it relief, but fuck it, I’m _glad_. I’m glad that’s his voice coming from my feet, I’m glad that’s him rustling around for something on the floor there, I’m glad he’s still _here_. I peel back the covers from my shoulders almost warily, as if drawing them back too quickly would destroy the illusion, and make a poor attempt to shuffle my way upright – but cognizant function is too much of a stretch, I guess. I can barely reopen my crusty eyes to look at him as I offer a grouchy-sounding (but not grouchy-intending) noise of recognition.

He stands awkwardly at the end of my bed, his clothes from last night bundled in his arms, and the pyjamas I’d leant him laid out neatly over the edge of the mattress – he’s changed into his pool cleaning kit, and is picking at the hem of the cornflower blue polo shirt. _When did he do that_?  

The light coming in from my window streams directly onto his face – which is weird, because I swear to God the sun never comes in at that angle in the morning – and it highlights all the remnants of last night. The pain’s still there, grey and concrete. ‘Course it is. ‘ _Course it fucking is_.

His freckles stand out too starkly on his cheeks, too dark against his skin – or is it more than his skin looks too pale for his freckles? Probably that, considering how deep the crescent bags beneath his eyes are in colour. Crescent bags, and heavy lines, and so much _tiredness_. A sadness devoid of poetry, ugly and harsh and _overbearing_.

“Did you sleep well?” he has the nerve to ask, with a smile so stupidly subdued and forced beyond measure that it hurts me to look at him. Come on, Marco. Let’s not play this game. (I only just woke up for starters.)

 _You don’t have to fucking smile when you don’t want to_.

“Wha’ time’s it?” I reply with a disgruntled bleat, wriggling myself up against the headboard of my bed, successfully clunking the back of my skull against the wood. “ _Ow_. Fuck.” I try to kick off the blanket, but it just tangles in my calves and keeps my legs tied together.

 _Sigh_.

I decide to focus my efforts on keeping myself awake instead, and trying to get my eyes to adjust to the fuzzy daylight. I must look like some sort of dopey animal blinking in the sun after a month underground.

Marco’s smile seems to become more genuine at that – me looking like an idiot – the corners of his lips twitching.

“It’s just gone two,” he says softly, slightly amused. I stare blankly at him in return.

“It’s _not_ ,” I say curtly in disbelief. Marco chuckles lightly, and sets the clothes in his arms down by my feet carefully, the breath of a smirk still toying on his features. I would call it beautiful if it didn’t hurt to see it against the cloudiness behind his eyes.

“It is,” he repeats. “Sorry to tell you. I, uh … I already went and cleaned the pool. I hope you don’t mind.”

I roll over and grabble for my alarm clock, almost knocking it off my bedside table and onto the floor in the process. Yep. The hands on the clock face do in fact tell me that it’s just before two in the afternoon.  It _is_ that late. The hell?

“Damn,” I mutter under my breath, setting the clock back down more cautiously. Marco moves to perch on the edge of my mattress, sitting so lightly that I barely feel it dip beneath his weight. Everything about him, every crack in his countenance … suddenly seems too plain, too easy to see. “Why didn’t ya’ wake me up when you got up? I coulda … coulda given you some company or something.”

Marco looks resigned as he drops his shoulders and smiles sadly, picking at the fabric of my bed spread, and avoiding looking me in the eye however hard I stare at him across my mattress.

“It’s okay,” he replies. “You … you looked too peaceful. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

My chest lurches painfully. I scold myself for it.

 _Alright. Overlook the fact that this means he was watching you sleep, Jean, and realise that he didn’t wake you because he probably just wanted the head space. Stop that fluttery heart shit right now_.

 _He wanted time alone_. _Because … because you know why._

A moment of silence drapes itself over us, and it feels pretty stagnant and _definitely_ awkward, with both of us staring fiercely downwards to avoid the elephant in the room. One of us should probably tackle that.

Me. _I_ should tackle that. Do the thing, Jean.

“So,” I start slowly, drawing out the o-sound as I scoot myself unsubtly down the bed towards him. He shuffles sideways to make room for me and my accompanying pile of blankets, but his posture is stiff as I close the space between us. “How ya’ feeling?” I’m trying to go for a cautious, sensitive thing here, but it kinda just sounds really _blunt_ when it escapes my mouth. Well, I never said smooth was my middle name, did I?

I hear the little puff of breath that weasels its way out between his lips – don’t think I don’t. It’s a fragile sort of sigh.

“I’m okay,” Marco says, but that’s a lie. We both know it is. I can see how brittle and withdrawn his cheerful façade has become, and it makes me wonder – did that happen just overnight, or have I really been missing the severity of this over the last few weeks? Was I really that damn _blind_?

The cracks running through his bones … how did he keep them hidden for so long? It makes me wonder: how many nights were spent curled up on his bed, clutching at knees, trying to find a steadying hand in the darkness, that I never knew about? His suffering was silent.

The worst type of crying isn’t the kind everyone can see: it’s not the wailing on rooftops, the clawing at clothes. No, the worst is when every little thing makes your soul weep, and there’s nothing to be done to comfort it. When you exist in a state where every slight movement leaves you with that feeling you get when you’re on the brink of tears, but they don’t quite fall. And so you wither, and so you scar.

 _Okay_ is gonna be a fucking stretch from now on. But I can at least attempt to grab hold of a good slice of it, for both our sakes.

“You, uh— you want some breakfast?” I ask, heaving my tangled legs off the bed awkwardly, struggling to my feet. “Lunch? Brunch? F-food?” Attempting to walk to apparently a step to far though, and it’s really _no surprise_ that I trip over my own jumbled feet, narrowly avoiding face planting onto the hard wood floor – if that weren’t for the way strong arms grab my waist out of reflex.

Everything is _so close_ to being perfect. You know how this sort of thing is meant to go – you see it in movies and TV shows, you read it in books. Love interest catches the protagonist from falling over because they’re a clumsy sob, and then they share a moment of _awkward as fuck_ sexual tension in a compromising position that ultimately cumulating in a kiss, or at least a _near kiss_.

There’s none of that here. It’s only the taste of the dream that still lingers on my tongue.

“Are you _sure_ you’re completely awake, Jean?” Marco laughs dryly; his hands don’t stay on my sides for longer than absolutely necessary, and it feels like he’s almost too quick to pull his touch away and brush it off – normally it lingers. Doesn’t stop me from blushing like an idiot, though … I just feel like a real tool, feeling the flutter of a second’s contact doing crazy-ass things to the stuff inside my chest.

 _Stop it, Jean. It means nothing now. Jesus_.

“’M fine,” I mumble, kicking away the blanket that wraps itself around my feet, with more aggression than necessary, fuelled by the hotness swathing my face. (But it’s frustrating, you know. Us. This. _This_. There’s no us.) “Gonna make you some food.”

“Jean,” he repeats my name resolutely. I twist ‘round to look down at him, still perched on the very edge of my bed – and it’s saying something that it’s weirdly _unsettling_ feeling taller than him. He’s too small and too timid, hands pressed together between his knees uncomfortably, and _it will never feel right_. “It’s okay. I … I already ate.”

I frown down at him, confused, and slightly surprised that Marco would go raiding my kitchen cupboards.

“I-I … I ran into Céline – your mom – when I went down to, uh … clean the pool. She offered me breakfast then,” he explains quickly, in response to my quirked expression. I swear to God, he winces.

“… Oh.”

So to add fire to the feeling of already being at arm’s length from everyone lately, now I have to deal with the fact that mom’s gonna have realised Marco came over really late last night and stayed over? Great. Totally doesn’t make anything feel any more awkward.

There shouldn’t really be anything to be embarrassed about, right? But that’s just another thing I’m going to have to _explain_ to mom come the unavoidable run-in later today, which is going to be just fucking _peachy_.

The longer I can put that off, the better.

“… Jean?”

There’s no way of saying anything in this awkward silence that doesn’t make things ten times more unbearable, so I’m forced to suck it up, uncomfortably shift my weight from one foot to the other, and sheepishly rub the back of my neck.

It’s selfish of me to ask him this, but I don’t want to be alone. And, I’m imagining – hoping, maybe – he doesn’t want to be either.

“You, uh … you wanna stick around anyway? A bit longer?”

Talking to him shouldn’t be this hard.

I thumb over my shoulder to where my TV rests beside my desk, with the Xbox nestled at its feet. I try my hardest to find that balance of normalcy where it doesn’t feel too much like a show put on for his pitied sake.

“I got the _Nemesis_ pack for _Call of Duty_ , if you wanna give it a spin or something—”

It’s not enough. Will it ever be enough now?

“Jean—”

“Yeah?” I sound too eager.

“It’s okay.” He presses his hands into his thighs, splaying his fingers over his shorts, and draws his gaze up from the floor to meet my eyes. “I should … probably go home. Thank you, though.”

It’s not just that. It’s not just that simple, is it?

It strikes me that it’s more than just a _he has to go home_.

Maybe it’s just my crippling self-doubt that’s telling me he’s _reluctant_ to stay, but … I dunno. It’s his body language, it’s the way his eyes keeping flicking away from mine after stilling for barely a few seconds, it’s the way I recognise the pressing feeling of being held at a distance from the world this morning. There’s something in the way he speaks that’s disconnected.

 _Regret, Jean, it’s the regret_.

Is he regretting telling me all that stuff last night? Letting me see the raw parts of his soul, letting me hold him whilst he cried … are we not supposed to talk about it? Is that not what we’re meant to do now?

We’re not gonna … pretend it never happened, are we? We can’t do that – I know better than most people, Marco, I know what it’s like to try and live your life pretending something doesn’t exist. You forget or you ignore it, but it won’t go away. The feeling’s just gonna fester and rot your organs from the inside out, leave you a hollow, walking _corpse_ of a person. It can’t be healthy.

I’ve gotta be overthinking this. Gotta be. I’m just thinking about myself again. Look at this guy … last night on the roof must’ve sucked all the emotion out of him, he probably didn’t sleep well, I bet he just wants to get home to check on everyone, to check on his—

His dad.

Feels like I’ve been subconsciously skirting around that topic myself.

His dad has cancer. There it is, there’s the word, there’s the true elephant in the room. _Cancer_.

One day, his dad is going to _die_ because of it.

It’s one of those words that feels heavy when it sits on your tongue, that doesn’t quite seem real, even now, when you’re staring it almost square in the face. It’s because, up until this point in my life, it’s been a thing sitting on the edge of my peripheral – you know how it is: you hear about a celebrity dying on the news, and you offer a passing “oh, that’s a shame”, or maybe you flick through the chapter in your high school Biology textbook explaining tumour growth in a manner entirely clinical and hardly sentimental. You don’t connect to any of that. Something you’ve never quite seen, something you don’t really know much about, but you _do_ know it’s out there, and it’s bad, and sometimes, it’s deadly. It just hasn’t caught you yet. ‘Til now.

Last night kinda had that ethereal thing going for it … it’s not quite real. I still have to come to terms with a lot of change, and this is at the top of the bill. It’s been shoehorned into my trajectory, and blocks out everything else like a great _comet_ passing over the sun.

Cancer. It’s a word that tastes like poison.

My mind swims as Marco sets about gathering his stuff; he folds up his clothes in his arms, and grabs his cell phone from my bedside table, all whilst I’m essentially just staring off into a space that’s neither here nor there, and swamped with the dawning of what now _is_. I’m distracted by my thoughts as I follow him onto the landing, trailing at his feet like a shadow as we head downstairs and slip through the – thankfully deserted – kitchen. My bare feet make sticking noises on the white-tiles, and it’s the only sound.

It’s a simple enough question to ask yourself, but a hard one to implement, and I can’t help the way _what am I supposed to do now_ swirls around like a vortex inside my head. How much of this problem is my problem? How much do I have to come to terms with myself? And how much is just me wishing to shoulder his problem for him? His pain?

I think about Marco face when the walls tumbled. I think about stepping out into that void.

Where is the line drawn? How much of this is pity for the man dying, and how much is pity for the son _suffering_?

In front of me, Marco’s back looks smaller than normal as we pad across the patio and then the lawn – I see it now, how the strength I once thought he had overflowing has been sucked away from him and left an empty shell that is still fighting to function.

No. That’s not entirely true. His strength is still _there_ , somewhere. He’s just gotta find it again.

 _You have to help him do that, Jean_.

Sounds like I’ve gotta figure out what I have to be for him. (And I can probably take a gander at what that _doesn’t_ include.) (I can’t believe I even _thought_ about that now. Fuck.)

“Jean?”

We’re standing on the sidewalk now, between the hedgerow and his van, and it shows how out of it I am because I literally don’t remember passing through the back gate. Marco’s turned to face me – taller, but not really taller if you get what I mean – and he tilts his head like an expectant puppy. I manage to haul myself out of my internal thicket, although a metaphorical machete wouldn’t go amiss right about now.

“S-sorry,” I say clumsily, scuffing my foot on the pavement. “Was miles away.”

Neither of us knows how to say goodbye. There’s a space, a chasm, that seems to have fissured the ground between us out of nowhere, and I both hate it, and appreciate it at the same time. Hating it is pretty self-explanatory.

Appreciating it is slightly different, and slightly selfish. I don’t know how I’m meant to react now, I don’t know how I’m meant to behave – is it meant to be different? – and the gap between us gives me that turning space to figure it all out.

“I’m … going to go, then,” Marco says when the silence progresses too long and too strange for him. The way his face drops even further suggests that he was waiting for me to say something or _do_ something, but it beats me what he’s wanting of me. He said he needed to go home, right? I already asked him if he wanted to stay around longer. “I’ll see you soon, Jean. I hope everything … clears up for you.”

He turns and unlocks his van with a click of the key, opening the driver’s side door whilst all I can think is: _oh come on, he didn’t did not just fucking say that_.

God-damn selfless idiot, I’m gonna fucking _punch_ him one of these days.

I can’t let him leave like this.

“Marco, wait.”

I reach out and grab the corner of his sleeve before my brain has time to process what exactly I’m doing. I pull him back, away from his van, and he seems to concede willingly.

“C’mere, you idiot.” It’s my voice, but it doesn’t sound like my voice, because it’s quiet and gentle, and it only speaks volumes of how I’ve come to notice the changes in myself because of him. I’m gonna be the Marco this time – the constant against the every flowing tide of variables – for a moment. I can do that for him.

I pull him into a tight hug – kinda awkward because I’m the one who has to rest my chin on his shoulder – but he melts into it, with no tension in his bones as he wraps his arms around my back, as if he’s been holding out for this, hoping for _this_. He exhales deeply, chest deflating, and nuzzles in closer, and I realise – yet another change – that this is different to the last time we hugged like this on the sidewalk. This time, I don’t think I care if anyone sees us. I don’t think I’d budge if even my _dad_ suddenly rounded the corner and saw us like this.

He says something against my skin, breathy and lost against the drum beat of my heart and the expanding and contracting of my chest.

“Did you say something?” I breathe; his response, only, is to squeeze me tighter – a desperate hug of a man made of water in a glass too full, sloshing around, unsteady.

For a moment, everything is Marco – I breathe him, I feel him, and I want, more than anything I’ve wanted in a long fucking time, to protect him. To make him happy again.

 _I’m gonna try really hard to figure out how to do that, Marco_. _Even if you don’t let me … even if you don’t, I’m gonna find a way, okay? I’m a stubborn asshole. You’ve done too much for me to let it slide._

“I’m here, y’know,” I find myself mumbling into his shoulder – and it’s so sappy, I know it is, but sappy feels appropriate right now. Sometimes clichés are okay: because they’re fact. “Whenever … whenever you need to like, talk, or hang out, or whatever … just – just tell me what you need me to be, yeah?”

It doesn’t matter what _I_ want to be anymore. What I want from him is not important; it’s not fair to be demanding the sort of attention that I want, or to be pining after something more than a friendship with him.

All that has to matter is him alone.

I feel Marco nod, and the way he twists his fingers into the back of my shirt is like a vice around my heart.

When you hit rock bottom, surely – _surely_ – the only way left to go is up, right?

 

* * *

 

When Marco leaves, I find myself drifting again; it’s like I’ve lost my anchor to the present, and there’s very little holding me down from floating off into the cosmos of my own thoughts, leaving the sidewalk well and truly behind. It’d be nice to not feel this fucking _despondent_ all the time – to go back to the days when things used to be happy, or have the semblance of happiness, at least.

But the more I think about that, the more I wonder … was that really ever?

Before last night, Marco wasn’t happy. He just hid it well.

Before I met Marco, I was dealing with the fall out of what happened with Eren. I wasn’t happy. I was fucking _miserable_.

Before that … well, I’ve been skirting around the issues with my dad for a long time. A really long time.  I just got used to the numb feeling as something ordinary.

 _Happiness is only ever temporary_.

Well shit, that’s a depressing thought.

I stop walking when I reach the back door to the kitchen, pausing to wipe off the grit from the sidewalk from the soles of my bare feet. When I glance up, I realise mom is leant against one of the kitchen counters, arms folded across her chest – not necessarily stern, but at least serious. She’s got her _we need to talk_ face on.

No. Come on. I can’t deal with this today. I’m all out of fuel.

“We need to talk, Jean.”

Ah, yep. There it is. Told you so. I know how this goes all too well.

“I don’t want to talk,” I reply quickly, eyeing up my escape routes and making a bee-line for the hallway. I don’t want to talk – I want to _think_. I want to just go and lock myself in my room for the rest of the day and _think_. I don’t want to deal with the _other things_ that went and happened last night on top of everything else.

“Jean.” She steps in front of me, between me and the door, and she’s trying to put on a confident face, she really is. (And it makes it all the fucking _worse_ to think about the reasons why she’s having to _feign_ that confidence.) Her make-up looks off, and her hair not as neatly primed as normal. Her sweater hangs off her skeletal shoulders in a way that highlights just how skinny she’s become in recent years. “We need to talk about what you heard last night.”

It’s about right to say I’m resentful. I’d pushed it all to the back of my mind, stored all these God-damn _lies_ that this family is built on away for a rainier day. I’m not in the mood, and I’m definitely not in the right head space for dealing with the cocktail of emotions that recent revelations about my father’s infidelity entail; anger, frustration, _guilt_.

I think the guilt is the worst.

I try to leave again, moving to skirt around her, but she reaches out with one well-manicured hand, and grabs onto my bicep firmly.

“You have to tell me what’s going on inside your head, baby. I can’t do anything to sort this out if you don’t tell me what you’re thinking.” She sighs resolutely, summons some sort of motherly strength to her voice. “We _have_ to talk, Jean. About your father.”

I don’t have time to think about the sting in my words before they come tumbling out, and my pride is too delicate to quite wish to withdraw them.

“We _had to talk_ a long time ago, mom.”                   

I bat her hand away and push past her, not wanting to look her in the face and see what sort of expression she wears because of me.

We’d been doing so good lately. So _good_. Why’d this have to happen now?

 _Why do I have to feel so shaken because of her_? _Because of both of them_?

When I reach the doorway, she calls out to me again, arms still crossed over her chest, holding herself securely together. She bows her head when she talks, which makes it all the harder to figure out what she’s trying to say with the flatness of her tone.

“Why did Marco stay the night?”

I exhale heavily through my nose, the rush of air like a violent snort.

 _It has nothing to do with this, mom_.

_He could never deserve this shit._

I don’t answer that question for a multitude of reasons, some more selfish than others, and I retreat to my room with so much spinning inside my head that I genuinely feel like tearing my hair out. That, or I’m gonna vomit. Mom doesn’t follow me – and I’m not sure if I’m glad of that or not. It feels like I’m ignoring my own advice by pretending the problems between us – all _three_ of us in this poor excuse of a family – don’t exist. That I don’t have to deal with them right now.

I know I should. I know I should turn back around, go downstairs, and confront mom about why – why did she not tell me that she knew about what dad’s been doing all this time? Ask her plainly why she hasn’t done anything about it yet, why she hasn’t confronted him … why she hasn’t left. Make a cup of coffee, go sit down with her in the living room, and talk. That’s what adults do.

I sure as hell don’t feel like an adult though.

Nineteen is a pretty shitty age … sitting on that threshold between still being a teenager and an adult, and everyone treats you like both and neither at the same time. Mom wants me to have this adult conversation but all I know how to do is react like a kid.

I feel the whispers of the decay I talked about beginning to spread.

I slump onto my desk chair with an elongated huff and wheel myself closer to my laptop, wiggling the mouse pad and waking up a new tab. My head still spins, shrouded in a cottony, gauze-like haze that muffles everything around me – even when I turn the brightness of my screen up to its full setting, it doesn’t even make me wince. I feel far away. The Google homepage is paying homage to some choreographer or something in today’s doodle, but I don’t pay it much heed, skipping my mouse over the caption to slam some words into the search bar.

_how to cope with your father cheating_

Over twenty-nine million results. That’s quite a lot of reading. I scroll down the first page, and open up a few tabs to flick through – but they all spout the same sort of bullcrap that seems perfectly reasonable on the surface, but really helps very little in practice. “Be patient”. _Right_. When does it stop being patience and just become ridiculous though? I’d say after about _six years_ of knowing about your father’s infidelity, and still saying nothing. That’s not patience. I can tell anyone that much. That’s just a selfish sort of _cowardice_ that I know all too well. (I close that tab instantly.) “Don’t blame yourself”, another reads. Dumb. How am I not meant to blame myself? I’ve had as good a part in causing this train wreck of a familial situation as either of my parents. I can visualise easily the lump of guilt that too often clumps itself in my throat late at night, too often the weight of the phone handset in my palm as I answer _another_ woman from the office, too often the days upon days of waking up in a sluggish trance, stupored by the knowledge of the accomplice I thought I was. Definitely was. Even now. (That tab gets closed too.) “Don’t take on your parents’ marriage problems” makes me laugh out loud, sharp and brisk and dry. Too late for that. Too fucking late. (Nope, exit.)

I tap the up-arrow on my keyboard to take me back to the top of the page, and re-enter my search terms.

 _How to deal with your parents in a loveless marriage_. Only one-hundred-and-seventy thousand results appear at the top of the screen.

 _How to deal with your mom lying about your dad’s affairs_. Thirty million for that one. Oh boy.

 _Why won’t my mom leave my cheating dad_. Too many hits to count.

I’m not sure whether I should be finding solidarity in the sheer number of people with stories like mine out there on the internet, or just find it really fucking _depressing_. Maybe it’s a universal thing for parents to be like this. Sure seems that way to me.

I exit quickly out of all the articles I open up, eyes flicking only briefly over advisory words that seem too sterile, too forgiving. Where’s the anger, huh? Where’s the _frustration_?

I backspace the words in my search bar once more, and my fingers hit the keyboard on their own accord, barely recognising the letters I find myself stringing together until I stab the enter key.

_how to do deal with a cancer diagnosis_

There are almost fifty million results.

Once I start opening websites, I don’t stop. I click on every link I see that reads about being the friend or the family member of someone diagnosed with cancer, about the trials of being a caregiver, about what it feels like to see someone you love go through something like this. I open up every forum post that starts with the sentence: _my friend’s dad has cancer_ – how does he feel, what can _I_ do to help, it’s all here. The task of dragging my eyes away from the text on the screen is quickly too difficult.

 _Don’t tell him it’ll all be okay_ , many of them read. _Because he probably knows it won’t be_.

My heart aches in my chest for the boy that means too much to me, and the people who mean too much to him. It’s a deadened feeling.

I tab down and read more, my eyes barely pausing for respite over the endless wads of text from fifty million different people, with fifty million anonymous faces. (But when I start projecting Marco and me onto them, they’re not all such strangers anymore.)

 _“The best you can do is tell them you’re there for them. Listen to them when they need a shoulder to cry on. Be a good friend and help them let their hair down_ , _because they’ll probably be feeling too guilty to have fun on their own accord._ ”

“ _Be practical. Offer to help out with chores or bringing over supplies or even taking people to hospital appointments_. J”

“ _Don’t pretend that you understand, because you probably don’t. Comparing your situations won’t make it any better_.”

“ _Do some research! The general feeling for people dealing with a cancer diagnosis is a loss of control, so by understanding the situation, you can help be a steady rock_.”

I start searching the phrases Marco told me on the roof last night: non-small cell lung cancer, wasn’t it? Stage four? Google tells me what that means – how the cancer would’ve started in one lung, and then spread to the other, and then to the lymph nodes, the kidneys, the liver, the rest of the body. It tells me about the symptoms: the fatigue, the loss of appetite, difficulty breathing, coughing up _blood_ —

It tells me about the life expectancy once you’re diagnosed. Less than ten percent of people live beyond five years. (It makes me wonder what sort of person Mr. Bodt must be to have beaten this thing back so many times and for so long.)

(I don’t want to think about what it must mean for him to have finally _given up_ , as Marco said.)

I think about Marco, and it feels like I’m peeling back the layers on him. It feels like I’m finally looking at him without the tempered glass – not that I ever realised that there was tempered glass between me and him, but apparently, there was. I was just blind to it. Things are clearer now – clearer, but further away. I’m getting a feeling of what he must be going through, and it hurts, and because of that, I have to hold it at a distance from myself. Not consciously, maybe. Not wanting to. But I have to. It’s like a wrenching feeling inside my chest, and emptiness in the pit of stomach, an inconsolable queasiness that just won’t be settled.

I curl in on myself, resting my forehead on the edge of my desk with a muffled _thunk_. Squeezing my eyes closed, I see Marco behind my eyelids; I see the expression he wore on his face that night at the party, the mixture of his guilt for enjoying himself, and his joy at being able to just _forget_. He’s always so worried – and that stretches beyond this cancer thing. It’s just him. He cares too much about other people, and it’s not good for him. I resent wishing this, but Christ, can’t he just be a little more shitty and selfish? He needs to turn that focus on himself for once.

I understand now, looking back on everything – which is a whole fucking lot – how his desire to make people happy has ruled him like a psychic with a horoscope, or a superstitious person with a broken mirror, or me with my fears. Marco doesn’t like to trouble people. Marco doesn’t want to cause people unnecessary grief. Marco wanted to be the perfect student. Marco wants to make sure his sister has a childhood. Marco wants to be a good son to his parents. Marco wants everything to be okay again.

Marco _wants_. Marco doesn’t get.

I bang my head repeatedly on the hard grain of my desk.

He must feel so fucking _helpless_.

And I didn’t understand quick enough. Idiot. _Idiot_.

I push myself away from my laptop with enough force to almost send me toppling over backwards on my chair – and I just about manage to steady myself before I launch across my room to my bedside table, ripping the drawer out of its rails and onto my lap, where I empty it of its innards.

Paper, receipts, old coins, a half pack of playing cards, two sad condoms … they all are tossed onto the floor as I dig through the disorganised contents, and – _there_!

I find two almost-empty packets of Marlboro’s there at the bottom of the drawer, and looking at those cancer sticks now, I feel sick to my bones. I feel them _splintering_ beneath the weight of it all, and the feeling lights an angry fire in my ribs that swells in calcium cracks – an angry fire at _myself_.

This is the first step to figuring out how to help. The first step towards making some measly sort of difference.

I don’t even _need_ the pitiful excuse of being able to say I was planning on giving up my nicotine habit anyway – there’s no requirement from my pride for an _excuse_ now.

That afternoon, I tear up my bedroom searching for every damned red-and-white packet I might have stashed somewhere out of sight and out of memory.

I find five: the two from my drawer, one down the side of my bed, the pack in my rucksack, and the one I go to retrieve from the back yard, which has lodged itself in the hedgerow. Bundled up in my arms, I waddle out onto the front drive in bare feet, purposefully binning every reminder of my _tact_ in the dumpster at the end of our street.

Feels like it’s time for a good change. I’m gonna grab this by the horns, whether life wants me to or not.

I don’t have a choice any more.

 

* * *

 

Life doesn’t make it easy though, I’ll tell you that much. My moment of madness and insatiable drive is just that – a moment. Not that I go back to craving cigarettes – it’s not like that, no. I don’t think I ever could find myself longing for the smoky spike of nicotine in my blood again, but going cold turkey doesn’t do great things to my general feeling of restless detachment. I‘ve been chain smoking so much recently that my body doesn’t take well to the news that we’ve suddenly stopped doing the cigarette thing, and I fall asleep that night with the shivers and a cold sweat, despite the heat.

When I wake up, somewhere on the verge of death, I feel like the human embodiment of shit, and look like it too. I don’t even attempt to glance in the mirror for more than a split second, and just about manage to flatten my hair down with my fingers to at least save anyone the expense of thinking some ratchet, homeless dude has gone and moved in at the Kirschtein house.

I exist in a perpetual state of numbness – more so than ever before. Constantly floating, not really feeling the floor beneath my feet, or the door handle in my hand, or the burn of morning coffee sliding down my throat. Any bravado I might’ve thought I had has been sucked clean and dry from my system, leaving me with a sandpaper throat and a cotton-wool brain. It’s like all the expense has caught up with me at once.

I avoid my mom. I’m not sure if she actively avoids me in return – probably not, because she _does_ try to make attempts to talk to me – but I blow her off, and let her slip through my radar … because focussing on _that_ as well is not what I want, and definitely not what I _need_ right now.

There’s still a part of me unable to let go of the anger I hold over her keeping secrets from me for so many years – and the only reason I think I’m clinging onto it so tight is because it’s _something_. It’s something strong and ignited and I can _feel it_. It offsets that numbness. It’s tangible.

Dad doesn’t come home either – not Saturday, Sunday or Monday – but I don’t think I blame him. I probably wouldn’t come home if I were in his shoes, God forbid. I’m not sure if I can bring myself to care about his absence – at least it’s one less thing to have to deal with right now. At least I’m not being dragged into some insufferable, emergency family meeting by him, or by mom as she clings tight to the hope that this will all iron itself out again. It was never smooth to begin with, mom. The more I consider the knife that wedges itself between the letters in our shared surname, the more I realise how I can barely stomach the thought of being stared down by _either_ of them, not after everything that’s happened. The distance between us all reigns strong.

With dad not around, I find myself barely noticing mom, if she talks to me, if she enters the room I’m in. I lose track of if I eat meals or not – does she even call me down for dinner any more, I can’t even tell you that much – it just seems to be an endless stream of gorging on packets of Doritos in front of my laptop whilst I scroll through some of those fifty million search results on Google. I exist on the periphery of it all: the ocean fish thrown into an aquarium tank, the person riding the sail boat in a Homer painting with no clear face to draw the eyes, the people in the car next to you at the traffic lights, who speed away too quickly to be noticed. Floating in my tank, sitting in my frame, riding in my car … nothing connects me to any of it all. I’m not doing too good at the functional human being thing.

That’s the thing, the whole story: I’m sad. I am sad _all the fucking time_ , because if it’s not one thing, it’s another, and even though it’s not the sort of sadness that makes me want to cry or brim with tears or anything like that, it’s the sort that just makes me feel like I’m perpetually sinking, and there’s _nothing I can do_. It clings like the stench of cigarettes to clothes, or earthy tea to carpets, or beer to the back of your throat.

The unendurable emptiness is so God-damn heavy that I can’t get away from it. Not ever.

I try to talk to Marco. I really do. I’m pretty sure I spend hours staring at my cell phone, starting so many conversations that I lose count – yet I delete them all. All my words seem superficial. I feel like the supreme overlord of shitty friends, but like hell does that make better words appear on the page. Blank message templates are quickly becoming the story of my life. Three days pass without contact.

Every second is spent thinking about him, thinking about how he’s passing these endless hours. It doesn’t alleviate the pressure squeezing every organ in my body, the lead weight in my limbs, the strange desire to cultivate the dark feelings, whilst resenting them all the same.

I wonder why he doesn’t call _me_.

(And I should know why.)

 

* * *

 

On Monday night, I’m thrown an unexpected curveball, but not in the Marco department. In the mom department. It’s around ten o’clock at night when I hear a soft knock on my bedroom door, drawing me out of the stupor of staring relentlessly at the ceiling which I’ve been enjoying for the past half an hour, after trying and failing to open up a Skype convo with Marco.

I twist around in my chair, letting it spin as mom pushes open my door a crack, and pokes her head through the narrow space between the white-washed wood and the frame. It feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve seen her in the flesh, and not just in dreams. Her face is stripped of makeup, and she wears the flimsy satin of far-too expensive pyjamas, and she looks meek. It hurts to think of her scared of me like she is of him, but I’m still not ready – not ready to confront the giant in the room, the giant in the _house_. It hasn’t festered enough yet.

Part of me wants to punish her. Wants to make her know that I’m angry, that I’m hurting, that’s she’s to blame. I’m spiteful, and I’m childish, but through the detached corner of solitude I’ve forced myself into, I’m feeling the claws of loneliness begin to dig into my flesh.

I don’t want to push her away.

But I also don’t know how to say I’m sorry when I’m not.

It must look like I’m somewhere distant – which is half-true, I suppose – because mom’s expression takes a turn for the apologetic for interrupting my apathy, and I recognise her muttering something quietly. Her words are concealed by the way my attention is drawn to her hand, slender fingers delicately clutching what looks like a wad of printer paper that she waves in my direction, and then props carefully on the floor when I can’t will myself to move out of my lethargy.

“Will you take a look at it, Jean?” she says, the trailing end of perhaps more spoken – but focussing on more than one thing at a time is still too much of a stretch for my fuzzy head. She bows out of my room, and I follow her disappearance through the crack in my door with waxen eyes, staring at the stilled door handle for some time after the floorboards of the landing relinquish the sound of her footsteps.

The white paper of a peace offering stands out starkly against the dark colour of the wooden floors, and the fine lines of printed text catch my eyes from even across the room. Curiosity seizes me. I minimise my failed attempt at starting a Skype conversation, and drag myself and my desk chair across the width of my room by my feet.

The sheet on the top of the thin pile is a print out from Google Maps; the streets of western Trost are familiar enough to me, as is the borough of my old high school. A little, red marker sits over what I’m pretty sure I remember to be a community hall: an old, fifties-build, ugly white creation that I used to see crawling past the window of the school bus in years past. My frown crinkles on my face, and I scoop down to pick up the stack, leafing over the first page, and finding driving instructions on the next.

 _Maybe this is mom’s roundabout way of telling me she’s kicking me out of the house_ , I debate internally, turning over the next sheet to discover a print-out of an email conversation between my mom and a name I don’t recognise: Rico Brzenska. Lord only knows how you’re meant to pronounce _that_ keyboard smash of letters, but I try to wrack my brains for any essence of familiarity despite that. (There is none.)

 _Reading the email conversation will probably help you, you idiot_.

I scan over the text, faded in places with dodgy, orange lines from our shitty family printer (and not the fancy one that dad has in his office, I note) – and the breath halts coarsely in my lungs.

_Hi Rico,_

_Following up on what you mentioned at the salon the other day, I was wondering if I could have some of the details for that art class you run_ —

My eyes skip back up to the start of the email, and I read the sentence again, a strange feeling swelling in my chest: disbelief and surprise at the core, but as I read on, the sensation warps.

_—I was hoping you might have space for Jean in a couple of your sessions; I think it would be a great thing for his confidence—_

— _really has quite a talent, and I’d hate to see his hard work go even more to waste than it already has on his father and I_ —

The words pinch around my heart, a strange sort of grateful pride mixed with the sting that comes with mom’s own acknowledgement.

My eyes flicker further down the print-out of conversation, scanning over the replies that follow, and it’s hard to know which side of the thin line I’m wavering. I feel torn.

I was right about the civic centre marked on the map – turns out this Rico person organises some sort of art class for the community college out in the west bank on a Tuesday afternoon. I guess mom wasn’t lying in her enthusiasm all those days ago when I showed her my sketchpads.

I’m grateful, if a little shell shocked. Compare this to a year ago – hell, compare this to a month ago … and well, it goes without saying. Mom’s been trying to close the distance – not just the one that’s sprung up over the last few days. She’s trying to close the distance birthed from many, many years of being held at arm’s length, if without realising it.

But at the same time, the snide part of me – a wicked sort of goblin-like creature perched on my shoulder, all hunched over and ugly-looking, is whispering in my ear: _it’s too soon to forgive_.

I still feel betrayed. Rightly so, I suppose. She let me down, and this – whatever _this_ is trying to be: a peace-offering, a white flag, an _apology_ – I can see right through it.

Mom’s gone an arranged art classes for me. Tomorrow, actually. The thought should make me feel elated – picking up a paintbrush has always been a sure-fire aphrodisiac of sorts, but all I can seem to recognise is the swirl of a vortex of confusion and frustration maelstroming it up inside my head.

The last page of the stack is a hand written note in mom’s barely-legible scrawl, and it draws up an uncomfortable lump in my throat as I glance at it – words that sting, but not out of spite or malice. They sting for the way my eyes prick with heat, and the way I know behaving like this is not the way to do it – but at the same time, the only way I know how to do it.

If I agree to this blatant bribe, does that make me the loser here? Does that make me pathetic for being able to be _bought_?

I sigh heavily, and set the paper down on my lap, leaning as far back in my desk chair as it will allow, my hands pressed firmly over my eyes.

I hate this. I hate this feeling of being so disconnected. Of not being able to make God-damn decisions. Of being so divided in what I want, you know?

I don’t want to fight with mom. But … but I don’t want my anger to be overlooked. My pain – even if it’s inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Not again. _Not again_. This is not _nothing_.

What would Marco do?

I stop grinding my palms into my eye sockets, and sweep my hands through the tufts of my uncombed hair, turning my eyes to stare at the ceiling again.

My mind seems to focus in an instant, as if the general haze I’ve been existing in for days, weeks even, solidifies into a pin-prick of light: what Marco would do seems like an easy question to answer.

Life goes on.

 

* * *

 

On Tuesday morning, I stumble into the kitchen with a pile of sketchbooks under one arm, and my backpack balanced precariously on the opposite shoulder, car keys jingling between my teeth. The house is empty, but I don’t feel the silence, with the buzz of white noise thrumming in my ears – restless is an understatement.

I’d slept on the thought of Marco – Marco telling me to stop kicking around feeling sorry for myself, Marco telling me to be proactive and get on with things, Marco telling me that my mom is only _trying her best_ —

Maybe the Marco in my mind is not the Marco of the moment – but it’s the positivity I need, the thought that if he were here, if things weren’t as grey as they are right now, he would tell me to think of _myself_.

He would tell me that, despite everything.

And today, I guess, despite the _weight_ of the sketchpads in my arms, this is me forcing myself to think about what I want. About my future. It’s not me thinking about mom, or about dad, or about what this family is right now. It’s just about me.

The choices I have to make don’t just go away because of everything else – because of the secrets kept, and the words said, and the discoveries made. They don’t go away just because other people are hurting more and worrying more – even if I wish it so.

Gotta keep moving forward, you know?

I check my phone when I’m buckling myself into the front seat of the Jag, trying to hold the handset and swipe the lock screen all with the same hand, precariously. There are no new messages in my inbox, nothing to be read on Facebook – well, not from Marco anyway. He’s been silent since Saturday morning, and the memory (if I can even call it that, since it was only three days ago) of hugging him on the sidewalk outside my house seems to wilt with the thought that there are things that mean he can’t bring himself to get in touch.

It makes me anxious, more than anything.

I move to type out a text message, but when it comes to choosing words, I fall short. What I am supposed to write to him? What is it that we talk about – and why does our memory of what was normal seem so far away and unreachable now? Am I meant to ask about his dad now? What pretence do I need to have to talk to him?

Asking about his dad is too much. Talking about swimming pools is too little.

Telling him what I’m up to seems too insensitive.

So I remain quiet, and hope I don’t come across too indifferent.

I try to lose myself in the drive across town – to let go of this feeling of hanging onto nothing in particular, yet everything at once. The streets are familiar as I wind through the back neighbourhoods that I recall my high school bus once taking; in the midday glare, Trost looks sick, too grey and lifeless, its buildings too sombre, its roads too cracked in the heat. The houses I pass seem withered, grass of front yards browning in the drought, chain link fences hanging broken, limp, and rusted. There are few people out on the sidewalks, and no sound through my wound-down windows save for the throaty thrum of traffic and blaring sirens in the distance; the only life seems to be the odd, tethered dog, panting wearily in the shade of their kennel, wishing the baking heat of the day away.

It’s enough to keep me occupied – my mind away from the sketchbooks on the passenger seat and my phone in the pocket of my jeans – and I bury myself in the memories of years past. I recognise the street sign at the junction where Connie crashed his bike into the tail-end of a cop car one time he was running late for a class – he’d ended up being even later, of course, and with a police sanction to boot, much to the exasperation of our long suffering Math teacher at the time. I pass the slightly shabby, slightly _paedophilic_ baby-blue-and-pink of an old ice cream van pulled up at the curb two blocks away from my old high school – probably the very same one from those few years back, and remember the one lunch break in the summer of junior year when the old guy who ran it doled out free popsicles to all the kids. Still doing business after all this time, I guess.

I slow for the next junction, where a right turn would take you up the road leading to my high school – the orange and sand-coloured stone of the main buildings still looking like a prison at the end of the street, quiet and desolate in the height of the summer.

Instead, I take the left, easing the Jag down the street on which Connie, Sasha and I used to take our cigarette breaks, decidedly far enough away from the school gates that we were never seen (but yet always caught, because the teachers could always smell it on our clothes). The community centre stands alone and dilapidated as ever I remember it, a patch worse for wear than even the sorry looking houses that line the other side of the street. Its windows are small, and its paint crumbled, and the small parking lot that splays out to the side of the square, boxy building is riddled with potholes that I carefully navigate the Jag around, picking a space marked by the least friable of white lines.

Kinda looks like the sorta place you’d go to buy drugs, or get purposely _murdered_ – not to take some sort of art class.

I move to check my reflection in the rear-view mirror; I _could_ probably pass for a drug addict, to be honest, if we’re going by the near-whiteness of my skin, and the purple smudges that have strung themselves beneath my sleep deprived eyes. I look fucking _rough_.

I dig around in my rucksack for where I’m sure I stashed a comb as another car rumbles into the parking lot, four or five spaces down from me. I glance up warily – it’s a big, black Range Rover, with tinted windows and spotless black hub caps, and _sure_ , that’s probably _not_ a car that belongs to a dealer, but a drug _lord_ on the other hand—

The gears of my imagination whir, distracting me on my quest for something to flatten my hair with, as the door of the big, black car opens and a person hops out, lithe and sallow. They’re dressed to the nines – especially for this side of Trost – swanned in a white turtle-neck shirt and a black, creaseless pant suit, short blonde hair cropped and quiffed effortlessly, and face hidden behind large, bug-eyed shades in the glaring sunlight.

I find myself caught in their presence, austere and meticulous, my face literally pressed against the window of my car as I stare. The suited, _possible-drug lord_ is greeted by a woman who emerges from behind the glass doors of the civic centre – she, too, is short, but with more a blocky stature than a willowy one, and wears a heavy set expression beneath spectacles, face framed by ashen hair. She breaks into a fair smile, though, when she greets possible-drug lord, and the two shake hands warmly.

 _Well, she doesn’t_ look _like a crack addict, but you never know_ —

The pair of them disappear inside, and I’m left with my nose smooshed up against the glass, wondering if this art class is actually code for something else entirely.

 

* * *

 

It’s not, if you’re wondering.

It takes me a good twenty minutes to work up the courage to get out of my car and attempt to follow the mystery pair inside, and a further ten spent pacing outside the front doors of the community centre, clutching the straps of my bag in white-tight fists.

I probably would’ve stayed out there the whole day – and more – if I wasn’t interrupted in my anxiety by the same, mousy, bespectacled woman. I jump out of my skin when she pushes the glass door ajar with my back is to her, and greets me with a questioning: “hello?”

“H-hi!” I say, my voice at least eight octaves higher than I’d like it to be, rocking the look of a startled rabbit as I spin ‘round, my heart floundering in my chest. The woman raises her eyebrows, caught between disdain and query. I try to school myself, biting the inside of my cheek, and tugging my shirt down awkwardly, if only for something to do with my hands.

“It’s Jean, isn’t it?” the woman says – grudgingly, I imagine, what with the way she leans her weight on the glass door and blinks at me slowly. “Céline’s son?”

I find myself nodding rigorously.

“I’ve been wondering what you were doing out here,” the woman remarks crassly, nudging the door open wider with her hip. She extends me a hand, and I stare at it blankly for a moment before I remember: yes Jean, you’re meant to shake it. “I’m Rico.”

“J-Jean,” I offer back, before realising that she has also already established that she knows my name. “Shit, I mean—”

“Just come inside,” Rico interjects, with an exasperated roll of her eyes as she holds the door open for me as I scuttle past her. The ceiling is low, and the lights pitiful, making the entrance-way seem dank and gritty, even with the blare of the sun outside. “They’re still setting up in the hall, so you’re not late.”

I trail Rico down a short corridor, passing a few unlabelled doors, and noting the scuffed linoleum under feet, and the more-than-likely-filled-with-asbestos ceiling tiles above my head. Rico slips through the door at the far end of the hall, into the muffled hum of voices and movement beyond, so I’m obliged to follow, gulping back a wad of saliva that has collected in my throat.

I blink rapidly as my eyes adjust to the much-brighter, artificial light of the large room beyond the door; a circle of slightly worse-for-wear easels have been set up in a cult around a central table lit by studio lamps, where an old biddy is working on precariously balancing some pieces of bruised fruit in a less-than-artistic pile. She cradles an armful of apples and pears against her chest as she shuffles around the table, loafers squeaking on the dry-wipe floor.

I feel like I’ve stepped into a time machine – that, or an old folk’s home. I’m greeted with the squinty eyes of at least a dozen grannies in a rainbow of crochet sweaters. It’s not a surprise really – what teenager would choose _this_ over a day spent lounging in the sun, or hitting up the park, or _anything_ but killing time in an art class where the average age must be at least _sixty_.

I must be the youngest in the room by at least forty years – bar Rico, but she’s already left me stranded, having sauntered off to the opposite side of the room, where she immediately falls into a different conversation. I feel the eyes of all the old ladies on me – it’s like visiting your grandma, but an infinity times worse, because you can practically _hear_ the amalgamation of all their internal _clucking_.

I slink over to the closest easel that doesn’t appear to be occupied and slip my rucksack off my shoulders, taking my sweet time to unpack my nice pencils and some of my paints, pretending that I have more in my bag that I actually do, just to appear busy. I check my phone – three times, no less – and rearrange the blocks of paint in my palette into a less sensible order than before, until I resign myself to the fact I must look like a _pillock_ , and I take up a seat on the rickety-feeling stool provided. I feel so out of place, it’s _unreal_.

My neighbour to my right appears at her easel, and shoots me a gummy grin as she settles onto her stool, short, stocky legs nowhere near reaching the floor, the seam of her pantyhose solid against her liver-spotted skin – I shudder, and deliberately draw my attention back to the uninspiring collection of fruit that has been set up to draw from.

Better than old ladies’ stockings though. For sure.

I scan my eyes over the shine of an apple, and over the browning peel of a banana, and over the stalk of a bunch of grapes that sits the highest on the fruit mountain, and I catch the firm gaze of gunmetal-blue.

I feel my skin prickle beneath a sudden – and short – staring contest; but almost as quickly as I realise I’m being appraised do the eyes on the other side of the room flit away, disappearing behind the shield of a canvas.

Possible-drug lord (sans-sunglasses) is sitting opposite me, across the circle.

I squint unsubtly in their direction, but beyond the stretch of their long legs and Chelsea boots beneath the feet of their easel, there’s very little to judge about this person.

They look really out of place here, though – I think that’s a definite. A sleek feline in a room full of old, droopy, knit-swaddled dogs; an electric eel in a pond of big-lipped catfish; some other clever metaphor that situationalises the way my eyes are irrevocably drawn to this person, a part from everyone else – but I seem to be the only one.

None of the old biddies are giving them a second’s glance, already caught up clutching pencils in shuddering, arthritised hands, hatching out the shapes of apples and pears and bananas on their canvases.

Well, when in Rome, I guess.

I pick up a pencil – blunt and slightly chewed – and start scribbling, finding the sweep of my wrist rusty and clumsy against the page. I start with one of the pears halfway up the pile of abandoned fruit – and there’s really no other way to say it: it comes out looking like a _butt_. And not even a nice, shapely butt: a grey smear of a butt that does itself absolutely zero favours. I sigh heavily, and grab my eraser, attempting to make amends to a pretty lousy start.

The woman with glasses – Rico – is making rounds about the circle of easels; chatting fairly amicably to each pottering old lady she passes, passing casual compliments and subtle suggestions for improvement, before slipping into petty questions asking after grandchildren or the health of a husband or what have you.

I take a peek at my gummy neighbour and how she’s getting on – and holy fuck, is she a whiz with the pencil. She’s clearly practiced in the art of drawing still-life fruit, with her clean lines coming out precise and defined from her knobbly, warty fingers. She notices me watching, and stretches her wrinkled lips into a smile.

“It’s looking good,” she offers, nodding in the direction of my butt-pear. I flush furiously, and turn back to my shitty sketch with a garbled string of nonsense, vigorously scrubbing at the graphite smudges with my eraser.

My renewed enthusiasm for the subject matter – which, I shortly realise, totally didn’t just come from being paid a compliment by a seventy-year-old granny – doesn’t really last that long. I manage to scrawl out a few apples that don’t look too shabby, and the banana takes on a vaguely banana-ish shape at the top of the pile, but those damn pears … just keep looking like butts, however many times I erase my messy lines.

Granny _slays_ those pears – in fact, she finishes her line art after about ten minutes of happy drawing, a brassy tune being hummed on her lips as she sets about shading with some fancy-ass charcoals that must’ve cost her an arm and a leg, or at least a month’s worth of meds.

I’ve given up with my fruit pile by this point, twiddling my pencil between my fingers as I try to unsubtly steal glances at her work, caught somewhere on the verge between amazement and definite jealousy.

Her piece doesn’t just draw my attention – every biddy on her way to brew a cup of tea and collect a biscuit pauses behind her shoulder and coos in awe, but granny seems ever nonplussed, accepting their praise with a modest shrug of her lumpy shoulders, delving into conversation with her spectators about bingo (or whatever old people do in their spare time) as she continues to spew out a masterpiece.

I’m dragged out of my scrutiny of old people social logistics when Rico taps her fingertip on the top corner of my canvas, spectacles resting on the sharp point of her nose.

“Not a fan of fruit?” she quips, and I almost feel _guilty_ for not being inspired by those pears under her glassy stare. I shrink a little into my seat.

“Not … not really,” I admit submissively, glancing back at my less-than-enchanting work. “Pears are … _hard_.”

I think Rico snorts – or at least, that’s what I _think_ the low gruff that escapes her throat is.  She gestures at the ring-bind of my sketchbooks peaking from the top of my rucksack at my feet with a tilt of her chin, fingers still drumming.

“You don’t have to draw the fruit if you don’t want to,” she says shortly. “You’re not at school.”

She taps my canvas again with a click of her nails, and then meanders away, swooping over to talk to granny on my other side, joining in the fuss over the shape of her banana.

I squint at my canvas, and I squint at my sketchbooks, and I _definitely_ squint at granny – before I bite the bullet, feel a spike of bizarre inspiration, and delve into my rucksack to grab the pad I’m pretty sure still has a few clean pages at the back.

Granny can keep her pears.

I flick through the small forest of Marco sketches – it’s been a while since I’ve last looked at these, and seeing the memories of his smile, and the way it lights up his face, fills me with a strange weight, like a breath of stagnant air. It fills my lungs, and replenishes them with oxygen, but it doesn’t taste good. It aches.

It makes something twist in my gut, and it’s all I can do to push it back, to tell it: _not now. Wait. Please._

I lick my index finger and thumb to swift through the pages faster, scanning over the arrays of freckles I know like the back of my own hand – until grey pencil memoirs give way to a clean slate.

Granny is first to be converted into graphite – and I mean, I’ve never claimed to be an expert in drawing old people – but drawing people is always going to be my first port of call over _fruit_. I twist in my stool to face her, if only her flabby profile as she leans in close to inspect her hatching on an apple, Rico watching appreciatively from over her shoulder.

The pencil lines sweep out of my fingers with far more ease this time, recognising the crumpled-paper crease of a brow or the slope of a beaked nose like they’re second nature. This is what I know how to do. This is what I _like_ to do.

It’s easy enough to displace myself with the feeling of being able to freely scribble the faces of those around me – especially when I’m not probed into a corner where I have to conceal my drawings out of fear of repercussions at all times. I can block out the hum of conversation around me, the squeal of a boiling kettle, of pencils scratching on canvas.

It’s amazing what a half hour with a sketchpad does to my mood – like I know how a few lines on the paper on my lap will save me years of lines on my face in the future. It detaches me from the detachment, if that makes any sense. I see everything clearer, and clearer, and clearer still: where the only thing to worry about is the way the pencil slides across the paper like a boy sledding in the snow.

I almost have a heart attack when the screech of a neighbouring stool against the linoleum floor electrocutes me out of my trance. My eyes whip up and greet the crow’s feet at the corners of granny’s apexes, crinkled in an amused smile, as she draws her seat closer to mine.

“Did you get bored of the still life?” she asks cheerfully, nodding at the sketchpad on my lap which I hastily try to cover with my hands. She laughs a gravelly, yet warm sort of laugh. “I suppose it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.”

“You’re pretty good at it,” I find myself squeaking – the tone of my voice somewhere akin to what would happen if someone _stood on my testicles_. Regrettable. Granny chuckles, and throws a glance back over her crochet-clad shoulder at her pencil piece – now finished.

“Fifty years practice,” she says, words tinged with some degree of solemnity, before breaking into a gummy smile as she gestures to my lap. “I still haven’t mastered portrait, though. But you seem like you’ve certainly got the hang of it. May I see?”

I pass her my sketchpad with wide eyes and an internal voice firmly telling me to seize back my page of faces from her hands _right now_ – but watching her eyes light up causes my outstretched hand to fall short and flop back into my lap. My spine ripples and my gut coils, but this old lady shares the same look of elation that mom wore – that Marco wore – when I first showed them my stuff, and that fills me with a nervous sort of _hope_.

She hums appreciatively, threading her podgy fingers between the pages and leafing through the arrays of loose pencil lines. The faint smell of mothy-lilac tickles my nostrils as she shifts, holding up the page she’s turned to in the artificial, yellowing light of the room – it’s the sort of smell that reminds me of _mamie_ , and the musky, floral scent that clings to every carpet in her little French cottage out in the sticks. I guess where there are grandmothers, there’s always lilac.

The sweet smell calms my nerves, like a great, big squishy grandma hug. I swallow back the tightness strung in my throat, and dare my eyes to pass back over the old lady’s face as she appraises my work, caught in the gentle dappling of freckles on olive skin upon paper reminiscent of a sanguine-coloured memory.

“These are lovely,” she says softly. “You’ve got a lot of feeling in your penmanship. Much more dynamic than _conference pears_.”

“T-thanks,” I stutter bashfully, stroking the nape of my neck as she beckons over the old woman sitting to her other side, who’s followed by two more grey-haired cronies. Granny beams as she shows them one of my Marcos, and the fawning noises they make as they press their tiny reading spectacles further up their noses send my blood pressure sky rocketing.

“Oh, how _charming_!”

“I wish my grandson was this interested in drawing!”

“Well now, who is this _handsome_ subject?”

“Rico, have you seen these?”

I feel the anticipatory tremble jitter through my system as Rico looks up as her name is called, from the other side of the room where she’s viewing the easel of the possible-drug lord. She unhooks her glasses from where they hang over the collar of her blouse, and props them upon the bridge of her nose; then strides over, weaving between the barricade of easels and sorry-looking fruit, having my sketchpad thrust into her hands like a baby being passed around at a christening by the gaggle of grannies. She stops, and appears to frown.

I don’t realise how I hold my breath waiting for a reaction that I never really sought out to ask for, but the quirk of Rico’s eyebrows is apparently all that needs saying. She turns, and calls over her shoulder in a steady, unremarkable tone.

“Hey, Nanaba, you should look at this.”

Possible-drug lord – _Nanaba_ , apparently – pokes their head around the side of their easel, perfect eyebrows perfectly curved to match the round curiosity of their mouth at the sound of their name. Rico gestures a come-hither motion with her hand, and taps the spiral bind of my sketchbook with her neatly-buffed nails.

Nanaba stretches their long legs out from where they’re hooked over the bar of the stool – flat, square heels clicking on the linoleum floor as they raise themselves effortlessly to their feet. They sweep intremulously across the space between their set up and the small crowd which has amassed around me, blue eyes brimming with a simplistic sort of elegance that is strangely fascinating to watch, and completely impossible to be pulled away from.

They pause next to Rico, and whilst the other ladies continue to jabber, a muted quiet descends over my thoughts, and I’m caught up in following the way this mysterious person’s eyes flicker down to the sketchbook presented to them in Rico’s hands, a doodle of Marco face-up.

“This is right up your street, isn’t it?” Rico asks, handing Nanaba my collection of snapshots when they squeeze closer to get a better look. “Weren’t you were moaning about Mike turning down that Trost Met student the other week?”

Nanaba makes a noise in assent, but doesn’t say anything specific, some electric spark now present in their calm demeanour as they hold the page at an arm’s length away from their face. Marco’s image stares back just as firmly.

“These are cleaner,” Nanaba says – a voice low and relatively unassuming, “The style is great.” They turn their attention to me. “Your portraiture is really something.”

The brightest blaze of elation is always kindled by something you don’t quite expect – and this leaves me gaping like a drowning fish.

“See, this is why I come to these things, Rico,” they continue, gesturing to their chest, and then into the air grandly. “Mike forgets what this job is supposed to be about.”

I’m pulled back into the loop abruptly when Rico addresses me.

“You’re not working for anyone, are you Jean? You’re still at college, right?”

“Y-yeah,” I nod quickly, glancing between the two figures bearing over me. “I, uh … I’m just about to go into sophomore year … doing … art …”

 _Oh yeah … despite everything, that’s still a thing. Feels kinda alien on my tongue though_.

“Surprised you haven’t been picked up yet,” Nanaba admits casually, exchanging a look with Rico as they hand me back my sketchpad – I struggle to hold back both the shake in my hand, and the gawp that threatens to prize open my God-damn jaw. I accept it gratefully and hug it to my chest, because I’m definitely not fucking believing what my ears are hearing right now. My flush is _furious_. “Are you at Trost U?”

I nod again, not trusting the waver threatening my voice. Nanaba muses aloud.

“Maybe you know Ymir then,” they say, tapping their chin with their pointer finger. “She’s with us.” They dip a hand into the tailored pocket of their flashy pant suit, and withdraw a sleek, black rectangle of card, which is offered to me. I take it between my fingers like I’m being offered some holy relic – _not that I know what I’m being given_ – until I flip it over to read the staunch white and red writing on the other side.

GARRISON ART HOUSE

Mike Zacharius, Curator

An address proceeds underneath the title in fine, white print, and a telephone number with the dial code somewhere in midtown after that.  It’s all very flashy and minimalistic, and I flip the business card over in my hands multiple times trying to understand _what the everlasting fuck is going on here_?

First they complement my art, and now … _and now_?

“I scout for a gallery. Those are our details,” Nanaba says, noting my bewilderment, pointing to the words slipped between my fingers. “You should come by with some more of your stuff sometime – I’d love to see more.” I feel an involuntarily blush blazing away like a furnace in my cheeks, as well as the overwhelming desire to crawl under the nearest table and curl up into a ball for the foreseeable future. “I really like the ones you’ve done of the man with freckles – do you have any others?”

“L-loads,” I choke out, both my knees twitching – I try to tune it all out. My poor attempt to cool myself and appear nonchalant falls a little flat. “I … I have a lot … of h-him.”

“Great.” Nanaba flashes a smile – the first, but it’s genuine. They seem _genuinely_ pleased. (I feel like I might faint, but that’s another story entirely.) I’m extended a hand, and respond with the limpest wrist known to man, shaking Nanaba’s firm fingers twice, pathetically. “I look forward to it. Make sure you ask for Nanaba – and you are—?”

There’s a strange and unnameable feeling that rises inside of me, the bubbling of an energy I just don’t kn— no, wait, I know this. This is pride.

 _Do you remember what it’s like to feel pride_?

“J-Jean,” I stutter, and then again with more determination, “My name’s Jean.”

 

* * *

 

I don’t really breathe until I’m back in the car, a good twenty minutes later. Nanaba had left shortly after handing me the business card, whipping on their sun glasses, and already dialling a telephone call before half-way out the door; after that, I’d been swamped by the grannies again, all of them crooning over the sketchbooks still in my rucksack – drawings of fruit aptly ignored for the rest of the session. For once, I hadn’t really minded the overbearing attention – I’d been riding the buzz as a crest of a rolling wave that filled the emptier parts of me to the brim.  

I’m not entirely sure how I escaped – probably thanks to Rico, no doubt, for reminding everyone very sternly that they’d only booked the room for two hours – but that had only led to another endless bout of being firmly encouraged to come to next week’s session by approximately eight different grey-haired ladies, and promised homemade cookies by a further two.

I’d managed to worm my way out of the throng to pack up my stuff eventually, alongside gummy, lilac-smelling granny as she rolled up her canvas into a cardboard tube for safe keeping.

“Do you think you will be coming back next week?” she’d asked, as I tugged on the straining zips of my backpack. I tried to shrug my shoulders as indifferently as possible.

“It was fun,” I said, “So yeah, I guess – i-if I have the time, ‘course.”

The granny smiled warmly, reminding me once again of _mamie_ , and leaving me in genuine fear of her crossing the distance between us and brutally _pinching my cheeks_ – she didn’t thankfully.

As I’d turned to leave, she’d called out to me, with one more question that had stopped me from taking a step, my foot hovering just above the ground.

“I meant to ask: who is the boy in your drawings?”

In the safety of my car, I sink down into the leather seat with a deep, quivering breath. My legs and arms feels like lead – laden with exhaustion, but trembling with an untapped energy that plants a thrill in both my head and in my gut.

I lever my cell phone from the pocket of my jeans, and check for messages: there are none, but it’s no surprise. I open up my contacts, and scroll down, my thumb coming to swipe across the name and freckled face I know all too well.

I think about my answer to the question: but not in words, no. There aren’t words for _that_. Not yet – not now. There can’t be now, but maybe … maybe one day.

 _Maybe one day I can tell you who he is to me_.

My reply had been a smile and a blush, so dumb-looking and so God-damn _corny_ , but Jesus Christ, the way that granny’s eyes had fucking twinkled made me fear that she might be some distant relation to Connie or Sash – or probably both of them.

Marco is a lot of things – he can’t be pinned down by one word.

His _self_ is moulded from the crisp shape of kindness, and in his words pours my addiction to the breath that fills his lungs, the same air breathed by the migrating Monarch butterflies that swarm around our house in the later summer months on their way to the coast. He burns because of his love and care for thousands, and when he laughs it’s like a tender kiss stolen on a cold park bench, and he is _not_ broken – he is _strong_.

He is strong, and full of the world.

He can’t be pinned down by cancer, or condolences, or even swimming pools. He _shouldn’t_ be pinned down by my pathetic need to find an _excuse_ to be able to call him.

These last few days have fucking _dragged_. And I miss his voice.

I press the green dial button on my phone, and hold it to my ear as I count the rings on the other end of the line.

One, two, three – he picks up on four.

“Sorry it took so long to call,” I blurt down the line almost as soon as the phone clicks, wasting no time on petty hellos. (That’s what caller ID is for.) “I’m an ass.”

There’s a fragile intake of breath; released in a shaky sounding sigh. (Or maybe it’s just a hiccup on the line?) I imagine his strong hands on the receiver tightening. There’s baited silence, and then:

“I’m just glad you did,” he tells me.

I shrink down in the front seat of my car, hooking my ankles over the dashboard, and set the radio to the lowest volume, the bass of some summer anthem occupying the still air just enough, setting a rhythm for my uneasy heart to beat to.

We talk. And it comes easily, melting away the suggestion of possibility that had me scared. I don’t have to focus on concealing the things my face does when I hear his quiet voice in my ear: no hiding dorky smiles or flustered blushes. It’s easier to bypass the walls that have become more opaquely visible lately.

What does Marco need? Marco needs _this_.  

Marco needs me talking about how all the old ladies at my art class smelled of mothballs, and how I genuinely thought Nanaba was potentially selling people crack in a back room of the civic centre for a good portion of the day. Marco needs me to make him chuckle despite himself over my stupid imagination.

He laps up the story of my adventure today – gushing with praise when I tell him that there were actual, living people (beyond him) who enjoyed my art, and scoffing when I insist that they only liked it because _he_ is the subject matter.

I ask him how he’s been over the last few days of silence – I don’t ask why he’s not been in contact, because I don’t need to – he answers my internal question with the way he dances around the subject, telling me they’ve all been _fine_. Not what I’m asking.

It takes me saying his name just once with a breathy severity to make him sigh heavily down the line.

“You’re better than me at this, Jean,” he says, and I frown. There’s something not quite right with the way he rolls over the vowels in my name – I should know, seeing as that shit makes me weak at the fucking _knees_. It’s colder. Remoter. “You’re good at being honest. You’re … you’re good at accepting what you have to deal with.”

“I’m not,” I scoff, finding my fingers itching for something to play with, where a cigarette would usually have hung, “Well, maybe I can _accept it_ , but like … doesn’t mean I actually do _the dealing with it_.”

I think about mom – prime example of my aversion to any form of responsibility – and know for a fact that Marco wouldn’t have let this stupid feud go on for longer than barely ten minutes (yet here it is, having been four days now). What would it take for him to see himself through my eyes, I wonder? He always seems to know what the right thing is to do when it comes to _my_ problems.

“You have a lot more common sense than me,” I add, quietly. Marco huffs.

“I think I could argue your case,” he murmurs, then: a pause.

“Marco?”

“I’m sorry, Jean,” he sighs, and I imagine his jaw quivering, and him staring relentlessly up at the ceiling as some damned heat pricks at his eyes. “I’m sorry. I just … I just don’t know how to … how to face this.”

“You don’t have to apologise to me, idiot,” I quip, switching my cell phone onto my other shoulder, and wriggling my ankles as pins-and-needles begins to set in.  I breathe in deeply: in and out. Tether myself. “How’s your dad?”

And try to move us forward.

I can feel his reluctance, even if it’s stretched thinly across invisible telephone wires and carries the twang of distance and white noise through the receiver. I know fear like a blind man knows braille: touch it, and it responds, fluently. Fear and I are long acquainted friends, and I can see, in Marco, how he _fears_ what might happen if he fully accepts … _everything_.

It becomes _real_ when he accepts it.

(But maybe if I accept it first, he’ll see. He’ll see.)

(He’ll be better.)

I forget how long we talk for – cars come and go in the pot-holed car park, people pass by on the sidewalk, that old ice cream van whistles past at one point with a tune on its lips – and I sink ever lower into my seat, willing that if I press my phone closer to my ear, it’ll lessen the distance.

His sighs give way when I press him again with the sound of his name – and I pray it holds even a fraction of the significance the way he says my name means to me.

We talk about his dad – and once it starts, it’s difficult to stop, and Marco’s got ten years of weight on his chest to let go of. The words fall out of his lips like a tireless tide after a heavy storm; the things he pulls out from the darkest dredges of his mind, they scald. But I have to remain incombustible. For him.

He tells me about how his dad has stopped eating dinner with them – how he can’t stomach a few mouthfuls of food before needing to be wheeled to the bathroom to puke it all back up into the toilet basin, strings of gruel-like bile sticking to his lips that makes Marco quease. He tells me about how his dad’s hair has only come back in clumps after the chemo – no longer dark and unruly, but slithers of wispy, coarse grey that only barely tickle his temples. He tells me about how he can barely hold a conversation with the man anymore, because his eyes glass over and it’s like talking to a corpse, only worse – because this one still breathes, despite wanting not to.

That’s the worst part, Marco says, and his voice in my ears shakes, trembling like a vibrato all the way into my chest.

He knows his anger is shameful – he shouldn’t be this frustrated by a man who can’t help the fact he’s dying from the inside out, being killed by his own cells. Marco says he tells himself this on a daily basis – on an hourly basis if need be – but it hurts too much to see his father as a husk of the man he once knew, far too accepting of a black-chained fate that he brought on himself with a life lived with a cigarette pressed to his lips.

I tell Marco that I understand, that he’s allowed to be angry – it’s because he’s hurting. Maybe _I_ don’t understand, not entirely, but that doesn’t matter, does it? I can feel Marco shaking his head at the other end of the line anyway.

“I don’t have the _right_ ,” he says. I can see how the thought makes him sick.

 _You’re only human_ , I think.

We delve deeper: he mentions Mina, and how she still _tries_ , after all this time. She’s not known anything but a slowly dying father, and yet she’ll still cannonball into the living room and thrust a drawing into his face with enthusiastic zeal leaking out of her toothy grin. She’ll still try to persuade their mom that they can definitely make the father-daughter picnic that her elementary school is throwing this year – even when their mom shakes her head tiredly, and pets Mina’s mop of wild hair with hollow conviction. She’ll still try to sit on their father’s lap when he’s dozing in his arm chair – and Marco chokes when he tells me how much it hurts to have to be the one to pick her up beneath her arms and pull her away whilst she asks: “why?”.

When it becomes too much, and I feel the threat of tears begin to spill in the way his tenor cracks, I pull us down a different path. I ask after his mom, about the mundane things: how’s she dealing with work, does she need any help with the housework, _can I do anything_?

Marco chuckles resolutely, no humour and dripped with a solemn sadness, but he thanks me none the less. He doesn’t want to rely on other people – I’m not blind, I can see that.  But I don’t think I’m about to give him the choice here.

“I can babysit, you know. Any time. Just call me. What’s the worst that could happen?” I pause, and then add, seriously, “Don’t answer that.”

Marco scoffs weakly, but it lifts some of the pressure bearing down on my shoulders.

“I feel like leaving you and Mina alone in a house together wouldn’t end well,” he says, and I picture him with the fragment of a smile gracing his noble features, however remote he might sound. “We’d have to put all the emergency services in the tri-state area on red alert.”

“Is that you sassing me, I hear, Bodt?”

He goes silent for a moment, as if considering the words that might be trying to flow freely from his mouth. And then, softly, less disconnected than before:

“Why Jean, I would never _sass_ you.”

I laugh, and him with me gently, and the sound fills me with the warmth one feels standing outdoors on a late summer evening, grass cool beneath toes, and light gold and soft upon your bare skin. It’s not all there, but it’s something, it’s some life in his heart; my addiction sprouts its coloured wings again, and it’s all I can do not to straight out ask him: _laugh for me again_.

We delve into the other stuff – the things that make me truly realise the extent of an escape I must be alongside a shoulder for him to lean on. It’s not been long, but it feels like an eternity since we last talked about the inconsequential: some video Ymir posted on her Facebook timeline last night, the fact that neither of us have remembered to buy Reiner a present for his birthday, the cliff-hanger at the end of the most recent episode of _Person of Interest_.

But I don’t forget – forgetting means pretending it doesn’t exist, forgetting means fooling yourself into thinking it doesn’t matter, forgetting means not treating it all with the severity it deserves.

It’s like there’s a silent promise from me to him that we stop letting our secrets decompose inside the bottles we keep them in, and we _don’t_ forget them – we just make do.

We make do.

The counter is still ticking, the sand still falling, but time’s not run out yet. Not for anything.

_Please remember that, Marco._

“Are you still in the parking lot?” Marco asks me, and I’ve slumped so low in my seat that I’ll probably have to resign myself to a life of living in the foot-well of my car … or at least a life of spinal complications. I try to wriggle myself upright, and my back cracks painfully as it realigns itself in a straight line.

“Urmph— yeah. Yeah, still here,” I reply, cricking my neck as well. The shadows outside are growing longer, the colour of the sky a more hazy blue, awaiting the painter’s tint of the oranges and yellows of a sunset. “We’ve been talkin’ a really long time.”

“Hmm, yeah. We have.” A breath of punctuated silence. “… Tomorrow, then?”

“Yeah, you got it.” Words of goodbye hold heavy on my tongue, stuck to an invisible flypaper within my throat, because they don’t quite settle right. There’s a space, a hole, first and foremost, that I notice only now – an empty moment of respite between sentences that waits to be filled with words I hadn’t considered until now.

I think I know what words are meant to fill that gap. But not quite yet.

 _Not quite yet_.

Instead: “I’ll see you, Marco.”

 

* * *

 

I wish it could stay that simple. This is not a story about cancer – this is a story about _living_ , despite cancer.

But it says something when the cancer itself is the easiest thing to come to terms with.

 

* * *

 

I fall asleep that night feeling strangely calm, and wake, too with the sense that I’ve finally re-established my hold on this ethereal detachment I’ve been existing in for days. The city rumbles, and the sun blazes through the slits in my curtains – but today, I notice it. I’m grabbing today by the fucking _horns_.

There’s no restless sense of anticipation in my system as I wait for Marco to arrive – and I’m not sure if I miss the way my knees would jitter, or my fingers would tap on the kitchen counter top – and I wonder what that says about me. _Us_.

I wonder if it all correlates. The quiet acceptance of the fact that I am, and have been for a while, _in_ —

Marco arrives at midday on the dot, pool nets tucked under arms, gaudy, blue shirt stretched across broad shoulders. Normal.

No … no, not _normal_. There was never any normal – was there? An illusion of normalcy, perhaps, an ideal. But it’s not reality.

Reality is when I slip out the back door to greet him with a hug, and his eyes, before blank and distant, touch upon the memory of a happiness that makes my head spin. Just for a moment. But it’s something. He holds my shirt tight and presses his nose into the crook of my neck, whispers of a hello pressed in a breath against my skin. It tingles. I mentally tell it to stop. (It doesn’t.)

Words seem almost irrelevant, unnecessary as he pulls away and his eyes flick to the ground, a bashful heave of his shoulders and a rising pinkness in his cheeks. I buff him on the arm.

“You look better,” I say.

“I missed you,” he replies, without missing a beat.

I help him with the pool chores, and standing on the mosaic edge, staring down into the gently lapping water is almost insignificant now – insignificant compared to the way that when I pause to wipe my brow of fine sheens of sweat, I catch him staring off into the middle distant, far, _far away_. The first few times I jostle him out of it with a joke, and then a call of his name – and he responds with a sheepish sort of apologetic smile – but soon it’s too much to be calling out to him every few minutes to drag him back into my orbit.

 _Far, far away_.

So I watch him for a while; I study the way his brow creases, and how he seems to mumble words unaware across his lips, and how he stops and stares at the water every so often, before jolting back into the present with a kick like a sleep twitch. There’s a glassiness that stretches itself thin across his expression, and without the melody of his humming that might usually accompany our pool cleaning sessions, I drift into a daydream.

The word _normal_ remains hanging in my headspace like a still pendulum with a brassy weight.

I imagine the black and white, the life that might have been without the mess, without the fear, without the grief – without the fathers who cheat and the mothers who lie and the sisters that cry and the sons that walk with the weight of the world on their shoulders until they _break_.

I imagine what might have happened if I hadn’t been born with blood that turns to ice in the presence of water – and I’d never fallen out with Eren, and never lost Connie and Sasha and the others, and Marco pushing me in the pool had turned into a joke that had cumulated in an out-of-breath kiss with hair plastered to wet foreheads and the sounds of giddy laughter.

I imagine the coming home at night to parents happily eating dinner together, and introducing them to someone more than _just the pool boy_. I imagine a relationship with Marco.

I imagine being able to one day overcome my phobia, and playing in the pool with him and Mina in the summer months, or maybe going on holiday to the ocean and enjoying the feeling of sand between my toes and hands twined with fingers, or the two of us getting a dog and taking it for walks down by the river—

In some other place, far, far from here, we have longer hair, and more wrinkles around our souls, and have already spent mornings not leaving the bed, kissing foreheads good morning and goodnight—

 _I can’t think like this_.

It’s not fair on our situations to start with – it’s cheapening and it’s obsoleting and above all, it cowers with the air of pointlessness. Don’t think about what can’t be.

A _far away_ dream.

 _It’s okay though_ , the voice inside my head whispers, despite itself. _If your reality is not flawed to begin with, nothing can ever get better._

It’s the only way to learn that you don’t need to be fixed. Neither of us.

(I think it was Marco who taught me that.)

Still though. You listen to those sweet sirens of promise and your ship is drawn in all the wrong directions. Dogs, and holidays in the sun, and kisses stolen on front porches, and clandestine touches beneath sheets.

I can’t _afford_ to think like this.

I scowl, and thrust the pool net deep into the water, it hitting the floor with a muffled _thunk_. Marco glances up, dark eyes widened by the sudden noise.

“Jean?”

I haul the net out of the pool, empty the few, fine pieces of debris caught in the mesh, and then drop it onto the concrete slabs with a clatter. I raise my shoulders.

“Hey, you wanna try the swimming thing again?”

 

* * *

 

My skin prickles despite the heat of the day, coming up in goose bumps up and down my bare arms. Marco’s already half-submerged in the pool by the time I’ve mustered up enough of the courage I need to look at myself in the mirror in swim trunks, let alone venture out into the back yard again – he floats listlessly in the sky-comprehending water, movements slow and sluggish. I wrap my arms around my chest, and allow myself the moment to watch him: him, the part of the sun in human form, shielded by a great, grey looming cloud. His shoulders droop as he allows his fingers to sift lethargically through the waters, head bowed in a silent prayer whilst his mind walks on a different plane – or walks not at all, I don’t know how it is.

I’m left only wondering whether it’s this _life_ that is his cage, or whether it’s his own flesh.

I step off the patio, feeling the stipple of fresh-cut grass beneath my naked feet, and head towards the top of the pool steps. The concrete is sun-baked, but when I dip my toes into the furl of water over the top step, I shudder.

“Cold,” I find myself muttering aloud, which distracts Marco’s attention. He looks back at me over his shoulder, and for a moment, his eyes lose their glassy filter and he is very still. I take a step down into the water, the chill licking up over my ankles. “You alright?”

Marco’s dark eyebrows pinch together, and I’m aware of the gulp in his throat as he swallows heavily. He turns fully to face me, seems to draw upon a fleeting moment of poised composure, and then wades back through the clear water towards the foot of the steps.

“Y-yeah,” he says quietly, eyes flitting briefly down to the water surface again, before back up to me. He swallows again. Makes me feel self-conscious. Which is … _weird_ , all things considered. “Are you … are you good?”

I look down at my feet, and wriggle my toes beneath the water. I steel myself. Yep. Alright. I take the next step with an ease that I’m surprised by.

“Good,” I confer, stepping down one further, and then another. My gut twists, the uncomfortable flush of hot sweat sweeping over the back of my neck, but I suffocate it. I should be able to do this by now. Marco’s hand dips out of the water, fingers suspended just above the surface when he recognises the curdle in my expression.

 _No, it’s okay. I’ve got this_.

_Don’t you worry about me._

I step down off the last step, feet coming to rest on the gentle downward slope of the pool floor. Have I made it this far before? I can’t even remember to tell you, if I’m honest – abruptly caught up in the way Marco takes half a step through the water towards me, his palm coming up to cup my elbow. The space around me shrinks. Becomes warmer.

I search his expression almost frantically, but whilst he is close in body, close in the way my skin boils where he touches me, he is still displaced in some distant world inside his head. Molasses-brown eyes, lit with a tempered fire yet concealed with the smoke produced therein; there’s something intense about the way he’s looking down at me now. More intense than I’m used to – like the weight of the air amidst a humid storm of summer rain that reflects only the _depths_ of the things he must feel.

Fear. Grief.

There’s a lot of that here.

The world around us seems to stop, coming to a halt on its spinning axis; the lazy taste of summer that licks the brilliant blue of the sky is inconsequential, the song of swallows darting beneath the rafters of the house muffled by a blanket of cotton wool that has been padded into my ears. The water that wraps around my legs and waist, like a thousand, roaming arms, feels thick, like tar.

 _Breathe, Jean_.

I can’t tear my eyes away from his. His fingers squeeze my elbow.

He’s looking, but not really looking. I can’t find footholds in the expression he wears.

My heart thrums in my rib cage like a floundering fish, like a rabbit caught in a snare, and I’m becoming more acutely aware of water lapping against my navel – more water than there’s been in a real long time. My breaths don’t sink fully into submission inside my lungs. My stomach pinches with the throes of a fast approaching anxiety.

It feels different, this time. It doesn’t hurt where it usually hurts. It’s not that sort of anxiety.

 _God, I need to breathe_.

I lever my elbow out of the grip of his palm, and I shake my head as I step away from his gravity – the side of the pool is a welcome feeling beneath my hands as I curl my fingers over the rough edge of concrete, and hold onto something more tangible. I don’t pull myself out of the water – no – but I stand with my arms rigid against the side, and my shoulders hunched, and I take a deep breath of warm air.

The water shifts, gentle waves sloshing against my back, as Marco moves somewhere behind me now.

“Are you okay?” His voice is low. Rasping. Strange.

 _Just peachy_.

His hand settles on my shoulder, he curls his fingers, and I can feel the _heat_ radiating out from his touch. My skin blazes. It feels like I’m going to have a God-damn _heart attack_.

He’s so _close_.

I glance back at him over my shoulder, and it’s like his eyes pin my body against the pool side like a rare butterfly gets pinned in an exhibit box. It feels like I can’t move.

It feels like I don’t _want_ to move.

I twist, peeling my reluctant fingers away from solid concrete, and let my back slide up against the blue-mosaic wall, the small, square tiles grating against the indentations of my spine. Marco’s hand on my shoulder moves with me.

What is this? What _is_ this?

The intensity in his eyes is burning. Redness stains my cheeks, scalds the tips of my ears. He shifts his weight, and doing so, shuffles closer a fraction more; his toes brush mine beneath the water.

I can hear my pulse in my ears.

“Are _you_ okay?” The voice that slips between my lips doesn’t sound like my own – it’s shy and nervous, and hangs in the air unanswered, drawing only a tighter furrowing of Marco’s eyebrows and a tautness in the line of his mouth.

I feel about as smooth as sandpaper. Fuck.

The pool water licks at his freckled hip bones, swirling over tanned skin washed in a summer afternoon light, and God – please save me. I can think of nothing else but raising my hands to run across his chest, painting trickles of water over the soft undulation of muscle and calloused breath inside his lungs, of gliding my fingers over the crevices of collarbones and curling them around his neck to pull him closer, of knees parting thighs and rigid gasps that become pants—

Stop. _Stop_. Jean, you gotta _stop_.

Marco murmurs a low noise, and his hand on my shoulder drifts, an intimate touch that sweeps down over my bicep, short nails against pallid skin. My blood bursts with the laminar contrails of his fingers. His breath escapes heavily – mine too.

The sounds that catch in his throat _do things_ to me, okay. There’s a tension that settles deep in my abdomen, a viscous sort of heat. (A hard-on in the pool … now that would be a new one.)

I can’t take the way he’s looking at me. Because it’s telling me the things I want to hear, and I can’t—

The crescendo inside my head rises.

 _Marco, stop. Or I’m gonna have to kiss you_.

His stare drops, and I breathe heavily with the loss of that great, flecked brown in a swirling distance. He becomes meek. Shrinks. He seems to hang his head, focus drawn to the silver-metal balls that pierce the white skin at the base of my neck.

Smaller. For a moment.

“Hey—”

He flicks his thumb over the stud in my left clavicle. It’s like a _firework_ erupts inside my veins, and one thousand different shades of red light up my face. My knees go fucking _weak_.

It’s all I can do to bite back the sound that threatens my sanity inside my throat – the noise that claws its way up and up and up—

Marco twiddles the piercing between his thumb and forefinger, and then meets my eyes again, his expression ripped open. The severity is gone, replaced by something sunless and sincere, but also so sad, so _desperate_ that it—

No. _No_.

My heart screams _yes_ , dear fucking God, _yes_. There are inches between our faces – _inches_ , only. I could. I could kiss him. I could show him in one gesture how much I—

I don’t want this to happen like this. Not when he still looks like he’s lost so far away. Not when he’s so clearly after something to cure the aching _loneliness_ buried deep inside the bundle of his chest. Not when I could do something that might only make him hurt more.

Liking him like this is not the right thing to do. It can’t be.

I want him to like me like I … like him.

The desperation in his eyes consolidates me in the knowledge that this isn’t the right time.  Not yet. Not yet. (And boy, does that fucking _sting_.)

Marco’s hand drops from my collar, his fingers trailing the rise of my chest for the briefest of moments; he looks down into the water, and I’m confused. He inflates, his chest fills with words, and anxiety _stabs_ me in my gut.

“Jean … I … I really—”

_Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say if our situations were different. Please. Don’t._

_I don’t know how I’m going to be able to control the need to kiss you if you tell me the things I want to hear._

I listen to my own breath hitch. Do what’s right.

“M-Marco, I … I need some space.”

I slide away from his orbit, slinking along the pool side, and I watch his face fall – why? I’ve done the right thing. Haven’t I?

Something inside me asks the question I’ve been keeping under lock and key – if only for the sake of my own sanity.

 _What if he likes you back, Jean_? _What if that’s what he needs from you_?

 

* * *

 

Wednesday ends with a strange air hanging stagnant between us, the sense of detachment smothering like it never left. I hold onto the feigned normalcy, but my words fall flat, my jokes and jibes draw barely the whisper of a chuckle. Marco doesn’t come that close to me again.

When it comes to say goodbye, he doesn’t hug me. He moves to do so – and I see the want in his face – but he stops himself short, and just pats me on the arm, with the sort of sad, accepting smile that wrenches hearts.

I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.

I see him off from the curb with a wave of my hand that remains stuck in the air long after his van turns the corner at the end of the street, before a degree of panic descends upon me like a tidal wave.

There’s a lot to deal with here. I’m surprised my brain doesn’t just … short circuit, here and now. I kinda _want_ it to.

What … what was he _doing_ back there? Could he have … could he really – is there a wrong end of the stick I’m getting here?

You don’t just touch someone like that, you don’t just get as close as that if you don’t want to—

Ugh. _Ugh_.

I end up squatting on the sidewalk, back pressed against the prickle of the hedgerow, and I hold my head in my hands.

Damn this. Damn _us_.

I can’t see any of this clearly. I’d wanted to kiss him so badly.

 

* * *

 

I text him later that night, forcing out the words onto the screen however physically painful they might be.

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
hey man u alright? u seemed a little off this afternoon

I set my phone on my bed side table, and roll over onto my back on my mattress, staring at a browning spot on my ceiling. I lay like that for a while – hours probably – as the sun trails across the sky outside my window, plastering the furniture in my room in a golden glow that grows darker and darker, until the rays of orange are eventually replaced by the black smog of night, vacant of the twinkling of stars.

I’m lulled by the sounds of car engines and distant sirens and mom trying to creep up the stairs without making any noise. My heart hasn’t stopped hammering. My phone doesn’t buzz once.

I feel torn. Conflicted, like every thread in my body has been tangled into an uncombable mess. The worst part though? I don’t think I even know why.

Whenever I close my eyes, all I’m seeing is Marco, and the gravity that guides his limbs like a puppet, and the desperation for something to cling onto poured into his flaxen eyes. I see my mom and my dad behind him, their faces blurry, and their arms crossed, and beyond that still, I see the outline of the dying man I’ve never met, but the man who lauds me with the _splinter_ of self-control I can still hold onto – a cigarette between his teeth, and an array of freckles like the ones I’ve _fallen in l_ —

Yeah, there’s that too. The words that are meant to fill the spaces that stretch between pauses in conversation.

I don’t even know when it happened, or when it started. But it’s right here, and it’s right _now_. Like having your throat slit, it’s just that fast – but not that you mind the whole bleeding out all over the pavement, no.

It’s the sort of pain you can’t help but be fucking _addicted to_. And the cynic inside me resents that fact – because I’m supposed to know nothing about all this mushy crap, because I’m not meant to spend every God-damn hour of the day pining, because how can you feel both ten years younger and ten years older all at the same time when you look into the face of just _one person_?

I grind my palms into my eyes, and I growl – though it’s more a whine of pity, if anything.  Jean _trash du jour_ Kirschtein. I should think about changing my name.

I can’t do this – I can’t think like this. It’s not fair on Marco.

He’s got enough on his plate right now. He’d thank me.

 

It’s not _fair_.

I think I’ve fallen in love with him.

 

* * *

 

I sleep uneasily, finding my blankets too itchy, and the air too humid, and the jeans I’d fallen asleep in too lumpy. Insomnia, my old friend, at least I can count on you to be there for me when everything else is playing hooky.

I stir the next morning with a grittiness pooled in my skull akin to the feeling of a messy hangover; eyes bleary and crusty with sleep dust, I scramble blindly for my phone, knocking over my alarm clock as I pull my duvet up to my ears in an attempt to cocoon myself from the cruel light of day.

No new messages.

Disappointment drags my heart down, down into my stomach, and an anxious twitch anchors my arms and legs as I drop my cell phone onto the mattress next to me with a sigh. I drag my hand down my face and, groaning, squeeze my eyes shut.

Please. Please not again. This fucking _greyness_ is going to kill me.

 

* * *

 

I text him again. I text him a lot.

He doesn’t reply, and I tell myself that it’s because he’s busy. Of course he is. He’s got two jobs, he’s got a little sister to look after, he’s got so much going on at home – why would his priority be to reply to my pathetic clinginess?

(It’s the only thing I can tell myself to stop myself from going crazy.)

(I still don’t know what’s going on.)

Thursday and Friday pass in a blur of non-descript paralysis; I barely leave my room, and when I do, it’s like I’m dragging a  ten tonne weight around the house – a weight I never asked for, a weight I have no fucking clue where I picked up. It’s _so much worse_ than before.

Dad doesn’t come home, and mom doesn’t talk to me, and the housekeeper takes one look at me and avoids me – which would make me laugh bitterly on any other occasion – and I just feel … _lost_. Like lying on the floor for approximately nine hundred years and never moving.

 _Someone tell me what to do_.

I know it’s bad when Saturday comes, and it’s the roof of Levi’s van I see skim the top of the hedge from my bedroom window. He cleans the pool in half the time it takes Marco to do it, and the pleasantries he forces himself to exchange with my mom are painful to listen to.

I can only spare a glance at my phone, and the lack of new messages in my inbox, before I feel like I want to stop existing.

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
missed u today

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
has something happened

 **To: Marco-Polo**  
did i do something

I get no reply.

Saturday night sees me hauling ass up onto the roof – and it doesn’t feel right without a cigarette clamped between my teeth. There’s no nicotine rush to displace feelings, no white smog to lose myself to the wispy shapes of. Like everything else, it’s empty.

I play at 2048 on my phone for a while, but when swiping numbered tiles back and forth against the screen gets tedious, I lie back against the grey slate, and try to pick out the glimmers of stars against the orange-tainted black of the night sky. Most of them are aeroplanes, in the end.

I wonder where they’re going to – and where they’ve come from. I imagine the tin can full of people thirty-thousand feet above my head, all with different stories, stories which I’ll never know. I wonder if any of them are doctors. Or artists. Or have husbands, or wives, or parents who cheated. Or have dealt with the death of a loved one.

I wonder how many people are the same as me, out there.

I barely hear my phone buzz with an incoming message – for a delayed second, it’s lost to the sounds of the city, before I _jolt_ back to reality, and scramble to pull it out of my pocket.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
It’s not your fault.

My chest deflates with the breath I’ve been holding for days, but a crippling nausea fills the space that the oxygen leaves.

 _Marco_.

 

* * *

 

August is weary and lethargic. Days tick past all one and the same, divided by very little save the coming and going of the sun beyond my window.

Over the following few days, Marco replies to a grand total of one of my messages: a lone smiley face in a blank text message, a response to me asking him how he is. I debate over the subjective worth of that smiley face, and heaven forbid I lose sleep over an emoticon, but I do.

My loneliness swamps me in waves. At times, it’s fine. And then, it’s not.

I stare at the green dots next to my friend’s names on Facebook like Gatsby at the end of his pier; Marco’s never once highlights, or at least, not when I’m online. I exist limply, drowning myself in the catharsis of music from my record player, but the electric rift of a guitar solo does nothing for me.

I don’t think I say a word – typed or spoken – for days.

…

Not until Connie Springer – _naturally_ – breaks the monotony. (Who else would it be?)

It’s a Tuesday morning – or afternoon technically, because that’s when I finally roll out of bed, duvet draped liked a cape around my shoulders. Six days since I last saw Marco’s face.

(That’s a lot of time for us.)

(I try not to dwell on it.)

Opening up my laptop to do the morning sweep of Facebook, I notice the little red prick of a message notification chilling in my inbox.

 _You, Connie Springer, Sasha Braus, ten others_.

I click on the thread sceptically, opening up the chat window in a full screen, and am hit full in the face by undiluted friends.

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> bagsee not ymir’s van  
>> i am not travelling five hours in that thing  
>> it smells of cat pee  
>> so gross

 **Ymir:**  
>> IT DOES NOT  
>> RETRACT THAT STATEMENT SPRINGER  
>> I WILL HAVE YOUR TESTICLES FOR PAPER WEIGHTS

 **Reiner Braun:**  
>> it kinda does though

 **Sasha Braus:**  
>> do you even have a cat ymir?

I squint at my friends’ petty arguing – it’s too early for this, and definitely too early for getting prematurely lynched by Ymir when I ultimately agree with Connie and Reiner (‘cus the inside of her van really does smell rancid _at the best of times_ ). The conversation has no topic, so I scroll back up through the thread: miles and miles, it turns out, as I backspace through a lot of angry Ymir, and endless streams of banter between Connie and Sasha, before I eventually reach the top.

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> hi guys !!!!!  
>> so sash and me came up with an AWESOME plan to see the summer out in style and get completely and utterly tRASHED  
>> and u guys have been lucky enough to be included

 **Sasha Braus:**  
>> LET’S GO TO THE BEACH!

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> HEY i was explaining the plan !!!!!

Oh yeah. I forgot about this. The beach. The _ocean_. My eyes flick over the clog of messages that followed between Connie and Sasha, which was ultimately interrupted by Ymir asking for some _actual_ logistics. There’s some mention about dates, some obnoxious interruption from Reiner, Annie posting one of those annoying thumbs-up emoticons, a discussion about transport, blah, blah, blah.

I move my mouse to click on the list of people added to the conversation when I tire of reading Ymir’s endless tirade of caps lock. Of course I’m instantly drawn to Marco’s name, third from the top.

Of course.

It’s way too frantic, the way I scour through the rest of the messages to see if _he’s replied at all_ –

He hasn’t.

But he might. He might still.

The message blinks again, and automatically scrolls me back down to the bottom of the thread, where there’s a collection of new replies.

 **Ymir:**  
>> shut ur face braun do u want me to drive ur lazy butt down there or not  
>> and can we PLEASE actually decide where we’re goin  
>> cus as much as i enjoy threatening to kick u guys asses  
>> this conversation is a fucking car crash

 **Eren Jaeger:**  
>> jamaica

 **Ymir:**  
>> piss off eren

 **Eren Jaeger:**  
>> :D

 **Ymir:**  
>> serious suggestions only

 **Eren Jaeger:**  
>> but ive never bn 2 jamaica ):

 **Mikasa Ackermann:**  
>> I think somewhere in the same country at us would at least be preferable, Eren.

 **Ymir:**  
>> shit was that miks just being sarcastic  
>> i may have just shit my pants

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> run for the hills guys !!!!!

 **Eren Jaeger:**  
>> ):

 **Marco Bodt:**  
>> Thanks for the invite, everyone! I’d love to come.  
>> Have you guys ever been to Jinae? We have some lovely beaches down there. :)

I make a noise that’s not unlike a hiccup of startled surprise, and sit up bolt-straight in my desk chair. The blanket draped around my shoulders falls to the floor with me barely noticing.

 _Marco_.

I flex my fingers ready to reply – with what exactly, I’m not sure, but it’ll come to me, _it’ll come to me_ – but the others beat me to the bone.

 **Eren Jaeger:**  
>> wtch jean reply in 0.2 scnds lol

 **Sasha Braus:**  
>> i guess that means we can count on jeanbo to want to come ;)

 **Ymir:**  
>> is the bet still on

 **Marco Bodt:**  
>> What bet?

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> I’M GOING  
>> TO KILL ALL OF YOU

Okay, so not exactly how I wanted to enter this conversation, but—

Well, needs must.

(It’s even worse that they have a point. _Fuck_.)

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> ah theres my boy !!!!!

 **Sasha Braus:**  
>> speak of the devil

 **Ymir:**  
>> BRB LAUGHING MY ASS OFF

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> shut up im gonna sit on ur fucking face ymir

 **Ymir:**  
>> EW NO that seat is reserved for historia only u gross boy

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> !!!!!

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> omg

 **Reiner Braun:**  
>> mother of god  
>> [photo attachment]

 **Historia Reiss:**  
>> Ymir …

 **Annie Leonhardt:**  
>> ….. so about this beach trip

The desire to slam my head into my desk is overwhelming. I stare in bleary disbelief as the conversation continues more tamely – Mikasa crops back up, and asks Marco what Jinae is like. I imagine the look of nostalgia on his face as I read the words he types into the group conversation, describing stretches of sandy beaches, and rolling dunes, and late night beach bonfires.

The others don’t know, but I do – I know the softness in his face when he talks about his home town. That’s a thing he’s shown only to me. Wish I could see it now though.

 **Marco Bodt:**  
>> There’s a good beach I know that’s a little way up the coast from Jinae, at Stohess. It’s really hard to get to as a tourist, but if you know the way, it means that there’s usually no-one there.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> it sounds great marco

I stare incredulously at the words I’ve typed, and the ellipsis that appears at the bottom of the conversation, stretching into an eternity. I wonder if he’s going to reply directly to me – and I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering, as no-one else chooses this moment to butt in – and I hold in a baited breath.

 **Marco Bodt:**  
>> :)

What the hell does _that_ mean? I grip the edge of my desk, and stare intently at the tiny square of Marco’s smiling display picture.

Little words with thinner meanings. It’s like I’m scratching away, but still I can’t get in; and it’s all I can do but still be a God-damn slave to any semblance of a thing that leaves his mouth.

Six days, and two smiley faces.

It doesn’t make anything fucking _clearer_.

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> sounds like a plan !!!!!

 **Historia Reiss:**  
>> Ymir says she’s up for that :D

 **Sasha Braus:**  
>> BAGSEE JEAN’S CAR

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> ALSO BAGSEE JEAN’S CAR !!!!!

 **Eren Jaeger:**  
>> ur gonna have 2 fight w marco over riding the jag  
>> *in the  
>> hehehehehe

My face burns as I furious slam my fingers against the keys of my keyboard.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> eren do us all a favour and shut the fuck up

 **Eren Jaeger:**  
>> so rude ):

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
>> oh my god shut up

Reiner reappears shortly after that, raising the question of alcohol, and suitably distracts the others from making any more jokes at my expense.

Marco doesn’t join in with the rest of the conversation, though whether it’s because he’s watching from the side-lines like me, or whether he’s logged off, I don’t know. I resent the shield of electronic distance.

The others continue on their chatter, and they don’t know. They have no clue what’s going on here – and you know what, nor do I.

 _Nor do I_.

What is going on in his head right now? What … what does he expect me to do? I’ve tried – I’m trying. I’m trying to do the best for both of us.

I have known Marco for one hundred and seven days. That’s it. But that’s all it took.

I remember how my eyes were drawn to that line of four freckles across the bridge of his nose on our first meeting. I remember handing him that lemonade, and wishing him the best in dealing with my mom.

And look at us now.

Talk to the me of three months ago, and I never woulda thought this’d be possible. I never thought I’d have friends like this again – like him.

I watch the replies in the Facebook chat build up between my friends, and it pains my chest to think about what I went through with all of them.

I don’t want to lose someone again. Not when I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.

I’ve never felt this far away from him before.

How do I keep moving forward when I’ve been thrown this far off kilter, huh?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the hiatus is over! I'm glad to be back writing, but the break was worth it - mainly uni and cosplay related, but it also served as a good breather for getting refreshed, ready for this final arc of the story.
> 
> Apologies for this chapter not really containing much punch - it really is a bridging chapter, setting up some plot points for the remainder of the story (but don't worry, we still have around 8 chapters still to go before the end)!
> 
> The theme for this chapter was a sense of detachment. I hope you can share in Jean's intense sense of nihilism, and kinda understand where he's coming from. Maybe you can understand what's up with Marco too. It'll be all explained shortly anyway.
> 
> Please listen to: Sedated, or Work Song, by Hozier, for this chapter. They're delicious.
> 
> And finally, thank you guys for being so patient! And for continuing to support the fic whilst I've been away - we hit 60k just a few days ago, which is mental !!! I love hearing back from you, so look forward to AO3 comments or Tumblr messages you might want to throw my way (please do!). And thank you for all the posts and arts and beautiful stuff I've seen from the last chapter ... I was suitably destroyed more times than I can count.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the chapter. Next time: more Ymir. More Nanaba. And we get to meet Mike. Oh, and Marco's parents too. I've been looking forward to this one for a while.


	17. Go Your Own Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If I could  
> Baby I'd give you my world  
> How can I  
> When you won't take it from me?" 
> 
> Go Your Own Way, Fleetwood Mac (1977)

I remember my first day at university with a distinct clarity that I’d more than rather forget; the sort of memory that you burry deep in the throes of your subconscious, but that has a tendency to scrabble its way to the forefront of your mind when you lie in the dark at night, rewinding over and over again, just to make you _squirm_.

Fall had hung in the air that morning, crisp and golden despite everything that the summer had thrown at me that year. It held the promise that summer nights and sticky heat and lonely cigarettes and _swimming pools_ were behind me, and that things would be different – things would change.

I’d stepped out of the house to the smell of loamy earth and the first scattering of early leaves on the front yard, pads of fresh paper and a small bouquet of sharpened pencils stuffed in the backpack slung over my shoulder – _ready_. New school, new year, new me. It had been something like that, in my mind; a dumb, foundationless optimism.

They couldn’t keep hating me forever, right?

Autumn sunlight had streamed through the windscreen of my Jag as I slid behind the steering wheel, rays soft and mellow and kinda of hazy, and I’d driven the whole way to campus with the sun blinder folded downwards but my window opened a crack, enjoying the cleansing that the change of season seemed to bring to the grimy city streets of Trost.

I remember that first day well – because despite the taste of autumn in the longer shadows and fresher air, I was left with only bitterness in my mouth that I tasted for months after. Some nights even now, I wake with the thought on my tongue, and it takes a moment to squeeze my eyes shut and remind myself: _no_. Don’t think about it. It’s in the past now.

I’d done the standard thing: neglected to print off a campus map, because I didn’t want to be one of “those freshmen”, and spent way longer than necessary wandering between buildings, trying to find the room where my first class of the semester was supposed to be. I’d been shimmying through the masses of students in a particularly crowded hallway when I’d recognised the familiar shine of beautiful, black hair (and then, nearby, tufts of angry brown; the egg-shape of a bald head; someone with a high ponytail). My heart had hammered, a mix of nervousness, but also excitement – but damn, I should’ve listened to the tickle of anticipation creeping in my ear. 

I’d craned my head higher over the shoulders of the shuffling bodies of already disgruntled seniors, and tried to seize a glance as Mikasa hid a delicate chuckle behind a slender hand, and Eren puffed out his chest and grinned, the faint, white line of a scar visible above his right eyebrow beneath the wisps of his shaggy hair.

They were smiling. That had to mean good things.

I’d squeezed through the tightly packed people, leading with one stiff shoulder and one hand raised in greeting. I’d tried to pretend that nothing had happened to all of that summer; that nothing had sucked it all up into one, long blur of endless smoke breaks on the roof of my house. I’d tried to drown the memory of hitting the water, and Eren. I’d forced a smile.

“Hey – Mikasa! Connie, Sasha!”

I can’t really begin to describe how just one look upon their faces through the crowd had sent me reeling into that abyss of falling backwards into a perpetual blackness – but it was like everything had stopped around me. The commotion, the jostling of elbows – and I was distinctly alone. Alone, as Mikasa turned her back on me, as Eren whispered something haughtily into her ear with a scowl, as Sasha had shook her head, as Connie’s eyes had met mine with something I only recognised much later as tinged with _hurt_.

I’d stood still, like a buoy in the middle of that sea of people, bumped relentlessly by the current, but anchored. I’d watched their backs retreat, and disappear into the stretches of a university hallway, and that distance had stretched a million miles in a second.

And it had stayed that way for months – months and months of awful restless nights awake, replaying their faces amidst dreams of plummeting beneath the waves —

But that’s not the point.

The point is not remembering the twist of loneliness in my gut that became second nature to me over the months that followed. The point is not thinking about how every time I heard them laugh – without me – it frazzled the edges of my sanity, until there was nothing left to burn, save the ashes of what once was—

Not the point.

It’s fixed now. It’s better. I don’t need to relive those months of my life any more. I don’t think any of us do, because it reminds us how shit we _were_ and how stupid we _are_.

The _point_ is that I know the way that distance stings. And I see it now, looming, in the gap that has opened up between Marco and I, stretched from my own sinew, and I see it in the vagueness in his messages on the Facebook chat that remains ticking on my laptop screen in front of me still. I don’t think I’ve moved in over an hour.  

It’s not nearly the same vastness that sprung from the hurt in my friends’ eyes that day, but maybe my chest feels more hollow this time around – because at least I know _what I did_ to lead to twelve months of skulking around with my headphones in my ears and a cigarette clamped between my teeth, and the goblin of jealousy on one shoulder and of regret on the other.

I don’t know what _this_ is, though.

I don’t know where this space between Marco and I has grown from – and I know, _I know_ it’s not just about his dad. His dad was still ill before. That hasn’t changed. (Damn, I wish it would, though.) The only thing that’s changed is him telling me about it all.

So maybe it’s pity, I find myself thinking, as I spin around and around and _around_ on my desk chair, hands clamped over my forehead and room blurring into some stream of colours as I kick myself to spin _faster_. He doesn’t want me to _pity_ him.

I don’t _think_ I pity him – we all have our own shit to deal with. We all have shitty lives and shitty hopes and shitty expectations for what could be, but can’t be.

Doesn’t mean I would wish any of it on him though. No. He doesn’t deserve that in the slightest. I don’t _pity_ him, I don’t feel _sorry_ for him – because what meaning does such a small word really hold? But I don’t want him to hurt.

So maybe it’s the fear of putting the burden on _me_ that’s pulled him away overnight. That malignant word and the weight it holds over everyone sucked into its tumult: _cancer_. Marco’s the sort of person who would put distance between us so that I don’t have to feel that pull into the void, so I don’t have to fall asleep with the itch of wonder at the back of my mind: _how much longer_?

I think that anyway, Marco.

There are worse things that it could be, of course. The little whispers of suggestion as my room flies past in a blur that entertain the insecurities that I can never quite bury. The worry that the miles that grow are not a result of Marco’s selflessness or Marco’s altruism.

What if he’s just had enough of _me_? Dealing with me, and all that’s fucking _wrong_ with me – on top of coming to terms with his dad, on top of trying to keep his whole family afloat off his own back.

I don’t think I’d blame him, you know.

Who wants the constant nag of some spoiled little rich kid, whose woes stem from the fact that the swimming pool gives him the jitters, and daddy dearest likes to bend his secretaries over his desk, and that mom – poor, old, long-suffering _mom_ – is happy living a life built on lies.

The lies are petulant and insignificant though.

My father’s not _dying_.

The things that keep _me_ up at night must be little more than a thorn in Marco’s foot.

I brace my hands on the sides of my chair and stop myself spinning abruptly. The world around me topples and I almost keel sideways, save for the way my fingers curl around the stuff plastic and woven cushion. Shapes float in front of my eyes and the thick fog inside my head seems to roll, over and over and over itself, until I squeeze my eyes shut and welcome unmoving darkness to quench the nausea.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Don’t think like that, Jean. Don’t think like that. You’ve come too far.

I’ve gotta keep telling myself that.

Don’t go back to that dark place. If you restring bridges made from your own flesh, you’re only going to unravel yourself.

Whatever I say, whatever I do – it doesn’t stop those little demons perched with their hands cupped around my ears, from whispering. And they do so in such silky smooth voices that I can’t help but listen.

It’s like a broken record – _it all is_ – but this is what it always revolves back to:

Maybe he knows that I like him. Maybe he knows that I … well, y’know. Really like him.

Kinda _love_ him.

I pitch forward, twine my fingers into my hair, and rest my forehead on my knees. Eyes still firmly shut. A groan of frustration. High-tension wire. Drowning slow.

What if he knows, and he’s backing away, because _why would he want that_ on top of everything else? Weedy little kid whose experience amasses to a few hasty blowjobs behind the high school bike sheds and like five years of lusting over his friend’s step sister. Who can’t keep his eyes away long enough when his pool boy decides to strip or how fascinating the droplets of pool water are when they collect in the crevices of his collar bones—

See, this is the God-damn problem. There are more important things that this, and still I can’t stop how these things fucking _bludgeon_ their way inside my head.

What if Marco knows that I love him, but all he needs is a friend. All he _wants_.

I’d put fifty cents in on that, I’m telling you.

I let my fingers fall away from their tight grip on my roots, and start to pick at the little balls of fluff that bobble the fabric of my old sweatpants, cracking open my eyes with much regret to focus on the task of flicking the small globules onto the floor.

It’s like I’ve been plodding along for a really long time, and I’ve been waiting … waiting for something to happen. Good, bad, I don’t really know – just something. Some cliff at the end of the path I can go tumbling off, falling helplessly on and on with no-one really to witness it, but I’ll witness it, I’ll _feel_ it–

Well, it’s something. Something that just isn’t appearing however far I walk, and whilst I keep moving one foot ever slower in front of the other, everything around me is slipping away gradually, until, one day, I’m gonna wake up, and it just won’t _be there_ anymore.

And I’ll question it – but what really will there be to question?

I feel both empty and full and how can this be it? How can this be the great plan for my life: forever wallowing in a mildly shitty existence, feeling sorry for what I have and don’t have, trudging onwards to nowhere in particular?

Everything I feel spins in a maelstrom of emotions somewhere deep inside – not in my head, not my heart, just somewhere else where I don’t think I can reach – frustration, confusion, hurt … and _want_. But in the centre of the cycle, there’s the suspension of emptiness, and that’s me, that’s where I am.

It’s been barely a week since I last saw Marco. And, I’m realising: fuck all of that talk about normalcy, _his_ normalcy, what’s _he’s_ usually like – fuck that. When did I let him become such an integral and intrinsic part of _my_ normalcy?

It’s not good for me, I shouldn’t be relying on his presence alone for this much, I shouldn’t feel like wringing my bones out for want of just one person—

But God, I miss him.

 

* * *

 

Tuesday passes slowly. I drag myself around my room on my chair, annoyed by the way my duvet snags beneath the wheels, annoyed by the way it creaks when I lean back too far, _annoyed_ —

My fuse burns short, and everything seems _too much_. There’s an itch that prickles the hollows of my knees, that crawls up the back of my neck yet can’t be scratched, that bites like the sting of an insect that just gets rawer and redder the more you pick at it. It’s difficult to _do_ anything; I can’t figure out how to hold a pencil, however I position my fingers feeling clumsy and awkward. I can’t listen to music, because no rift sits well with the rhythm of my thoughts. I can’t sit still, because I need to fidget, and I can’t move because it feels like I might throw off sparks with even too severe a breath.

I get cranky because I need a cigarette.

And I hate myself even more for even daring to think that.

The nights are arriving earlier – it’s dark by half seven in the evening, but you can see the pin-pricks of stars in the twilight before the sun sets; so I sit at my open window, glass flung wide, chin resting on the sill, and count them over and over, until the sky turns black and I can rest assured that there are at least fifty-three balls of burning gas that might have already died eight years in the past, to be counted in the small portion of space above the roof of my house. Probably should be more, but the orange pollution from the distant city shrouds the fainter lights, and makes the cloudless sky seem almost purple in its endless enormity.

My stomach growls eventually – sometime late, but I don’t care to check the time on the clock on my bedside table. I throw on a hoodie over my crumpled bed shirt, not because it’s cold, but because it gives me the sense of a second skin, some thin protection that I might need to leave my room. It’s pathetic really, but still I find myself having to draw on some non-existent courage to turn the handle of my door.

My restlessness seems to make my anxiety worse. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this ill for no reason, and the thought of seeing other people makes something crawl beneath my skin. There’s no grounding to it, I know that. If mom’s downstairs, we’re just going to ignore each other. I haven’t seen dad in days. There’s no reason to feel so nervous, but I do. I am. It’s like a ticking of a clock in the back of my mind – not counting down to anything, no, not that – but it’s the constant _tick-tick-tick_ of a feeling I can’t quite place, that gives me a little nudge off balance.

I stand with my ear pressed against the wood of my door for some time, listening for the tell-tale signs of life in the rest of the big, white house. It’s silent – not even the buzz of the television or the whirr of someone’s shower, the splattering of water against glass sounding like a haze. Silent.

I slip out of my room, wrapping my hoodie tightly around my chest as I try to keep my footfalls light against the floorboards. It’s just become second-nature – even when there might not even be anyone else at home – I just want to be quiet. The feeling of wanting to shrink away and just … not be noticed for a while. Not by my parents at least. I know it all too well.

The kitchen is dark, but the glow from the streetlights beyond the hedgerow of the back yard refracts off the white marble and rounds out the sharp corners of the cabinets. I flick one of the light switches, giving life to the round spotlights over the oven and the sink, dusting the surfaces in a dozy, yellow glow that doesn’t offend my eyes.

I head straight for the fridge – and am almost surprised to see how fully stocked it is; maybe I’d expected it to have emptied whilst I’ve been drifting, to have not been stocked up because I wasn’t there to raid it or something. But there’s a brand-new bottle of milk in the door, and three or four plates of leftovers covered in clingfilm sitting on the middle shelf.

Mom made omelette – it’s my favourite, and I know she knows that. I stare longingly at the portion she’s _put aside_ ; omelette always tastes like a shitty, rubber Frisbee when you reheat it, but she kept some back for me anyway. God. I bet all these leftovers were meant to be mine. There are days’ worth of dinner in here.

I reach past the omelette and grab what looks like a shallow bowl of spaghetti; it smells so good even cold when I peel back the film, and carry it like a beacon towards the microwave. I spin the dial and shut the door, peering through the little window at my food as it slowly revolves against the gentle hum.

I’m too distracted by the smell of warming spaghetti bolognaise to hear the cutting of an engine on the front drive, or the front door opening and closing brusquely, or the tapping of Cuban soles on the hall floor – but I do hear the gruff dismantling of a groan, and I shoot up straight – just as dad rounds the corner into the kitchen. Shit. Knew I shouldn’t have come downstairs.

He stops and stares at me with eyes like a sharp _whip_ to my chest – and it’s all I can do just to stare back, wide-eyed and surprised, if only by the lack of feeling that stirs in my stomach.

It’s the first time in a long time – and I‘m not just saying that because all time seems long these days. It really has been days – a week? More than that? He’s looking at me like he’s seen a ghost.

Dad looks rough – and he never looks rough, even when he’s been sleeping at the office for days. His shirt tails peek over the taught waistband of his suit pants, buttons stretching over his stomach; his tie has been tugged away from his collar for breath, a top button has been flicked undone. His jaw is framed in more than one morning’s worth of stubble, and for an overweight man, he sure looks _gaunt_.

For a second, _I wonder why_. I’ve never seen him look this run down before. What could be keeping _him_ up at night?

I don’t have time to dwell on it though, as he drops his briefcase onto the floor too loud, and his steps towards me are too forced, too rigid – and I just remain as straight as a God-damn _rake_ in front of the microwave. He grabs a coffee mug from the cabinet above the sink, and clatters it down on the counter top; flicks the switch on the coffee machine – makes me jump as it gurgles; rattles the fridge door as he opens it – almost spills the milk that he grabs. He crashes around the kitchen like a bull in a china shop, and doesn’t once look me in the eye, and I almost think I might cut myself on the sharp edges of his … _anger_.

Is it anger? You know what, I can’t even tell.

Maybe he’s just trying to be provocative. Maybe he’s just trying to make a point. I don’t think anyone can stay angry that long – not even me. I’m not angry any more, I’m just … _nothing_. It’s too much effort to go searching for a feeling to punctuate the greyness.

He makes a cup of coffee in the quaking silence, and I watch him drink it whilst it’s still clearly way too hot. In the back of my mind, I hear the microwave ping, but I daren’t move to collect my food, daren’t risk a movement of my arm that might prompt him to speak.

He sets his empty mug down on the kitchen counter that divides us, and wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve vulgarly. He speaks anyway.

“Don’t you have something to say?” His stumpy fingers are white around the handle of the mug – so tight that I wonder maybe if he’ll break the china just from holding it? I stare almost _curiously_ at the translucence of his skin as it stretches, rippling over his knuckles.

“Jean? Do me the decency of at least looking at me when I’m talking to you. I’m _waiting_.”

Ah, yep, there’s the tickle of the itch scrambling up the back of my neck, like a fly I want to swat. I keep my eyes trained on dad’s hands. I try to remember how to function normally. I wonder how well he can read my expression when his head is so far up his own ass.

“An apology would be nice, Jean.”

An apology? An apology for _what_? Does he remember the last thing he actually said to me? I sure do.

_You will get nowhere in life majoring in Art. I hope you realise that._

Something cracks, but it’s not porcelain. I realise quickly that the sound comes from inside my head only. In a flicker, like the dying flare of a candle, I raise my eyes to his for one, short-lived moment, and gruffly, I whisper:

“Go to hell.”

I don’t mean to say that, but it just comes out. I don’t _mean_ to say anything. But I guess something inside of me – my inner child – knows that if I make him angry, I’ll get what I desperately crave from this hollow space of a father-figure: _the truth_.

Guessing what’s going on in his head, guessing where I stand with him – I don’t want that. I can’t deal with that, and I just want to feel something more than _this crushing numbness_ —

He starts shouting at me, but it’s like there’s gauze strapped across my ears because I can’t quite hear his reeling voice. I see his arms move wildly, I sense his taunting words shaking in my skull, but I don’t … _feel_ them. He yells at me, and I bow my head, _and I take it_. Until—

“What the hell is wrong with you, Jean? Who’s pulled you into this God-damn delusion, huh? You weren’t like this before the summer started – your results, your attitude towards your _future_ , you behaviour towards me and your mother – is it that _pool boy_ your mother employed? Has he messed you around with this sense of _disillusionment_? People from his sort of _background_ , Jean, they make you think you can get away with being a _dead weight_ and that it’s okay not to _care_ about—”

The veins in his neck bulge as he shouts, but I meet his glare, refusing to even flinch. There must be something there now, in my eyes – something steel, something iron, something wrought – and dad must see it, because he stops abruptly, mid-sentence. His mouth hangs open, sagging and revealing yellowing teeth. I wonder if he’s taken up smoking behind mom’s back again. Whatever.

I swallow resolutely, the lump in my mouth sliding like a glob of thick tar down my throat. My entire body feels thick with tensile energy, and I think it’s obvious to him in the way I ball my fists at my sides.

Anger is like fire because it burns everything clean. Maybe I am clean, maybe I am _transparent_. Maybe I can see the seeping of _his_ anger in my own silhouette and it makes me shiver. What a cosmic joke. But I don’t think I care anymore.

 _Come on then. Come on. If you’re gonna bring Marco into this, if you wanna fucking_ do _this – come on._

Mom appears in the kitchen then, feathers ruffled, dressing gown hanging limp off one shoulder, looking panicked by our noise. She reaches around my dad, and presses a hand to his chest, and says something – something weak and depthless, and all I can focus on is how she can even stomach _touching_ this bulbous man after all the shit he’s put us through – all of which she fucking _knows_. Look at her hand splayed on his chest – _look at it_. Look at how it makes me _sick_.

She doesn’t touch me. She outstretches her hand towards me, like she means to place it over my heart too, to be the axis of distance between us, like there isn’t already a kitchen counter in our wake. She reaches, but she doesn’t touch, babbling away things to my dad to try to lessen the intensity of his glare on my face. Her words only fall empty on my ears – but she’s lived this loveless marriage for _years_ now, so maybe she does know what she’s doing. Because dad retreats.

He backs away and breaks our glaring contest, and that’s some shallow victory of mine, because it doesn’t make him feel superior to me. Finally realising that I won’t take his shit lying down any more. That he has no legs to stand on when it comes to telling me what to do. Damn fucking straight. He mutters something gruffly – and then he’s gone. His briefcase still sits on the inside of the door frame, forgotten and abandoned.

Mom and I both watch the empty, pulsating space for a moment, like we’ve done so many times before, until she turns to me, tugging her dressing gown sleeve meekly up over the bare skin of her shoulder.

“Jean—”

I feel tired – irrevocably so. Not sleepy tired, not the sort of tired that makes me want to face-plant into bed. Just tired all the way down to my bones. Sluggish. Bland. _Done_. I move back towards the microwave, and the door sticks a little as I pull it. The spaghetti is still just about warm – it’ll do. I don’t even know if I’m hungry anymore, but at least it gives me an excuse to leave.

Mom chews at one her nails, even though she knows she’s going to ruin her manicure. Her eyes are large and doe-like and on-edge as she reverently watches me turn back to face her, the bowl clutched in my hands.

She looks just about as lost as me.

But I can’t. I can’t, mom, I can’t— not yet. _Give me time_.

 _I’m still working on figuring out what to do about this mess_.

“Mom, d-don’t,” I rasp, “I’m … I’m gonna go eat, okay. I just … just _don’t_.”

She glances down at the leftover spaghetti, and then back up at my face, and I think: _how can someone really look that desperate over pasta_?

“I can make you something nicer, if you’d like,” she says softly – _timidly_. That hurts. She stutters like a stuck record. “Or there’s s-some omelette left over in the fridge – I know it’s your favourite.”

“Mom.”

_Don’t make me doubt myself even more._

“O-or I could make you something to drink? I know it’s not quite cold enough yet but I could do cocoa with the little marshmallows, or—”

“Mom. _Please_.”

_This is the only way I can fool myself into thinking I’m strong._

She looks like someone’s zapped her with a taser, and flinches at the starkness of my words. She glances around the kitchen almost frantically, before her eyes land on today’s newspaper folded on the breakfast bar.

“O-oh, did you see, your friend Ymir had a—”

She’s trying so hard – I’m not blind. I can see it clear as day, and it hurts me to know what sort of shitty person I am. I hate myself, I really do. I know if we talk about it – if we shout about all the things she never told me – I’ll cry. And it’ll be pathetic and sniffly and messy, and then she’ll cry too – and I can’t even comfort myself in the promise that we’ll go back to normal afterwards. It’s too much to want to deal with right now.

“Goodnight, mom.”

 

* * *

 

Mom and dad argue that night. It kills the quiet that’s descended over this house for the past week – or at least pops the bubble I’ve been living in. I eat my spaghetti cross-legged on my bed, willing the walls and doors between them and me to get thicker, so that their poisoned words might not infiltrate my ears as much as they do. But no. They just scratch and scratch and _scratch_ —

It’s gone midnight by the time they give up the ghost, and I’m left wondering when I’ll learn to accept all of this as normal – because it’s pretty _trying_ having to wince every time I hear a loud crash or a slamming door along the landing. I kinda long for the day when I can turn a blind eye to it all, even if the repercussions of what that means are excessively painful to bare. I don’t want this to _be_ okay, but I want to _forget_ okay. If I forget, then I have nothing to compare this to. How will I know that this _isn’t_ okay?

In the early hours of the morning, I scuttle back downstairs into the plunging darkness of the kitchen, and retrieve the newspaper mom had pointed at. I flick through the rustling pages as silently as I can as I pad back up the stairs – and it’s on the third to last sheet that I find the small, cropped square of Ymir’s begrudgingly smiling face, and a short article detailing some exhibition she’s about to open.

I crawl out onto the roof through my bedroom window, the paper clamped between my teeth, and I read the rest of the piece by the light of my phone. There’s not _much_ to read – just passing information in the pages that you never really care to turn to, unless you’re some old biddy who spends her day in the arm chair smothered in at least fifty different crosswords and the TV guide. The whole double paged spread is dedicated to the sort of people who actively care about how cultured they seem – and I suppose, that’s the upper echelon of Trost for you. They don’t like art, but if it makes them look good to the boss, then who are they to complain about a splatter of paint on a canvas strung up in a city gallery. As long as it gets them that promotion they’re after.

It’s all listings of stage shows; of musicals; of gallery opening times; of art house cinema schedules. All the stuff buried in the side of Trost that tries so hard to make itself seem so Bohemian and refined. (Can’t fool me. I’ve lived in this city for nineteen years. It’s a shit-hole decked out in shiny black glass. That’s all.)

My eyes flit over the printed text illuminated blue by my home screen; the words of some journalist whose clearly not paid enough for this job, punctuated by quotations from Ymir herself which drip with audible sarcasm. That provokes a sort of smile to my lips – crass and cynical and _jealous_ , I guess.

Look at her. I mean, it’s _The Trost Review_ , so it’s not exactly the _Times_ or the _Post_ , but hey, that’s her name in print there, and that’s a snapshot of her art beneath her scowling face. Who cares what sort of people read this section of the paper. Just look at her.

At the foot of the small article, in an italicised fine print, it details the opening times of this exhibition – I recognise the name of the gallery from the business card that now sits in my desk drawer, untouched since Nanaba handed it to me a week ago today. The show’s on Friday (not that I’ve heard a word of it ‘til now); but Ymir’s always been – not modest but – _reserved_ about talking openly about her art. Like it’s not really _a big thing_.

(Little green monster perched on my shoulder doth protest.)

I fold up the paper and shove it under my ass, some pathetic excuse for padding between my butt and the rough slate of the roof tiles. The light of my phone turns my fingers and face blue too, as I open up my inbox and scroll backwards through unanswered text messages to find my last correspondence with Ymir, before typing out a quick _nice one_.

 **To: Ymir**  
hey congrats on the exhibition. i just read the article in the paper. how much did they pay u to take that photo lol

A congratulations quells some of the dark feeling in my heart, and I allow my thoughts to drift away from all the things that plague me – I think about the sweep of a paint brush across taught canvas, of bristles swirling through fresh paint, of Ymir trying to Tetris all her paintings into the trunk of her shitty van.

I think about that being me come the autumn. I haven’t really had much time to sit and consider it all; after riding the wave of finally coming clean to my parents about art and my future … it feels like it fell off the radar with the crowd of _everything else_ going on right now.

It’ll be weird not trudging into a lecture theatre at stupid o’clock in the morning, or accidentally singeing my shirt sleeve on a Bunsen in the lab when I’m more focused on trying to keep my eyes open. Not having to drag two kilos of Math textbooks between here and campus every day. Getting home and not facing a chapter of mind-numbing problems to tackle. The freedom to draw.

(The others things I imagine, you don’t want to know. Lift shares. Waves in the corridor. Parting kisses before class. Impossible things.)

My phone bloops in the dark, a little envelope arriving at the top of my screen.

 **From: Ymir**  
i am SHITTING myself over that thing oh my god please come i need all the moral support i can get!!! or just someone stronger than historia to drag me home after when i get wasted off my face

I roll my eyes at her message, and type out an unsympathetic sounding response. A few minutes tick by of watching aeroplanes dip down from out of the murky sky, before I get a series of replies.

 **From Ymir:**  
shut up you dick. look ive got two spare tickets left and u can even have them for FREE if u come.

 **From: Ymir**  
please i dont know how to make polite conversation with art buffs its not in the ymir programming ok i need the help of ur fancy ass

 **From Ymir:**  
bring pool boy. make it a date or something i dont care. just please dont leave me alooooone

My sigh escapes my lips as a grated huff that flicks the strands of my hair across my forehead that I’ve let get too long again. Right, right. Because that’s totally a possibility, Ymir.

 **To: Ymir**  
yeah no. thats not something thats gonna happen any time soon.

I sit in silence for a while, my only background track the sound of the odd passing car with a purring engine, or of the breeze ruffling the leaves on the old Alamo cottonwood in next door’s yard. I begin to think she’s forgotten about replying – set her phone down somewhere and become distracted by something else more interesting – when the opening bars of _Who Are You?_ make me _jump out of my skin_. I scrabble to hold my phone, almost losing it in a tumble down the roof slope, and my finger slips when I try to slide the answer-call button beneath where Ymir’s name appears bold on my screen. The _hell_ —

“H-hi—?” I answer suspiciously, juggling my cell onto my shoulder, but I am cut off almost instantly.

“So what’s got _your_ panties in a twist?”

In the background, I can hear the jingle of what sounds like a _Super Mario_ game, and Ymir grunting as she shifts herself wherever she’s sprawled. I scowl on reflex into the darkness.

“I know you don’t function like a normal human, but … you realise it is like two in the morning, right?” I reply crassly. “Why aren’t you like … _sleeping_? Don’t you have neighbours?”

“Don’t _you_ have neighbours?” she replies sharply, but then backtracks. “Nah, nah, it’s cool. Walls are thick here. Thank God.”

“Yeah, I can imagine your neighbours being pretty thankful for _that_ ,” I mutter, and Ymir scoffs loudly in my ear. “Historia not in?”

“Nah, she’s not. She’s visiting her folks tonight, and … well, let’s just say they still don’t know she doesn’t bat for the 49ers, if you know what I’m saying,” Ymir says with a sigh. “Why?”

“Was wondering why you rung me,” I shrug. “Now I get it. You’re bored.”

“I’m not bored!” she exclaims down the line. I wonder if she’s packed a few beers under her belt, because her voice is louder than tolerable tonight. “Just been a while since I saw your grumpy ass, is all. You didn’t answer my question, by the way.”

“What question?”

“Why your panties are in a twist.”

“I don’t like that insinuation.”

“What, that you wear panties?”

“Yeah.” I pinch the bridge of my nose – and the line of fading pink scar tissue – and squeeze my eyes shut. I exhale heavily, and feel my chest, shoulders, _lungs_ deflate. Ymir doesn’t speak, leaving a definite space for me to answer her; I give in. “It’s nothing. Just some shitty family stuff dragging my balls.”

 _And some shitty Marco stuff_ , I add mentally, but refrain from saying that down the line. I’d lose any semblance of a sincere Ymir, and be left to cackles of bouncing laughter. 

“La~ame,” she sing-songs, and I imagine her, spread out on their manky, cigarette-stained dorm couch, feet hooked over the arm rest, inspecting her chipped nails indifferently. “Fuck that noise, man. I feel you. Parentals can be right downers.”

“Yeah, but every day?” I ask with a quiet, bitter chuckle rising in my throat. I drag my hand down my face, fingers prickled by days’ old stubble that I’ve forgotten to shave. “Feels like a lot of stuff has gone t’ shit lately.” I pause for a moment, and then mumble apologetically: “Sorry. You probably don’t wanna hear this crap, huh? Bit of a comedown.”

Ymir hums brazenly.

“No, it’s cool. I don’t mind – like, we all complain, it ain’t just you. If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn’t be a human being – you’d be a game show host. And that _would_ be a grim prognosis.”

I crack open my eyes and squint into the hazy darkness, pretty sure that I’ve heard that phrase before. Memories trickle in of some blurry, eighties movie that Sasha put on the other week when Connie and I were round at her place and she’d got fed up of us bickering over _Titanfall_. Right. The one where Christian Slater goes around accidentally on-purpose murdering all the popular kids.

(Funny teen movie, my ass. I’m never gonna look at high schoolers the same way again.)

“Ymir, people _died_ in that movie. I don’t think it’s appropriate to quote,” I say sternly, and she barks a laugh.

“Doesn’t matter,” she retorts, and I can hear the wolfish grin on her face. “Winona Ryder was _hot_ in that movie. That’s what matters to _me_.” She laughs again, before adding quickly, “Don’t tell Historia I said that.”

I crick my shoulders, and try to lay back against the roof tiles, shifting my butt to regain the feeling – the newspaper isn’t doing a particularly good job at being a cushion. The sandpaper-edges of the tiles dig awkwardly into the skin between my shoulder blades, but I suffer it, staring up at the sky once more. Wonder if I can count any more stars.

“See, this is why people don’t come to you for advice,” I say sagely.

“Well, you sit them down and make them watch _Heathers_ , and then they’ll change their tone,” she replies.

 

* * *

 

It feels good to talk to someone – or maybe that’s just two in the morning talking _for_ me. I haven’t spoken to anyone in days, and once I open my mouth, it feels like I could ramble for years. Not about Marco, no. Not that. But the trivial has its place sometimes, and it’s a nice, consequenceless feeling to be able to laugh over dumb things. Ymir complaining about her current diet of reality TV has me grinning, despite myself. It’s not even that funny, but there’s something about the way she finds exasperation in everything that’s ironically refreshing.

It’s not the same mundaneness that has me plodding along and waiting for a cliff – that’s a greyness. This is a colourless feeling; something that sooths, something that doesn’t spoil other colours when it mixes, something that should just exist before paint is put to palette. Like white light – a spectrum of everything, yet appears as nothing. It’s the pendulum of normalcy, which replaces the _tick-tick-tick_ of anxiety, of fear, of _worry_ in my veins.

Ymir chats unabashedly about how nervous she is for Friday night – I guess she’s glad to have someone to talk to as well. She complains about corporate bigwigs trying to buy her art which she doesn’t want to sell, and how they hung up one of the pieces in entirely the wrong place but refused to move it, and how she’s debating just legging it out of town for a few days so she doesn’t even have to attend the damn show. Barbados is nice at this time of year, she says. At _any_ time of year.

I laugh at her bad jokes, but do what a friend is meant to do, and encourage her to go. (Though not before we both agree that if she hides a hip flask in her suit pants, the evening will be significantly _more_ fun.)

“So you’re _completely_ sure I can’t persuade you to come,” she asks me again, through a whine. “Not even if I make Historia bat her eyelashes all pretty like? She’s real cute when she does that. And real _persuasive_ , if you catch my drift.”

“I _don’t_ need to hear about your sex life again. We’ve been through _that_ disaster of a conversation already tonight, _Jesus_.”

“You’re such a prude,” she moans, and shuffles around on her end of the line, yawning unashamedly into the receiver. “Look, I’m gonna hit the hay. Let me know if you change your mind, Jean. Just hit me up with a text whenever, alright?”

“Yeah, alright. Later.”

She hangs up on me with a grunt that translates in some language to a goodbye, and I’m left to the sound of static in my head. The night is dark – that deepest, darkest part where it seems like the infinitesimal blackness might last forever and ever, and morning just might not come this time because, apparently, it takes only eight seconds after the sun goes out to plunge the world into eternal shadow. Save there is no blackness in Trost streets – it’s a city doomed to live in a forever wretched orange glow that can be only truly beautiful when one races past the lights in a fast car, going _elsewhere_.

I clamber down through my window, tripping into my room like some slightly drunk, definitely misinformed Santa Claus, and I shove the folded up newspaper into the drawer of my bedside table, alongside Nanaba’s business card. Even in the semi-dark, I can make out the white writing still clear and bold against the black; for a moment, I stare at it, before I opt to kick the drawer shut. Peeling off my sweatpants and bed shirt, I face plant onto my mattress with a groan that summarises pretty much _all_ the feelings I’ve ever been victim to.

 

* * *

 

I fall asleep quickly, but my dreams are plagued with the thought of drowning. Marco’s there, of course.

 

* * *

 

It’s cruel to hear his voice when I sleep, and even crueller when it stays with me when I crack one eye open to the bank of morning sunlight streaming into my room on Wednesday. It’s early – I can tell – because the air that creeps in through the window left open from last night has the fond taste of a distant autumn, and summer is beginning its final curtain call, a warning that its time is almost up. I imagine mom’s perennial sunflowers will be blooming out the front – a stave, she once said, to keep the fall at bay and cling onto the last of the dewless sunrises.

It’s a load of crap, if you ask me. Can’t keep the autumn at bay, just like Canute couldn’t stop the sea with his bare hands. He was an idiot for trying. This summer’s gonna end sooner rather than later.

In the remnants of my dream, I hear Marco laugh – and now _that’s_ something that could burn frost and prolong the summer, if ever there was something. It’s a painful sort of Midas touch, that sound of his tenor rumbling so perfectly like that, and, being the grumbling baby that I am, I roll over onto my front, scrabbling for my pillow to shove over my ears and block out every last note of it.

It seems to only muffle his voice, and I’m left wondering what sort of dream clings to the trails of unconsciousness for so long? This is hardly fair. I don’t want to be reminded of what I’ve been missing, thank you very much.

Mom’s laugh is shriller, and I hear that too, strangely – it seems to float on that autumn-coaxing breeze through my window, and I guess it’s nice. Nice, too, like his, because it’s been a long time since I heard it freely.

 _Mom’s voice, mom’s voice_ …

I try to tune into that dreamlike frequency, and the more I try to listen beyond the shroud of my pillow, the clearer the conversation seems to become.

Clearer. It’s _not_ a dream.

I _throw_ myself out of bed. No exaggeration either, because I trip over my own feet that tangle in my duvet, and my knees slam painfully into the hard wood of the floor – that’s gonna fucking _bruise_ tomorrow. Boxers, bed-hair, a breathless anticipation that’s so, so fucking shameful – and I don’t even _care_. He’s there, he’s outside. And that’s an awful lot of information to process so soon after waking up. I fly down the stairs three at a time, my feet skidding on the hall floor as I cling to the end of the bannister for dear life to save myself from an early death.

I can still hear them talking. No, it’s not some figment of my human-interaction starved brain. No, it’s not a pathetic dream. No, it’s gotta be real.

I don’t slow through the kitchen – but nor do I allow myself a glance thrown out of the window. I don’t want to look, just in case, _just in case_ —

I fling the back door open, and feel all the breath expel from my lungs at once. Marco and mom both startle, mom’s hand flying up across her mouth in … in, well, horror, I guess. I’m not that much of a ghost, am I— _oh_.

Right. _The underwear_.  

“Jean!” she squawks in shock, her gawp raking over my skinny legs and pin-prickled skin. Marco’s eyes fly wide too, and a furious blush storms in his cheeks. Like an animal frozen in the path of incoming traffic, it feels like a bolt of lightning strikes me right now the middle. O-oh _shit_. All of a sudden, I’m very aware of how I’m standing, how I’m breathing – is it normal, am _I_ being normal? Do I usually take this many breaths per minute? How often should I blink?

_Screw normal, you’re standing in full few of mom, Marco, and quite probably all the neighbours, in your tighty whities. Ain’t nothing normal, unless they’re into exhibitionism._

I suck it up with a thick, tar-like gulp that slithers down my throat.

_C-c’mon. It’s not like this is the first time he’s seen me walking the f-fine line of nakedness …_

I look up at Marco: best friend and general downfall. Brown meets brown, and I’m locked quickly in a wordless stare. Yup, he’s here all right. Doesn’t look like he can believe it either.

Oh man, this is not how I expected this to go.

My eyes can’t get enough of him – suddenly I’m noting every little detail, mapping every freckled constellation like it’s been years of cloudy skies instead of just six days. He stands stiffly, rooted to the spot on the lawn with rigid shoulders, and you’d think he’d just tip straight over with a little push or shove.

His gaze flickers – and he’s not subtle enough to stop me from seeing the flitter south. Self-consciousness swamps me in a wave as his eyes return to mine at lightning speed, and he bites down hard on the inside of his mouth, blinking owlishly.

Oh God. My face is burning. I didn’t think this Mexican stand-off through very well. You can practically hear the crickets chirping in the background.

(I mean, I may have just scarred mom for life, and that’s just for starters. Marco’s fucking combusting over there. Hell, _I’m_ combusting.)

I stare incredulously at Marco, his red face unreadable as I try to search for some semblance of tangibility in the flecks of gold that are lit up by the sun in his irises. Nothing – not that I know how to grab hold of, at least. Nor in the taught line of his mouth, or in the way he folds his arms around his chest slowly, fingers gripping in the fitted fabric of his polo shirt. I can only watch his knuckles tense with a weird mix of fascination and humiliation gurgling away in my stomach.

Well chirp, fucking chirp. Not exactly how I intended our six-day reunion to go. But I guess I gotta own it. I open my mouth to try and puke out some stuttering word vomit, but I stop myself when it feels I might _actually_ expel my guts onto the lawn. Oh lord. _Breathe_ , you colossal moron.

And then, Marco fucking _laughs_ – not much, but a weak chuckle which he hides poorly behind his fist, cheeks red, looking away— Mom twists around to stare at him like he’s grown an extra head; she’s clearly still _appalled_.

 _I_ can’t care less.

Fuck getting me an antacid, Marco’s laugh is like a _spark_ to the kindling of my heart, and it ignites a breathless _burn_ deep within my chest. _Incombustible_ , my ass. He could set me alight with a single lit match of a word – of a giggle – if he wanted, despite all the water in my veins and the soggy paper that forms my bones. I can tell he didn’t mean to laugh. But fuck, it’s God-damn _mesmerizing_.

I feel mom’s gaze darting between the two of us, and slowly, she drops her French-manicured hand from her mouth, crossing her arms securely over her chest.

“I think … I think I … have something to do in the kitchen,” she says awkwardly – sheepishly, almost, as Marco’s giggle suffocates and subsides, and he coughs gently into his clenched fist, the throws of amusement still lighting up his handsome face. He tries to compose himself as we both watch mom return briskly to the house, glancing over her shoulder once, twice, _thrice_ , eyebrows pinched together in lines devoid of Botox.

When I turn back to face him, he has his head bowed, eyes train on the grass; whatever prompted the bout of laughter has abated and been packed firmly away. I clear my throat clumsily, but it’s my heart that fizzles with embers where my stomach before threatened to empty itself. Progress.  

“H-hey,” I stutter. So smooth. I am the chunky peanut butter of Casanovas, that’s a given. Come on, you idiot. Let’s try and make as less a fool of yourself as possible, yeah? “W-what … what are you doing here?”

Marco glances at me from beneath his eyelashes, almost reluctantly as he rubs the nape of his neck. Nervous trait.

“I … came to clean the pool.”

I deadpan at that. Wow, genius, why didn’t that cross my mind, blah, blah, blah. _Ugh_.

Tell me something I _don’t_ know, Marco.

(Which is basically everything, might I add.)

“Bit early to be cleanin’ the pool,” I mutter, scuffing the Trost valley dust that settles on the patio slabs however much you blitz the stone with a power hose. My toes come away pale yellow and chalky.

It crosses my mind – after a few seconds of my thoughts scrabbling to catch up with my words – that it _is_ early to be cleaning the pool. Like, really early. I’m pretty sure my alarm clock had read something along the lines of just gone _nine_ , as I’d barrelled out of bed. We’re never usually Marco’s first appointment on a Wednesday.

The itch gives me a hard _flick_ in the back of the skull. He probably knew I’d still be in bed. Banked on it. Maybe he was trying to _avoid_ me.

Marco shifts his weight and stares hard at the ground, counting the individual blades of grass being rustled by the precognitive breeze. Anywhere but me, basically. The lightness of the pre-autumn air is lost to the staunch weight of a summer heat once again, and I could cut the tension between us with a knife. Well, maybe a saw. A _power saw_ , if I want to be sure.

I raise my head, and huff the hair out of my face, looking upwards into the cloudless sky for some miracle courage that might solidify my mettle. I breathe. Swallow heavily. Exasperated. Lay it straight.

“What the hell is going on, man?”

I feel shitty for feeling shitty, you know? What right do I have to be demanding his attention now, of all times? Not at this, exact moment, or anything – I mean, my general nakedness is probably doing a good enough job of stealing his focus – but in general. I shouldn’t be feeling this miserable without him around, or at least instantly available at the end of a phone line or string of text messages. I have stuff to deal with, I have places to move forward to.

But geez, it’s hard. I want to be involved – and that’s a selfish wish of mine, I know. I want to be involved in his life, and I want to be there for Marco, and I know, I _know_ it was only a few days, but I missed him. It felt longer, so much longer, and it made me realise that imagining the rest of my life where Marco’s not around is … well, it’s painful. Especially when I can do something about it.

When I think about myself – my problems, my ambitions, my tightly locked cages – my world contracts and everything seems to loom large and forbearing. But when I focus on him, when I know I have two shoulders which make two, good crutches whilst he rights himself to his feet once more – my world _expands_. My selfishness is honest, in that sense.

It was the enigmatic smileys that did me in, the sound of his laugh weak and lifeless down the phone line that tugged at my heart strings, the knowledge that, _yeah, me too, Marco. I was alone once. You shouldn’t have to go through that too._

I almost daren’t look over at the expression on his face, daren’t check if he’s stumbling over a response to my question – if it’s even a question. (More a demand.) Nah, I’ll lose my resolution if I do. I gotta say this, and it’s gotta mean _more_ this time. More than it ever has before.

Sorry Marco, you can speak after. I gotta get this out.

“I’m so bad at saying all this stuff, Marco,” I begin, a gruff mumble as I card my fingers through my hair. Gotta say the right thing. Gotta solve the problem I know nothing about. Can’t make this worse – because if anything, I can’t cope with that. Sure, I’ll get over it. Sure, nothing lasts forever, however much I might believe this inordinate greyness might. But I don’t want to have to wait for that. The waiting will rot me from the inside out first. “All … all the stuff that needs saying. I’ve never been good with words when it counts. And I don’t even know why it counts now, ‘cus I have no— sorry, that’s irrelevant. What I want to say is … fuck … I mean …”

I give into cruel temptation, and take a peek at him, stealing away from the cerulean blue overhead. The gap of a few paces between us seems unfathomable, and way too far. I want him to be closer. I want to touch him and make him promise things that I shouldn’t be needing to make him promise. I want to open him up and scrabble around inside him with my bare hands and see what makes him tick – and then hold that feeling close to my chest and fucking _cradle_ it.

“But I … look, Marco, I … want the best for you.” The words are falling off my tongue slippery now. “And I know I have no fucking right to … want to be a part of your life right now, and I reckon I’m just a huge burden at best and all that, but— _ugh_. I wanna know what’s going on with you – with _us,_ y’know? I want you to know that I don’t mind being involved – I really wanna be. I want the best for you. And I think, or at least, I … I fucking _hope_ , that I can be part of that.”

I breathe heavily – feeling winded, as if someone just stomped on my chest. Marco doesn’t move – he’s barely there, or he’s _too_ there, and it’s like talking to a God damn mannequin, Jesus Christ, just say _something_ —

I wrap my arms tightly around my own chest, pressing my fingertips into my ribs, and I hold in the only feeling I’ve been sure of for the last few weeks.

The _only_ feeling.

(Does it even need saying what that feeling is?)

Marco … Marco’s eyes are wide again, his pupils dilated despite the bright sunlight streaming down over the roof of our house. It’s a mess of things that I read in his face – sadness, yes, surprise, maybe, amazement, if I’m lucky? Relief? I wonder if he’s relieved.  (I wonder if he’s not.) (I wonder whether he’s _disgusted_ that I’d even ask to know his secrets. Fuck.)

There’s something more though: there’s the fire of something I don’t recognise. And I’ve seen embers of it before, softly flickering like a fire on a cold, December evening, or spitting and crackling like a bonfire in the height of summer – but this is more. This doesn’t die away with a hiss or a sigh. It’s inextinguishable, and as he takes half a step towards me, I meet his eyes through his eyelashes again – coy, shy, I don’t know.

All I know is the trembling whisper of a smile that flecks upon his lips, the kindest touch to the battlefield inside my ribcage. All I know is that things burn, and things die, and things burst, and oh God, this silence is deafening, but I—

He speaks. He steps forward, closer. Reaches out, considers it, tightens his fist. His hand drops to his side again. “Jean … Jean, I—”

It’s enough. It bridges the gap.

 _Marco, I love you_.

It doesn’t come out like that. I almost wish it did.

“Friday,” is what I say instead; curt and brash and brisk, and Marco almost recoils in gentle surprise. (I almost do too – because the words coming out of my mouth like rapid fire are a surprise to me also. I don’t know where they’re coming from, what reminded me of them, but I don’t regret them.) I repeat myself more resolutely, trying to conceal the waver in my voice as Marco blinks rapidly a few times. “Friday. Ymir’s got a thing on. You … you’re gonna come with me. No buts. I already … got you a ticket. It’s gonna be _great_.”

People say love is a whole bunch of things. Like grand gestures in front of the classroom, like sixty-four bouquets of flowers delivered to your front door, like a serenade from a balcony window, or little pebbles against the glass when sleeping. (Oh wait; we’ve done that last one.)

And sure – I guess it is for some people.

For me though, it’s stumbling through bad ways of asking him on a roundabout date to an art gallery, or telling him I want him to share his loneliness with me whilst I’m stood outside in my underwear making a fool of myself.

For me, it’s wanting to say all the cushy things, but at the same … hoping, praying, that in silence he understands me anyway. Maybe he knows. Maybe he _knows_.

I find myself suddenly hoping that he does, somewhere. And when the time is right, he’ll realise.

And we’ll move forward.

(After all, this is just a pit stop in the grand scheme of things.)

Marco chuckles to himself, bows his head, but this time it doesn’t feel like he’s curling in on himself. He just looks bashful as he scratches the shallow hairs of his undercut. He takes one final step forward towards me, like some invisible string is tugging at his centre, and maybe, maybe, he just can’t help himself.

(I breathe in softly, subtly, and taste camomile. God bless.)

His shoulders hang with a finality, but I don’t think he dooms himself to it. He seems willing to give in – to me?

Maybe. So many maybes. I’m probably dumb to trust myself to them.

“Do I have a choice?” he asks me softly, and even now, I see the sprig of a late-blooming flower begin to blossom even in the saddest part of him. And even if that flower is pressed and squished and squashed between the pages of a book – at least its beauty lasts forever in my memory. His smile is for me, and I am so fucking greedy, but you know: _fuck those old, white men who blaspheme my greed_. It’s no sin. Is wanting the little cut-out pieces of his happiness so bad? I don’t think so.

“No choice,” I reply, and my lips beg to betray me by stretching into a grin. I try to hold it back, press my palms against a surging tide – but all it really looks like is me awkwardly sucking on a lemon with the pursed expression I’m sporting. Oh well. I guess Marco’s gotten used to the fact that my suaveness comes in waves. Really periodic waves. When the definition of periodic is: basically never. This is no exception.

“It’s a date,” I say – I _grin_. My internal monologue yelps, flustered, but I smother the sound with the furious rush of blood in my ears. “A-and now,” I announce quickly, tripping awkwardly over my pelting of words, “I … am gonna go put some clothes on—!” I stumble backwards a few steps – dancing around on the pads of my feet like my balls are on fire – and cling onto the inside of the back door to save myself from landing on my ass. Marco’s eyebrows quirk upwards in the middle of his brow with a – dare I say it – fondness that really makes me wonder how I have any blood left in my body to blush. I almost trip over the door step, heel catching on the ridge as I attempt to back my way into the kitchen; I think Marco rolls his eyes, and definitely shakes his head at me. _Hey now_.

“Just go, Jean,” he says lightly, biting his tongue through an exasperated _smile_. (There are things fucking _exploding_ inside of me, let me tell you.) “I’ll still be here when you have your pants on.”

I nod furiously, and slip-slide into the kitchen, questioning the ability of my legs to obey the commands of my brain. There’s definitely a seismic shift of sorts making the muscles in my calves and thighs spasm and a light-headedness that makes me dizzy. Just before I take off into the house to go and throw myself into the depths of my wardrobe and delayed humiliation, I twist back, and poke my head out of the door, squinting angrily against the sun.

Passive aggressively, I half-shout at him, “And then you and me are gonna clean the pool, got it? And after, I’m gonna drag your ass in here and make you lunch.” He opens his mouth to say something, but I stop him with a glare as I gesture two fingers between my eyes and his. He heaves a sigh, rolls his eyes, and then stares sheepishly at the ground once more. “Say a word, Bodt, and I’ll make you the shittiest fucking lunch you’ve ever tasted.”

“Clothes, Jean.”

“I’m on it, alright!”

 

* * *

 

We clean the pool after I stumble back downstairs a few minutes later – my bravado having been sucked out of me with the addition of a pair of rolled-up jeans and a scrappy t-shirt, half-tucked into my waistband. Marco informs me that I look much better, although the redness that bites the tips of his ears doesn’t fade; I give him a dutiful shove for good measure. Even the contact between him and my shoulder is enough to relight a dying spark, and I feel it, igniting embers in my chest that had been shrouded in a thick, grey smoke ‘til now.

He doesn’t mention what happened, and he doesn’t apologise for keeping his distance these past few days (not that I’m demanding or expecting it from him – merely hoping), so I don’t say anything about how his shoulders heave tiredly whenever he sighs. Marco sighs a lot.

It’s okay though – because for every expulsion of breath between his lips, I have a shitty joke to tell him, and make him laugh weakly. That’s enough for me.

Maybe we’re forcing it too much. Maybe we’re not. Maybe this is what we need.

It’s still not quite right, but it’s something. Things change, and I’m getting used to that fact now. You can’t cling to the past, and our future might not be determined yet, but the present … that’s something I can touch.

And I resolve to hold on tight.

 

* * *

 

I can’t say that it goes back to normal after that, but I don’t expect it to. Marco remains reserved, seems surprised whenever I jostle him, or poke him across a distance with a pool net to the ribs. Worry and fear still swirl endlessly inside my gut, but when I close my eyes – firm and tightly shut – and stop for a moment, I can picture rays of sunlight lighting up the water of that grey whirlpool, and I can manage it.

The sun feels like it shines brightest when I sneak back into the house and grab my laptop, setting it up on the patio table at the loudest volume to blast a playlist of _My Chemical Romance’s Greatest Hits_ , which I find on YouTube. Marco smiles widely at that, a rosiness in his cheeks that makes me feel _real_ , and the warmth of his unadulterated laughter when I rebrandish the pool net as a guitar (the joke not being lost on either of us) is like a gravity to me, yet skyrockets me all the way to Mars at the same time. Yet I feel the earth firmly beneath my bare feet for the first time since that night with him on the roof top.

And hell, I don’t even _like_ My Chemical Romance – is this a declaration of the unconditional strength of my feelings for him, _or what_?

I’m kidding, of course. Well, to an extent. It takes a few songs of him laughing at me before he starts to sing along – quietly, yeah, but I reckon the grins I shoot at him speak volumes.

It’s gone midday by the time we’ve rattled through the playlist three times and I’ve finished my one-man guitar solo at the top of the pool-shed steps. I make good on my promise, and I coax him into the kitchen, offering him my culinary prowess of reheated leftovers, or maybe a grilled cheese if he’s feeling adventurous. Marco snorts at both of my suggestions – _thank you very much, I’d like to see you do a better job, you freckled saint_ – and, of course, he nudges me aside and does _a better job_.

He puts me to work dicing mushrooms with a scowl whilst he cracks eggs into a frying pan on our stove – and he doesn’t even know that omelette is my favourite. (I feel a small pang of guilt thinking about the portion of mom’s offering still untouched on the middle shelf of the fridge.) I’m reminded of times before, of him dolling out breakfasts to the hungry strays of my friends, and how I’d longed for the chance to get used to watching him cook. Maybe this is some higher power finally answering some of my prayers?

He touches me out of choice for the first time when his hand settles over mine on the knife, and slides it out of my palm, telling me breathily that I’m turning the mushrooms into a disaster. It should be something that makes me implode, something that should light fireworks inside my heart, something that should rattle the rafters in my head like a windstorm, but I’m strangely calm – it’s like an anaesthetic, a soporific taste of normalcy that isn’t _quite_.  Him touching my fingers like that, with the whispering taste of lingering too long, feels right. I think gone are the times when I used to be so skittish about my feelings. It reminds me, again, of another time, when a similar thing happened, and it’s perfect, you know, to just stand shoulder to shoulder with him, barefoot, in my kitchen, as the eggs in the frying pan overcook a little too much.

 _Give me more. I’m greedy_.

Almost, _almost_ , it’s like nothing ever changed. The me of before, of last year, of last month even, might’ve been able to pretend one-hundred percent. Lock everything away in an iron-barred cage, and pretend.

Not me now. I am a collection of dismantled almosts.

(It’s better this way, I remind myself.)

(It hurts because there was never such a thing as normalcy. But I know that now. I’m learning to accept it.)

 

* * *

 

We eat our omelettes side-by-side on the edge of the pool, legs dangling freely in the sky-reflecting water. Marco laughs at me when he points out that I have egg stuck to my face, and I am tempted to persuade him into removing it for me – but I’m not that bad. I wipe my thumb across my upper lip –his eyes follow – and swipe the wild piece of omelette into my mouth, without his help.

“Are you sure you’re an adult?” Marco jokes as he licks his fingers – and I’m not deaf to sweet pop they make leaving his lips – and sets his empty plate down on the grass.

“Hey, I’m just appreciating your cooking,” I jibe, knocking him in the ribs with my elbow. He allows himself to be pushed, but doesn’t push back, splaying his palms on his thighs, and smiling softly down at his spread fingers,  and then the blueness of the water where he swirls his legs lazily. I watch him curiously, eyes tracing the line of his profile and the weight in his smile, but I don’t say anything. I swallow thickly instead.

I realise now that he’s not only a sunlit memory – the part of him that’s covered by cloud is just as important, just as _there_. Longing only for ever present sunlight is dumb – what idiot wants an eternal summer like that? Rain has its place in a drought, just like the other facets of Marco have a place in him, and in my heart. He’s sad, and I hate that, but I can accept it, because it’s all part of who he is, and always has been. There’s a sort of water in him that I can’t bring myself to fear; a rain that sings as it falls, and the parched ground is so in love with it that can only fathom praises when the droplets hit.

You’d think – considering me, and who I am – that I’d get sick of all that water. I don’t though.

It’s all okay with me – I think I can suffer any downpour now. The sun always shines above the clouds. It’ll be day time again somewhere.

Ymir’s words from last night echo in my mind, transparently clear.

 _If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn’t be a human being_.

Maybe her advice wasn’t so shitty after all.

 

* * *

 

When Marco has to leave – because he still has two appointments to fit in today after all, however hard I whine and pull despairingly pouty faces at him – he persistently tries to push away my hand that offers him the little, white envelope containing a few, twenty dollar bills.

“You do half the work these days,” he explains, trying to nudge my wrist away as I frown sourly at him. “I can’t accept it.”

“Take it,” I insist, grabbing his wrist with my free hand and prying his stiff fingers open, to shove the pay packet into his palm. He doesn’t pull away, just watches me silently, dark eyes on my focussed face as I recurl his fingers for him into a fist.  “It’s the least we can do for you, Marco. I wanna _help_.”

He knows what I mean. I don’t need to elaborate more than that. I want to help.

I look up at him – in the two or three inches of height he has over me – and search his expression. It’s intimate, because my fingers dawdle on his, but he breaks it off with a soft sigh out through his nose as he ducks his head, and holds the envelope against his stomach. The sun is low in his eyes, whilst high in the sky above us; he stares resolutely at that same patch of grass as before.

He looks down more often now.

But it’s not like the sky’s going anywhere.

 

* * *

 

It takes me a grand total of two microseconds to whip out my phone from my pocket when Marco’s van turns the corner at the end of my street. Everyone knows Ymir is famously bad at replying to text messages – almost gives Eren a run for his money. I hit the call button as soon as I find her contact number.

Six rings in, she answers, with a cackled, “So you changed your mind about hearing about my sex life, huh? Well, buckle up boy-o, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”

Five minutes of shouting down the phone line with one finger in my other ear finally silences her, ferocious cackling spliced with things I definitely don’t want to hear about what Historia can do with her tongue.

“Please just shut up for two seconds, oh my God! Yes, you get laid regularly, I _understand_ ,” I squawk, pacing across the lawn, making sure to dig my heels into the hard soil where I can. “I just wanna know if those tickets are still available, _Jesus Christ_!”

Ymir stops mid-crow with a surprised, round-sounding, “Oh! Why didn’t ya’ say so?”

“Yeah, _oh_ ,” I reply gruffly, “To be honest, I think you might have incinerated my cochlears so who knows if I actually _want_ those tickets anymore.”

“No, no, they’re still available, ‘course! You want both? You bringing a date?” I can practically hear her eyebrows wriggling as she holds back her snickering. “Who, I dunno, happens to have a thing for polo shirts and knows some inventive places to stick pool nets?”

“I’m going to hang up.”

“Wait, no, I’m sooooorry! The tickets are all yours, geez!” she pouts loudly. “It starts at eight, okay? I’ll stick you and pool boy on the guest list. Or maybe I won’t. Depends how _nice_ I’m feeling.”

“Pretty sure you’re the one who _asked_ me to come, Ymir,” I remind her pointedly. “I’ll see you there. Not that I’ll be able to look Historia in the eyes ever again. Hope you realise what you’ve done here.”

“Babe, it’s my duty to tell the world just how good she is when she does this thing with her—”

“ _Good bye_ , Ymir!”

 

* * *

 

I dream that night that I’m drowning again, but my legs kick against the current. When I reach the surface, air filling my lungs in a spluttering gasp, I see a familiar figure standing on the pool side. Tall, broad-shoulder, freckled – I think. I can’t quite tell, because most of his face is in shadow. He stretches out a hand, but it’s a little too far away to reach. I kick my legs harder to keep myself afloat.

There’s never usually a pool side in my dreams.

 

* * *

 

On Thursday, I manage to catch Marco on Skype just before he flits back out to his part-time job at the bar. (Which I still have no clue the name of, I might add – but Marco informs me that’s because he doesn’t do anything nearly as glamourous as mixing drinks; merely spending a few hours up to his elbows in soap suds in the back rooms.) (Clearly he doesn’t want to be caught off guard with me wandering in there unannounced one night. _Lame_.)

When the video feed bloops up on my screen, he’s fiddling with the webcam, tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration, and it takes all the willpower in the word to stare at my keyboard (and not the fucking marvellous view of his collar bones through the open vee of his shirt lapels), until he relaxes back in his chair, and shoots me an earnest, if strained smile.

Their dining room is lit warmly, plunges of yellow and gold from the disappearing sun dipping through the windows on one side of the room, lighting half of Marco’s face brilliantly, as well as the table behind him, where Mina’s coiled up on a chair, scribbling away on a scrap of paper. I call out to her through the feed; she glances up, frowns at the screen and sticks out her tongue at me, before furrowing back into whatever she’s busy drawing. Marco chuckles her name and shakes his head as he twists to face me again.

I casually bring up the topic of Friday – tomorrow – and with wide eyes, Marco informs me that he didn’t think I was being serious when I asked him along.

“Well, you were standing on the patio in your underwear,” he says, raising one eyebrow. “I was … going by the assumption you weren’t exactly thinking straight.”

“Nah, nah, I was completely serious!” I say, leaning forward in my desk chair enthusiastically. It’s not enough to be seeing his slightly fuzzy face on the laptop in front of me – I still wanna be closer. “I phoned Ymir yesterday, and she stuck us on the guest list. No charge. It’ll be great – or at least there’ll be free champagne.”

“Mom doesn’t let us drink champagne,” Mina perks up from over Marco’s shoulder, nibbling on the eraser on the end of her pencil. I grin wickedly in her direction on the camera.

“What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”

Marco leans back in his chair and spoils my fun, of course.

“I won’t drink – not if I’m going to have to drive,” he tells his sister matter-of-factly – she still maintains a scowl on her face, thick eyebrows knitting together. I kinda mimic her expression.

“Hey, no you’re not,” I scold Marco, whose eyes dart back up to the webcam perched on top of their rickety old desktop monitor. “I’m gonna drive. I’ll pick you up from your place. For starters, you won’t get your pool van within a hundred metre radius of that part of Trost, believe me.” I pause, and take a quick, but deep breath for measure. “Anyways. I _want_ to drive you. It’s no biggie.”

Marco rubs the end of his nose with his pointer finger as his gaze skirts the edges of the screen, flickering back to seemingly look me in the eye, and then away again just as quickly. The weird light in his dining room makes it hard to tell just how hard he’s blushing. (Makes me blush too. Awkward.)

“S-so, d’you want me to meet you at your house, or—?” he asks shyly. I shake my head.

“Nah, makes more sense just to pick you up.” He rubs his nose again – and I guess I can take pride in being able to recognise embarrassment from uncomfortable nervousness. This is the latter. I backtrack quickly, realising I might be overstepping the line into some physical parts of his life he might not want me to see with my own two eyes. “I mean … only if you’re cool with that. I totally get it if—”

“No,” Marco interrupts, before looking apologetic for cutting me off. “I-I … no, it’s cool. You can … yeah, you can come over. I’ll just … type you our address, hang on.”

He ducks his head to type, and I hear the clicking sound of an old keyboard through my headphones. A few moments later, a message pops up in the chat: an address in west Trost. It’s a little way out beyond where I went to high school, and one area code over from where Connie lives – so I can’t say I’ve ever ventured out that way, despite living in this city for so long. Oh well, think of it as an adventure, I guess.  

“Great,” I say simply, snatching my phone from the desk and taking a quick snapshot of Marco’s address, saving it to my album for when I undoubtedly have to struggle with my satnav tomorrow. “You got a suit or something to wear, right? Dunno what they’d think about cornflower blue polo shirts, to be honest. Well, Ymir would probably be chill with it…”

“Yeah, I’ve got something,” Marco says, a little reservedly – I shoot him as best a flashy grin as I can muster. It’s not a trick of the light to say it seems to melt some of the tension off his face, right? He glances down again – at his wrist, I think, but it’s out of the picture – and then huffs. “Looks like I’ve gotta go, Jean. What … what time tomorrow?”

I tap my fingers against my chin – smooth as a baby’s butt, considering I actually remembered, and felt up to, shaving this morning. Kinda nice not to feel so prickly.

“How’s seven?” I ask thoughtfully. “Starts at eight, so … gives us enough time to battle the nightmare traffic and get lost and stuff. That good?”

Marco grants me the fleeting glimpse of one of his old, Hollywood smiles that pretty much stops my heart dead in my chest. I grip the edge of the desk with one hand, and hope he doesn’t see how tempted I am to whine in literal _pain_. It passes so quickly though – and his face is teased by a sunkenness again that he has little control over.

“That sounds great,” he says softly. “I’ll see you, Jean. Tomorrow. Have a good evening.”

“Keep your phone on, alright?” I chirp, as he leans forward to make a click with the mouse. He glances up, confused, and I allow myself to snigger at his expression. “What? Washing dishes must be dull as fu— _hell_. Text me when you get to work. I’ll message you to keep you company or something.”

His jaw drops open momentarily, before he tightly clamps his teeth, and nods firmly. I grin through the feed at him, rolling my tongue across my canines out of satisfied habit.

“Night, Marco,” I chime, and then shifting in my chair (although it makes no difference whatsoever), I call: “Night, Mina!”

She doesn’t say anything bar probably a grumble. I roll my eyes dramatically, and return to look at Marco.

“Night, Jean,” he says finally, and the web cam feed fizzles into darkness, white noise zipping through my headphones. I wait for a moment to see if he’ll type anything more, but when the little green tick next to his display picture turns white, I push myself away from my desk, spinning around a couple times, deflating slowly.

 

* * *

 

I wake up early on Friday because I can’t sleep. It’s not so much the tight grip of insomnia which I know as well as the back of my hand – but rather a spider’s web of nerves churning in the pit of my stomach.

It’s a pretty standard thing, I guess: that twitching anticipation in your gut, restless in the run up to knowing you’re going somewhere. Having to kill the time between makes me fidget like God knows what; if ever I was the embodiment of a white kid from a nineties TV show lying on his bed, repeatedly tossing a baseball in the air whilst staring at the ceiling, it’s fucking _now_.

It takes half an hour of wheeling myself around my room on my desk chair, and seeing how far I can launch myself if I kick off from one wall, before I decide to start raiding my wardrobe. Not that it’s the best part of nine hours before I have to leave the house to drive to Marco’s. Not at all.

Okay, so it’s not like I actually start getting dressed that early. (I’d be bound to spill something on myself if I did.) But I lay all three of the suits I own on my bed, sitting cross-legged on my desk chair in front of them as I appraise each one for their relative ability to make my ass look great. (I stopped fooling myself into thinking I had any shame a _long_ time ago.)

My funeral suit is probably not the best choice. Not that I’ve actually worn it to a funeral, merely social events that-sure-make-me- _feel_ -like-I’d-rather-be-at-a-funeral, if you know what I mean. Mom and dad had a habit of dragging me to those when I was back in high school, before I became a self-pronounced social recluse; dad used to disappear to the bar with all his work colleagues, and I’d be left traipsing around after mom and all the other socialite wives discussing hair and babies and holding their glasses of wine for them when they needed to nip to the bathroom in great hoards.

Plus, black is kinda boring.

Of my other two suits, one is grey – kinda flashy, with its deep red lapels. It was a gift from _mamie_ , the last time I was in France … which also was a real long time ago, now that I think about it. I must’ve been, what, fifteen or sixteen? I doubt the thing even fits anymore, as I squint at the sleeve length questioningly. It’s a shame, ‘cus it’s a nice suit, and it cost a pretty penny, and I reckon I wore the thing a grand total of once … and that was when it was being fitted.

My other suit is navy blue – the jacket more like a blazer in style, with a nice pin stripe lining that not too offensive to my tastes. I shrug it on, and just like the grey one, the sleeves are a little on the short side. Looks like I’ll be rolling them up then.

I file away my other suits in my wardrobe to gather dust – I don’t think mom would let me donate them, even if I insist that I barely wear them, _and_ they’re too small. Shame Marco’s taller than me. Coulda given them to him.

Thinking about Marco makes me fidget even more. I start pacing around my room – which is _totally_ not fucking weird – glancing at the clock on my nightstand every two-point-five seconds. Time doesn’t pass all too quickly that way.

I wonder what he’s going to be like tonight – what side of him I’m going to see. I think about the party, us lying on the grass like a couple of drunk goons – _which we were_ – staring at the stares and laughing. I wonder if he’ll feel guilty for having fun again.

 _If he even thinks it’s fun_. What if he doesn’t? Oh man, what if he’s just really uncomfortable the whole time? And like, not even because of the art stuff, which he’ll probably have about as much clue about as I do Connie’s obsession with football. I did kinda bully him into this – how do you turn down a guy yelling at you in his best Calvin Klein print boxers?

It says something about how frantic I’m feeling when I actively choose to go and brave the shower to wash my hair – manic scrubbing of my arms and legs whilst trying to avoid to full blast of the jet stream is enough to keep my mind busy for a while, and then blitzing myself with the hairdryer for some time longer after that. I spend at least an hour in the bathroom with a towel barely draped around my hips trying to quiff my hair in just the right way – but the best I achieve is becoming a fire safety hazard with all the product that ends up clinging grossly to my roots. I try slicking it all back, consider the look of a complete _tool_ for a second, and then angrily ruffle my fingers through the shaggy blonde strands of the dead animal chilling on top of my head. Almost tempted to start pulling it out in clumps, if I’m honest. Fucking hell, how does mom _do_ this hair stuff.

I start getting changed around four, out of fear that I _might very well_ start ripping my hair out in frustration. I wriggle into my suit pants with an even more elegant version of the skinny jeans dance – these were definitely never this tight – but I swear to God I can’t have put on any weight over the last year. I ponder over white shirts for an age as well,  because believe me, I might complain about the gratuitous amount of Ralph Lauren in my wardrobe, but, y’know, there’s a difference between an Ainsley and a Londoner, and I’ve gotta look _just right_ —

Wow, I shouldn’t be this concerned – it’s not like I’m putting this on for all those Trost bigwigs at the exhibition. My dad’s probably spread the word around the who’s-who that I’m now not much more than a family shit stain, so fingers crossed no-one will come up and try to talk to me whilst we’re there. (And like hell I’d remember any of their crusty, old white men names anyway.)

I could tell you who I _am_ putting it on for though.

 _I don’t think anyone’s being fooled by what going on here_ , I muse, as I twist to check out how my ass looks in these pants, with the shirt I picked out tucked in. _Nice_.

 _Not that he’s supposed to be looking at your butt, Jean. We’re going to an art gallery. Y’know, where you spend the time looking at_ art _._

Pfft, whatever. I shrug on the blazer, rolling the sleeves up to just over my elbows – now, tie or no tie? I slide across the floor to my open wardrobe, my scarce selection of ties strung up on a rack on the inside of the door. Black is probably safe, I reckon, as I hold up the skinny strip of satin against my throat, inspecting the damage. Yeah, I reckon that looks pretentious enough.

I manage to make choosing shoes and finding my tie clip a process that lasts the best part of an hour – the little fucking _rascal_ of a silver slide having hidden itself under my bed, clearly from the last time I wore it and kicked it there, out of sight and mind.

 _Okay, pants, shirt, tie, jacket, shooooes_ , I mentally tally, checking out my reflection again in the mirror. _What else_? I rake my hands through my hair once more, and I guess it looks like _bird’s nest_ is the look I’ll be rocking tonight. Oh well, it’s not a _half bad_ bird’s nest, if you squint.

I grab my sunglasses from the bottom of my rucksack, sadly propped against the end of my bed, and hook them over the lip of the breast pocket of my blazer – and reaching for my phone, I seize the opportunity for a cheeky Snap Chat of my get up.

 _looking sharp dude_ , is the response I receive almost instantly from Connie. I also send it on to Ymir and Historia, but refrain from sending it to Sasha, because I know _exactly_ what sort of comments I’ll get back.

After I’ve messed around choosing a filter for Instagram – not that I was persuaded to get it by Sasha, no, _not at all_ – my clock has ticked steadily passed six, which sends a spark rushing up through my system like a God-damn _fix_ in my veins. I can start driving over at six, right? That’s totally acceptable. It’s polite to be a little bit early. Right? _Right_.

I pat down my pockets like I normally would for a pack of cigarettes, but catch myself when my fingers swipe over the linen of my trousers. _No_.

I distract myself from the craving by slipping my phone and my wallet into my pockets, as well as Nanaba’s business card, as an afterthought. Not sure why I think of it – or why I’d even need it – but feeling it in my back pocket gives me some sense of pride.

Six-twenty. _I can totally start driving over_.

I push shut the lid on my laptop, and head towards the door, fingers toying on the light switch when I glance sideways at the glimmer of silver of the spiral bind of my sketchpad shoved down the side of my bed. Something spurs me on.

 _Maybe I should_.

 

* * *

 

I pick three of my sketchbooks from under my bed, in the end, which Nanaba didn’t see, and tuck them under my arm with a discovered sense of purpose as I stride down the stairs, feeling strangely tall. The soles of my shoes click on the wooden floor, and you know what, this is the most fucking _alive_ I’ve felt in a long time.

I pause briefly in front of the mirror next to the front door to make sure my lapels are still sitting straight; I just the jacket a brisk tug, and nod approvingly at myself.

 _C’mon, Jean. Let’s rock and roll. You got this tonight_.

I whip on my sunglasses as I take a step out the front door, greeting by the golden beams of a low-lying sun above grey-slate rooftops. I almost find myself smiling – like a dork – to myself, save for the voice that calls out to me from behind.

“You look nice, honey.”

I catch mom leaning around the doorframe of the kitchen, scooping strands of ash-blonde hair behind her ear, apprehensively, forcing some sort of friendly smile onto her claret lips.

I taste thanks on the tip of my tongue, without even realising. I almost say it. I almost turn around and grin, you know – _grin like it used to be_.

The door swings shut behind me before I have the chance to decide what side of the line I still want to walk.

 

* * *

 

I try not to let the feeling bother me, but it does extinguish some of the good fire in my stomach, tinging me with the now-bitter aftertaste of smoke. I throw my sketchbooks into the back seat of the car, and I try not to dwell on it.

_No, come on. Tonight’s not about mom. Focus. You’ve been sitting on your ass for days. Don’t let this drag you back down there._

I slide into the driver’s seat, flexing my shoulders as I do, glancing more at my own reflection than the road behind me in the rear-view mirror as I reverse out of the drive and make a hard left.

I figure it’ll be easier to sneak through the suburbs at this time of the day; the freeway on a Friday night is like asking for a nail in your ass. Kinda painful, and really fucking _dumb_.

Waiting at the intersection at the end of our road, trying not to think about mom’s face peeking from the kitchen doorway, I wrestle for my phone from my pockets, flicking up the image of Marco’s address, and attempting to balance it poorly behind the steering wheel with one hand whilst the lights change to green.

The satnav shouts at me loudly to make a U-turn and head towards the freeway as I tap in the details, squinting at the screen against the sinking sun, but I remain persistent. TomTom can suck my dick. I ain’t about to drive head long into a three-hour rush-hour hold-up.

Eventually, it gives up, though not after I’m pretty sure I’ve made its life a hundred times worse by heading in most-likely the wrong direction. (I’d been using Connie’s house as a general bearing.) (And not a very good one at that.)

I zip across the junctions in the Jag, mentally laughing at all the people held up behind the red lights heading into the city centre; rows and rows of people crammed in thrumming tin cans, hands hanging listlessly out of open windows, puffs of smoke drifting upwards from traffic-jam cigarette breaks, the music-less cacophony of car horns bleating impatiently down the backlog. The black snake of metal roofs winds back as far down the street as the eye can reach, and then some.

The big, cream and taupe-brick houses of my estate, with their neatly trimmed front lawns, lusciously green despite the summer drought, dissipate after I cross the junction of the northern freeway. Grass-banked sidewalks give way to wide roads, lined by boxy, white office blocks straight out the seventies, the outcast businesses that don’t fit into the swanky, glass-fronted skyline of midtown. Gas stations, three 7/11s, a Chinese restaurant that looks like its seen better days but probably not better food flit past my window … and I can’t say north Trost is a thing of beauty. A blundering, white SUV cuts me off as it swerves into the Hertz garage on the other side of the street, the driver giving me a middle finger as his tires screech – _well fuck you very much, that was_ your _bad driving, shit head_.

I slink slowly through narrow side streets to avoid the worst of the traffic and the less desirable parts of the northern suburbs, meandering around potholes and simmering asphalt as shoddy diners and dive bars become the traditional, sand-coloured walls of old Trost architecture, before the tidal waves of the black and grey came along and stole all of the city’s history.

Over the junction at which a right would take me towards my old high school and Connie’s place, and as I venture further west, the houses seem to become smaller, squattier, packed together like cattle. I frown as road signs tell me to slow my speed, the Jag rumbling over cracks in untreated tarmac as I roll into a residential area.

This part of west Trost is not the worst place to live in the city – not by any means. But it never really caught up with the boom of the rest of the city, and it’s almost like driving back in time about ten or fifteen years. There are no grid-like, formulated roads lined with proud, white condos, each augmented exactly the same distance away from other; no fine divide between grass and sidewalk, where browning lawns creep and crumble over concrete; no smoothly paved driveways boasting the newest make of this, that, or whatever. No; instead the squat, asymmetric houses, each different from the one before, are shrouded by untrimmed trees, hemmed in by dusty-looking cars parked on the street side, a patch-work of different coloured tarmac dividing either side of each street.

It seems warmer though – more rustic, more _friendly_ , compared to home. It feels like people live here: live here, go to work from here, walk their dogs here, chat to their neighbours when they see them in the street _here_.

I’m not sure of the last time I saw this many Sedans straight out of the nineties, but it seems every house in this neighbourhood owns one – that, or a rusty Chevy, or a Toyota Previa minivan, or both. Glancing down at the smooth, black leather of the dashboard of the Jag, all its chrome accents and spotless, dark-wood finishings, and the squishy plushness under my butt, it’s hard to forget that _Luxury_ isn’t just a word in the name of this car. Knurled aluminium and satin rosewood and six-way adjustment for each seat and 250 watt sound system and all this stuff that feels suddenly far too much.  I feel like slinking lower and lower in my seat, imagining the eyes of all the pedestrians I pass judging me for the thrum of my fifty-thousand dollar engine.

The satnav blurts at me to take a left – so I do, swinging around slowly onto another, near-identical street, lined with a mix of rickety, old-wood houses and converted bungalows, strung up to a mesh of telephone wires that stretch like a loosely woven mesh across the width of the road, a pair or two of knotted sneakers thrown up over the cables. There are a bunch of kids playing in the middle of the asphalt, booting a flat football around between goals mouths marked with piles of sweaters, a particularly scrawny, weedy looking kid doing his best at tackling the ball when it gets too close to a score.

Their boisterous shouting ricochets through my open window as I toot my horn to warn them to move. It’s practised – the way they all scoop up of their goal markers, and the small pile of sunhats abandoned to the side that I’m sure their mothers insisted on them wearing when they went outside, in barely a few seconds, lining up on the crumbling edge of the sidewalk and leering at my car as I creep past. I glance back at them in my rear-view mirror as they all run back out into the road behind me, and continue their game without any hesitation – the ball flies past the weedy kid’s head after only a few seconds, and there’s a loud uproar of cheering as a few of the boys bump chests.

You don’t see that in my neighbourhood; the sort of parents who live on my estate wouldn’t be caught dead with their child getting scraped up in the middle of the road and running back home at sun down with bloody knees and an ecstatic sort of tuckered-out grin. It’s nice to see it here, I guess. They look like they’re having fun.

I spot Marco’s van parked half-way down the street, some kid having written something crude in the dust on the back door. I drive past it, deciding to throw a U-turn, and then come back and park in front of it – and also try to figure out which house is his as I do so. It’s hard to make out any names or numbers on the houses themselves, so I end up leaning out my window and squinting at the family names scribbled on the sides of mailboxes, until I find _casa de_ _Bodt_.

I guess you could call it kinda quaint – and I try, I really do, to try and see the white-washed bungalow-with-an-attic-conversion from the point of view of someone who hasn’t had the life I’ve had. The windows are large, framed by colourful, if unruly plant boxes hanging from the sill, and even though the grass is patchy, and the flowers in the flower bed need pruning, and the wooden doors of the garage I can see around the side look like they’re falling off their hinges, I get the impression someone cares about this house. There’s an old, grey, clapped out car with a twenty-year-old registration plate parked on a driveway sprouted with clumps of weeds through the cracks in the slabs, and a small, red bicycle lies abandoned in the middle of the lawn; on the porch there’s a whole stack of plant pots, some empty, some full with slightly wilting greenery, alongside a pile of muddy shoes resting on a doormat, left to dry, I figure, in the sun during the day.

I drop the handbrake and kill the engine, the nose of my Jag facing the nose of Marco’s van, and check the time on my phone as the satnav turns itself off. It’s twenty to seven. Okay, so I’m a _little_ early, but I figured that much. I glance out of my window again at the house, and wonder if it’s acceptable to go in yet – or whether it would throw Marco too much to have me lingering around for longer than he expected. I could tell he was uncomfortable about the idea of me coming ‘round for starters … though whether that was because he was afraid of me seeing where he lived, or because he is afraid of me meeting … _his family_ , well, I don’t know. And it’s hard to guess. But I don’t want to give him another excuse to reattain any distance.

 _Suppose I better go find out_ , I think, my hand moving to the door handle, but no further. My fingers curl around the aluminium, but don’t pull; the car door stays firmly shut, and I realise, _fuck, I’m nervous too._

_What if I slip up?_

I drum my fingers against my thigh, puff out a breath of anxious air, and then swipe my sweaty palms down my pant legs. The butterflies in my stomach have graduated to doing full-on barrel rolls and loop-the-loops. Man, I feel antsy. Kinda like a pinball machine, buzzers ringing, lights flashing, little silver ball spinning around and crashing into the sides, and I feel like my circuits are pretty close to frying on me. There’s a fizzle of electricity keeping me wired.

 _Do I still look good? My hair didn’t go flat on the way over here, did it_?

I jiggle the rear-view mirror to meet my eye line, fluffing up the front of my hair which has fallen limp in the heat. I tuck my sunglasses back over the lip of my pocket, and, licking my fingers, try to smooth down the ashy-blonde fly-aways above my ears.

_Okay? No, no, geez, it’s not okay, I look like a prick. This is not cool—_

In a brief glance back towards the house, I notice a hitch in the fine, mesh curtains drawn across the window of the front room, and a nose squished up against the glass; dark, beady eyes watch me intently from inside. Mina.

 _O-oh shit. Well, I guess that’s me caught out_.

I try once more to try and repair my hasty attempt at a quiff, before I reluctantly haul my ass out of the car, regretting leaving the safety of the air-conditioned driver’s seat when I feel the full heat of the evening sun scorching the back of my neck. I lock the door, and make sure to check the handle, not unaware of the fact some of those soccer-playing kids are still looking curiously in my direction, and I’m sure they mean no harm, but … well, y’know. Better safe than sorry.

I smooth out the fabric of my suit, and roll my shoulders, mustering up enough pluck to see me start walking down the overgrown path that cuts through their front yard to the base of the porch steps. Mina still has her face smooshed against the window, palms flush now, on the glass, and she twists to watch me walk up the stairs – which creak uncomfortably under my weight. I’m not sure if I’m meant to wave awkwardly at her, and her stare is becoming kinda _unsettling_ , so I decide instead to glower at my shoes as I approach the front door. Ugh. Didn’t polish them.

Taped over the doorbell is a little note in an unruly scrawl: _bell broken, please knock (loudly)_. I traipse my eyes over the curled letters as I raise my hand to rap as hard as I dare on the glass panel, it vibrating worryingly with each knock of my knuckles. There’s no noise that I can make out on the other side of the door, but when I glance back over my shoulder towards Mina, she springs to her feet and races away from the window – I hear her pattering echo through the house, and then the latch clicks.

Mina opens the door barely a crack, and squints at me – _hard_. Nice.

“Hey squirt,” I say, flashing her my best smile, despite the somersaults still going on in my gut. “You expecting me, right?”

“Marco’s expecting you,” she replies sternly, opening the door a little wider. “I’m not. Unless you got something for me.”

“Something for you? I didn’t realise there was a toll charge.” I raise my eyebrows, surprised, and wrack my brain. I don’t even have any chewing gum to spare this time – and I’m pretty sure all I could offer from my car is an empty Styrofoam coffee cup, or some leftovers paper napkins from McDonalds. Not exactly a great welcoming gift. She continues to stare firmly up at me, thick eyebrows set in a determined, yet, I guess, endearing frown. I don’t think I have much choice in playing along. “Uh … like what?”

She scans me briefly, and then her eyes focus on my sunglasses hooked in my pocket.

“I want your sunglasses. And then I’ll let you in.”

“I’m pretty sure this is bullying, kid,” I say plainly, but she doesn’t budge from where she blocks the gap of the door, arms folded determinedly. I sigh resolutely – exaggerating the heave of my shoulders and my surrender, and then toss her my Raybans. “Fine, you win. Though they won’t fit you.”

Triumphantly, she unfolds my glasses, and slides them onto her freckled, button nose; they slip a little, but don’t quite fall off. A victorious, vibrant grin lights up her face – rare enough, I reckon, that I can’t help but smile a little back at her. She evidently removes her foot from behind the door, allowing it to swing open fully into their hallway: walls painted a sunny, slightly out-dated yellow, and lined with framed cross-stitch prints of flowers and gaudy sayings that you might buy at a craft fair or whatever. I take a step over the threshold, and my foot barely comes down on the _welcome home_ door mat before Mina turns back to me, watching me over the rims of _my_ sunglasses, and informs me bluntly, “You gotta take your shoes off before you’re allowed in.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I retort curtly, but she shakes her head and points down at her own, sock-covered feet.

“Nope. It’s the rules. Mom doesn’t want you gettin’ mud on the carpets.” She peeks down at my shoes again, and puckers her mouth. “Although your shoes do look kinda clean. But … I dun’ wanna get in trouble for letting you in ‘n’ making stuff dirty.”

I stare at her questioningly, but trying to reason with Mina is more than likely going to be a losing battle for me. Plus, if that’s what Mrs. Bodt wants, I’m a good enough guest to do what I’m told. I toe off my dress shoes, trying carefully not to scuff the leather, and then prop them in a space on the shoe rack behind the front door. I straighten up with a click of my back, and turn back to Mina, who now has her arms folded firmly over her scrawny chest once more.

“Anything else I need to ditch before I can come in?” I ask her dryly, tempted to mimic her posture (but I resist it, because I wouldn’t put it past her to kick my butt right back out the way I just came in).

“Your hair looks kinda dumb,” she replies, without missing a beat. “But Marco will like it, so I think you’re okay.”

I don’t know if that’s meant to settle me or not, because clearly she doesn’t like how my hair looks – but that’s not really a change from any other day. And it’s not like I’ve been _battling with it for hours to try and make it do what I want it to do, no … no, not at all … fuck._

“Where _is_ Marco?” I decide to ask, in an attempt to change the topic of conversation, as Mina starts to pad along the hallway, weaving around a few bags and an old vacuum cleaner propped up against the wall. I guess I’m supposed to follow – or just risk standing in the doorway like a loser. I remember to shut the front door, and then hurry after her, stealing glances at the busy clutter lining the hall, the old photo frames on the walls, and the choice of flowers in a vase on the dressing table.

“He’s still in his room getting ready,” she replies deftly, swinging around the end of the bannisters when we come to the bottom of the stairs. “He hogged the bathroom for like … five hours today, you know? Even when I banged on the door telling him I needed to use the toilet, he still didn’t come out for aaaages.”

I can’t help but chuckle at that, and shoot a fond gaze up the stairs, finding some strange, probably selfish, reassurance in the knowledge that maybe he’s as nervous as I am. Not that I’d care if he turned up wearing a potato sack … he’d still look great.

 _Just greater in a nice suit_ , my inner monologue adds. I feel a tinge of heat in my face at the thought. Down, boy. 

Mina twists back around the bannister, and I get the impression that she’s not only miffed about the bathroom being taken all day, but also that she now has to deal with me whilst we wait for her brother.

She’s lucky though, because a voice hollers from – _somewhere_.

“Mina? Was that the door I just heard?” I recognise Mrs Bodt’s voice from that one time I sort of met her on a Skype call with Marco, but that thought doesn’t quell the nervous prickle that scampers over my skin. It makes it ten times worse, if I’m honest.

_Okay, okay, remember everything you were ever taught about making a good impression … which is nothing right now. Fuck. Fucking fuck._

Mrs Bodt pokes her head out from the door at the end of the corridor; her unruly, dark hair is piled on top of her head in a thick bun, and she has her spectacles resting on her forehead, a smear of flour on her cheek. There’s a well-worn kitchen apron knotted around her plump waist, and a tea towel slung over her shoulder. I do my best to plaster a smile onto my face, but it’s watery as fuck. My brain is blank and I’m questioning whether I can even remember _how to English_ , and all I can seem to recognise is a muted form of _dread_ in the forefront of my mind.

 _I shouldn’t be this scared about meeting his parents_.

“It’s just Jean, mom,” Mina calls back, and I almost want to roll my eyes, if I wasn’t focussing so hard on keeping myself from twitching. “He came early.”

Mrs Bodt’s mouth forms a round o-shape, and her bushy eyebrows shoot up into her freckled forehead. I meander around the side of the stairs sheepishly to make myself seen, subtly trying to wipe my tacky palms on the back of my trousers. A noise of surprise springs from her mouth, and then her face lights up with a homely smile that makes my heart flutter.

“Oh! Jean!” she chimes, sweeping the dish cloth from her shoulder to wipe the flour from her face and from her hands as she comes out of – what I guess must be – the kitchen. “It’s lovely to meet you in person at last.”

In the few seconds it takes for me to get my act together and cross the space to greet her halfway, I find my eyes drawn the crow’s feet that line her face, the signs of tiredness and wear, and how she shuffles her feet along the floor in her slippers. She looks a lot like Marco, more than any grainy web cam feed could ever show me. There’s the same sign of openness and eagerness in her face, and the same sheen of weariness that masks that light.

“Uh … you too, Mrs Bodt. Nice … _to meet you_ , I mean,” I say, battling for control of my voice as I extend a hand to her to shake. She bypasses it completely though, scooping me up into a massive bear-hug that squashes a pathetic sort of squeak from my mouth. Welp.

“You can call me Anita, _caro_ ,” she announces proudly, squeezing my rigid arms against my sides, before stepping away with a broad smile and a glow in her cheeks. I try to remember how to function normally, and not look like a startled rabbit in headlights. _Right, okay, so hugging is a thing in this family …_

(For a moment, I’m left trying to recall the last time I saw my mom or dad greet someone like that, let alone a friend. Let alone _family_. A surly handshake or a chaste kiss on the cheek has always been the norm for us.)

The sparkle in her eyes at how glad she is to meet me does something to kindle a pride in my chest, smoking out some of my agitated nervousness. I wonder … _I wonder if Marco’s talked about me to her a lot_. She’s looking at me like she already knows everything about me, for God’s sake. I chew the inside of my cheek to try to hold back the smile of my own that begs my lips at the thought of that.

Mina interrupts when she tugs impatiently at her mom’s apron and caws loudly. She’s got no time for our formalities. (And to be honest, when I was ten, food was all that was on my mind as well.)

“Moooom, is dinner ready yet? I’m so hungry I might _die_ ,” she whines, and Anita feigns a horrified expression.

“You might _die_?” she gasps, resting her knobbled hands on her daughter’s shoulders, stroking her fingers through strands of Mina’s unbrushed hair. “Well, that does sound quite serious, doesn’t it? But you’re going to have to last a little longer, _piccola_. You can have a glass of milk to tide you over, if you’d like. But you should make sure to ask Jean if he wants anything first, alright?”

Mina pulls a disgusted face at that, scrunching up her eyes and her nose. Anita untangles her fingers from her hair, and pats her encouragingly on the shoulder. Mina pouts.

“I’m not a big milk fan, so I’m okay,” I interject, saving the kid’s ass from having to do something so tedious as _talking to me_. “Plus, I … I don’t wanna risk spilling anything on my clothes before we go out. Thanks, though.”

Anita hums as Mina pulls a self-satisfied sort of smirk in my direction, and my sunglasses slip completely off the bridge of her nose; Mrs Bodt – _Anita_ , sorry – catches them expertly, thankfully.

“Looks like this one’s been _stealing_ your clothes though, hasn’t she?” she chuckles, as Mina reaches out to try and retrieve my Raybans from her mother. “But you’re right – don’t want to ruin such a lovely suit.” I feel the back of my neck heat up at that, and shuffle awkwardly on my feet. “If you change your mind though, Jean, just give me a shout, okay? If you want something to eat before you go, it’s not a problem. Anything you want. Now—” She glances briefly up the stairs, and raises her eyebrows. “– if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go _hurry my son along_ , but my husband’s in the living room. Maybe Mina will take you through if we ask her nicely.”

Anita looks down expectantly at her daughter who furrows her brow and tries to grab my sunglasses back once more – successfully, this time. She props them on her forehead stubbornly, mimicking the way her mom wears her glasses, and then heaves a fed-up sigh.

“ _Fine_ ,” she puffs, detangling herself from her mom’s apron, and brushing past me, tugging on the hem of my blazer. “Come on Jean, this way.”

I shoot Anita a wobbly smile, which she returns with one of her own, warming and radiant like a gentle breeze on a summer’s evening spent relaxing in the back yard, before she hurries up the stairs, slinging the dish cloth back over her shoulder as she goes.

Mina digs all the gold out of sighing dramatically as she tows me along the hallway, just to remind me how annoyed she is about having to mind my skinny ass, no doubt believing that I’m perfectly capable of finding the living room _by myself_.

She has a tendency to surprise me though.

“Hey Jean,” she says, out of the blue as she kicks a wild shoe to the side of the hallway, “I was just , uh … thinking.” She stops herself, just outside of a closed door, her little hand resting of the brass handle. She scowls – at herself – and mulls over her thoughts whilst gritting her teeth. I’m intrigued, to say the least – and that’s even with me being relatively used to Mina’s eclectic changes of pace. She stares hard at the floor, so I decide to prompt her on.

“Yeah? Whatcha been thinking about?”

Her lower lip wobbles as she nibbles on it, an unusual sign of vulnerability.

“’Bout nothing,” she mumbles, fetching my sunglasses from her forehead so she can fiddle with them. What happened to all that bravado, huh? ”Well … not really. ‘Bout Marco.”

“What about Marco?” I ask, trying to reason with the way my voice becomes more animated with the syllables in his name.

Mina grumbles something inaudible and scuffs her sock-covered foot against the carpet.

“’S nothing. He’s just been kinda _weird_ lately. Thought you might know what’s wrong with him.”

Oh. Damn.

I don’t have time to blurt out some garbled nonsense about what I think might be up with Marco – beyond the obvious, of course – because Mina pushes down on the door handle and opens up the living room.

And then I realise the implication of what Anita had said just seconds ago.

 _My husband’s in the living room_.

I don’t know what I expect. Well, I do, but it’s not this.

I expect machines and tubes and _bleep-bleep-bleep_. I expect glassy eyes and a sallow face and grisly things that make me want to turn away – the smell of hospitals and the weight of death in the air. I expect a man who looks like he’s dying.

Mr Bodt just looks tired – like everything and _everyone_ else in the household. His eyes are cast down, focussed diligently on the crossword in his lap when we enter the room, but a smile flickers across his drawn face when he looks up.

You can see where Marco gets his facial features from – the strong jaw, the nobleness in his nose and brow, the eyes dipped in a waxen, yellow-brown sunlight. He doesn’t share Marco’s colourings though; the freckles and the dark hair, they’re clearly from Anita. Mr Bodt, for what little hair he has left, is greying, probably once blonde, or maybe a light, tawny brown before his age and his illness caught up to him. His skin is pallid and sullen, white and freckle-free, and a fine, clear tube runs around the back of his head from his nostrils. I try not to stare, but my eyes follow the line down to a small, wheeled bag parked at the base of the arm chair he’s sitting in – I can’t remember what they call those things. A cannula maybe? Something about delivering extra oxygen and removing excess fluid from the lungs, from what I remember of reading the Wikipedia entry.

I can’t help but wonder what it’s like – not being able to breathe on his own? Like drowning, maybe? The volume of all that fluid – all that _water_ – crushing his lungs. I guess I can empathise, in a sick kinda way.

Mina bounds over to her father, any traces of trepidation about Marco flown on the wind, and Mr Bodt sets down his newspaper to receive her with open arms as she crashes into his lap. I wince, because I see the strain in his face, despite the smile. _That_ is as clear as day.

“Hey munchkin,” he says – his voice croaks. “I thought you were outside?”

“Nah, I was, but mom called me in. But dinner isn’t even ready yet!” Mina complains, scrabbling to perch on the arm of the chair, and probably kneeing her dad in the process, although he doesn’t let on if she does.

I shift awkwardly into the room a little further, wondering whether I should close the door behind me, when Mina decides to introduce me to her dad. I feel the familiar prickle shudder up my spine.

“Mom said I should introduce you to Jean though,” she says explanatorily, pointing at me. I feel a little like I want to shrink away. “That’s Jean.”

 _Short, sweet, and to the point, I suppose_.

I swallow thickly, and cross the room in a few strides, extending my hand, for sure this time, to Mr Bodt. I can feel my eyes are wide, and I’m trying, I really am _trying_ to be normal here, but it feels like this moment is too _important_ to be able to justify anything, really. I just hope it doesn’t look like I’m staring at him.

“S-sir,” I say, as I take his hand and shake it, although my grip is weak and limp. (Although, his is too, so maybe he doesn’t notice so much.) (I briefly think about how my dad would have my guts for garters with a handshake like that.)

“It’s Matthias,” he replies, and it’s hard to read him. He’s not an open book like Anita. His voice is low, raspy and breathless, and … empty, in a way. Maye not devoid of feeling, no – he pets Mina’s knee affectionately with his left hand – but it’s hollow. There’s no sustenance behind the sounds his mouth makes.

I wonder what he thinks of me – I wonder who he thinks I am. And I mean, obviously he knows I’m his son’s friend, but I wonder … if there’s _more_ than that. What’s he thinking about when he looks at me dressed _like this_?

“It’s nice to meet you, son.”

“You too,” I reply formally, retrieving my hand and clenching my fingers into my palm. In my head, I stutter and stumble over what else I could say. What am I _meant_ to say? It’s like I can smell the blood, but who knows where in my head it’s leaking from. Too dark to tell. But I kinda fear turning on the lights, because I’m afraid of what I might say, what I might do, what I might see.

You can’t just say, “ _I’m sorry you’re dying_ ”.  Sorry? It barely means anything. “ _Is there anything I can do to help_?”. Does he even know that I know? I sure wouldn’t appreciate some strange kid in an Armani suit flouncing into my house and saying he feels _pain_ for me.

That kid knows nothing of what it must be like.

 _I_ know nothing.

I gulp, despite my mouth being dry as a desert, and step backwards, insides of my knees hitting the edge of the couch. I lower myself carefully onto the squidgy, flowery _disaster_ : stiff back, rigid neck, hands clamped in my lap, ass basically hanging off the very edge of the cushions. I plant my sock-covered feet firmly on the floor, and I resent myself for making things feels so awkward.

There’s a war going on inside Mr Bodt’s ribcage, and the ground is soaked now, soaked and soft and weak with the blood of many, and I wonder how much it hurts, right here, right _now_. I wonder how deep the wounds go – beyond the fact his own body is essentially _cannibalising_ itself – I wonder if it hurts even more because he catches himself, some nights, imagining what might have happened if he’d thrown those cigarettes in the trash that first time his wife said she didn’t like the stench of smoke clinging to his clothes—

Or maybe not. I don’t know how it is for him. Maybe the pain comes and goes.

What I do know, and it twists my insides to watch it, is that however deep his wounds are, he has the same, kind touch as Marco does. He turns back to his daughter – not-quite-ten year old Mina, who has known nothing, nothing else but  him dying slowly her entire God-damn _life_ – and her eyes fucking sparkle as he engages her in a croaky conversation about her day.

She crows about meeting a dog three streets over, tied up to a lamppost, who was really keen to play fetch, but really bad at actually bringing the sticks back when she threw them. She boasts about managing to beat some kid called Boris in a bicycle race, and then how he’d cried like a baby when she’d peddled circles around him. She bounces up and down excitedly when she recites a story about throwing a mud clump in the face of another kid called Samuel when he said girls weren’t allowed on his soccer team because they, quote, _suck_.

I don’t even think I hear her breathe once, her skinny legs jittery, and her hands flailing wildly as she explains her great adventures, and _Mr Bodt smiles through a wince_.

It makes me question how much time they get to spend together – how many times he’s too tired, too sick to be able to sit around with her and chat, to keep up with her enthusiasm. It’s clear to see that this is how Mina copes – if you move at one hundred miles an hour, you don’t have to stop and think about what’s flying past you. I wouldn’t want to stop moving if I was in her position either.

I’m getting on a bit, though. Can’t help but need to go slow.

“H-hey, Mina,” I find myself saying tentatively, not quite finding the strength to raise my eyes from where they’re staring intently at Mr Bodt’s feet. “You wanna come over here and show me how you slung that mud shot at that Sam kid? I feel like I need some pointers for getting rid of annoying friends myself.”

I don’t want to drag her away from him, I really don’t. But as my eyes flicker up bravely, I can see how he’s biting back a contortion in his face, and his brown eyes are fiercely steeled against a wave of clear pain. I pat the sofa next to me, and offer Mina a wobbly smile as her eyebrows pinch together.

“C’mon,” I offer again, and I really hope she doesn’t see straight through my paper-thin silhouette. I almost hope that Mr Bodt doesn’t either.

Mina looks wary, narrowing her eyes at me, but she slides off the arm of her father’s arm chair nonetheless, and plods across the floor to stand squarely in front of me. I breathe heavily through my nose, and try to conceal how deep my shoulders rise and fall as I try to maintain … normalcy. I don’t dare to look over her thin, little shoulders at what expression Mr Bodt might be making now.

“Let’s see your throwing arm then,” Mina pouts, puffing out her freckled cheeks. I oblige, pushing my rolled up sleeve further above my elbow, and lifting my bicep to show her. She cocks an eyebrow and huffs in my face. “ _Weedy_. Just as I expected.”

“Ouch. My pride is wounded, kid,” I retort, though my airy chuckle falls flat to my ears. “Please don’t tell me I’m a lost cause.”

“The lostest,” she replies haughtily, hands on hips. I can crack a more genuine smile at that, just as Anita’s matriarchal voice rumbles through the small house.

“ _Piccola_ , the table isn’t going to lay itself!”

Mina’s eyes narrow even further and she grumbles something I can’t make out, but doesn’t budge from in front of me. There are a few moments of silence, until I hear the shuffling of slippers along the corridor, and Anita pokes her head around the living room door.

“Mina, did you hear me? It’s your turn to lay the table tonight, come on.”

Mina whines loudly, and I fully expect a “but mooooom” to escape her lips, but she gives in surprisingly easily, dragging her leaden feet towards her mother with shoulders hunched. Anita ruffles her fingers through her daughter’s hair – clearly a habit – as she ushers her out the door, and quickly shoots me a pleasant smile over her head. I try my best to return it, but she’s gone again before I can even question whether the expression on my face was approachable or not.

Mr Bodt doesn’t make a sound, but his eyes are closed now, and his breaths deep, the rise and fall of his skeletal chest through baggy clothing rhythmic.  I watch him in silence for a while, relieved to see the contrition slowly melt away from the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth as the minutes pass. I think he falls asleep – but I don’t want to disturb him either way, taking the opportunity to have a glance around the living room.

I’m not gonna lie, the place looks like it hasn’t seen a makeover since the mid-nineties … but I suppose that’s understandable enough. It reminds me a lot of _mamie’s_ place in France; the beige-coloured carpet, the mismatched, floral sofas that have probably never been new in their _lives_ , the television kept in a large, wooden cabinet with shutters. Let’s not even _start_ on the small army of Jesus figures lined up in a suicide mission on the mantelpiece above the fire place.

I drum my fingers against my thighs restlessly, feeling my butt slipping ever closer to falling off the edge of the sofa, but I daren’t move for fear of … well, I don’t exactly _know_ , but it’s the familiar rigor that seizes hold of your limbs when you’re forced to wait by yourself in a place you’re not familiar with. Don’t want to make a noise, and the like.

Mr Bodt makes me jump when he splutters a hacking cough, and my heart lurches into my throat, raking at my hackles. He wheezes loudly, and doubles forward on himself as he tries to control the spasming in his chest, and I’m torn between the ice that solidifies in my limbs, and the instinctual reflex that drives me to want to lunge forward and check that he’s okay.

He manages to control it before I can will decision into my legs, and heaves himself upright with a distraught sigh. He wipes his hand over the back of his mouth, and I have to pretend, I do, that I _don’t_ see the speckles of blood that come away on his skin.

He knows. I see it in his face when our eyes briefly meet across the room. I don’t need to mention it to him. He knows he’s not okay. He doesn’t need me patting his back to fool him into thinking that he is.

He coughs again, lightly, to clear his throat, yet the sound is accompanied by the thunder of feet flying down stairs, and I have barely a moment to register anything – or, y’know, mentally prepare myself for what might be about to happen – when Marco all but _flings_ himself into the room.

I’m _not_ prepared. Not in the slightest.

I fucking _spring_ to my feet to greet him, and that’s not even the worst part. Not even the way his eyes fly wide and his lips part just a little bit in surprise. Not even that. I wouldn’t even say it was the horrific shade of tomato-red my face has decided to adopt in this exact moment, when I’m standing barely three feet from him, trying, _trying and failing so hard_ not to just blurt out that’s he’s the most attractive human being I’ve probably even seen in my life and if he’d like to follow me upstairs to his room right now, and keep the suit on, I would really like to—

Y-yeah. _That’s_ the worst part.

“… Hi,” I squeak out, ringing my hands like an awkward school girl, and _o-oh God, that suit jacket fits him so well, I need to stop staring at his_ —

If there was any question as to whether I was trash before, well … there really can be no fucking doubt now. Peel your eyes away Jean, come on. No – _don’t move closer to him, you asshole_ —

Marco’s cheeks are so prettily pink, though. I could probably write you a two-hundred page, deliciously pretentious novel about how great they are – about Marco’s blush. I fucking love it. He opens his mouth, and then clamps it firmly shut again in an instant, before snorting air out loudly through his nose, eyes darting all over the place. He’s such a God-damn dork.

“You … you look really smart, Jean,” he says, trying to give me a once over, but failing miserably as it becomes more of a _thrice_ over. My heart decides to unashamedly fling itself against the inside of my ribs as his eyes skip over my chest for at least the fourth time. “Really … really great. You look really great.”

I try not to think about what happened in the pool last week. I try not to remember the closeness of his face, the feeling of his fingers fiddling with my piercings, the puff of faint breath on my skin. I try. I _try_.

God, I fail.

He’s beautiful.

I can think of countless reasons why _beautiful_ isn’t the right word, not with all things considered, but I can think of _countless-plus-one_ reasons of why it is.

His suit is simple, but it’s nice; dark-grey herringbone, and well-worn. The trousers taper neatly at his ankles, and the single button he has done up fits snuggly over his waist. Maybe it’s a hand-me-down from his dad – and there’s an ache in my chest that accompanies the longing, at the thought that Marco and his dad might have once been able to trade clothes, might have once fitted the same suit.

“You … look really great too,” I say – and lord only knows how many awkward seconds have passed with me just staring at him, appreciating him. I think I’d be more than willing to negotiate a pay rise if he came to clean the pool dressed like _this_ more often. I choke a little, and then add, quietly, _daringly_. “Handsome.”

Marco blinks owlishly at me, and I follow the thick bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows.

_It’s true, it’s true, stay strong Jean. Don’t freak out. You only told him the truth._

“T-thanks,” he stammers, endearingly, ears flaring red. I do him the grace of pretending I don’t notice, moving to focus on his tie. It’s such a dad-tie – you know what I mean. The really chunky type, made of flash-reflecting satin in a dreary brick-red and maroon stripe. Proper office wear. It’s gotta go.

“You need to lose the tie though,” I say softly. I forget about what I’m meant to be doing when it comes to _us_ , as my shaking fingers glide over the knot at the base of his neck, tugging gingerly on a tight loop of satin as the room around us seems to melt away. I forget about his father sitting just a few paces behind us. I think I probably _forget_ how to breathe as well. “C’mere. Let me.”

I already have my hands on him though – and when did there become barely breathing space between us? My feet are toe-to-toe with his garish, polka-dot socks. I didn’t even notice getting this close.

It only makes my hands tremble more, and I feel my tongue threatening to peak out of the corner of my mouth in concentration as I fiddle with the fabric around his neck.

I manage to find the give in the satin I was looking for, and with a more resolute tug, the tie comes lose. I know my face betrays me with a dumb smile as I loop the long stretch of fabric carefully over his neatly parted hair, and press it into the hand that he presents to the slither of space between us.

“Better,” I can’t help but grin, falling foul of the temptation to reach back up and flick open the top button of his dress shirt. His gait hitches as my knuckles brushes fleetingly across his throat, and I really hope – for my sanity mainly – that it’s just my imagination.

 _Pretend, Jean. Pretend. Just pretend that you didn’t hear that_.

I sweep my hands to the lapels of his jacket, patting them down even though they’ve clearly been meticulously ironed. The suit feels nice under my touch. Real nice.

“You gotta look like you’re a vain asshole for this sorta thing,” I smirk, letting my hands trail – just for a second, “If they don’t think you’re up-yourself, they won’t let you in.”

“Right,” Marco breathes gently, but I don’t think he knows what he’s agreeing to. I feel the single word as a warm buff of breath on my face. He doesn’t try to move away. Doesn’t call me out on how I’m still touching him, doesn’t try to remove my hands. He’s doing that same thing with his eyes as before, in the pool – the heaviness, the smoke, _the suggestion of a tender touch_ —

I can almost imagine that he loves me as much as I love him. But it’s impossible, because, _God_ , every time I look at him, it’s like constellations burst and fires die, and I am deafened by how much I—

For a long while, it’s been the thing I’ve wanted most in the world, and the thing I’ve wanted the least. Some cruel paradox, right?

We still don’t move away from each other, and for every perfect millisecond that passes, I feel ever closer to that one dream of mine to have his arms around my waist and …

No. Stop. It only hurts.

A week ago, I read online that almost sixteen-hundred people die every day in this country because of cancer. That’s one person every fifty-four seconds.

I try to think about that. I try to think about what it must be like to be trapped between breathing and being buried, to have hounds chasing after your heart with every wheeze, to know that one day is going to be the last day Mr Bodt wakes up to see the smiling faces of his family.

I try to think about how I’m not what Marco needs right now. I want him to focus on his dad. I want him to make the most of what little time they might have left. One day soon, his fifty-four seconds are going to be up.

_Marco, don’t look at me like that. Because it’s terrifying me._

_I don’t want to be that extra complication, so please. You don’t need a mess like me._

_Please, please, please._

I summon the courage to search his eyes once more – once more for something tangible, but all I find are swirls and swirls of things I can’t comprehend.

…

“Gosh, don’t you boys look smart.”

I bite my tongue as my soul hastily evaporates from beneath my skin, and just manage to rein in a hasty string of swearwords thanks only to my exceptional will power. My hands fly from Marco’s shoulders in a split second.

Anita stands in the doorway, hip cocked against the wood frame, arms folded around Mina’s shoulders lovingly, and a broad grin stretched across her plump lips. Mina herself doesn’t look so impressed, eyebrows raised high in disapproval at me giving the goo-goo eyes to her brother.

 _And h-how long exactly have they been standing there_?

I can literally feel the steam pouring out from my ears and debate how acceptable it would be just to melt into a puddle on their carpet. Probably not very. Well, _shit_.

Marco’s face is kicking up a storm, and he rubs the back of his neck sheepishly as he smiles at his mom, like he _hasn’t_ just been caught doing something really … _gay_ with some dude in a prissy, blue suit and bad haircut.

I take another step away from him for good measure, and stare holes in the floor.

“You really did a number on that suit, Marco,” Anita continues, apparently oblivious to my overwhelming desire to be eaten up by a large crack in the ground any time now, “It looks like it was not even a day in the attic.”

“I’m just glad we had something that fit,” Marco admonishes bashfully, causing his mom to sigh resolutely through her ever-present smile.

“I’m sure _Father Christmas_ might be persuaded to chip in towards a nice suit of your own come the winter,” she says, to which Mina rolls her eyes dramatically, in a _I’m-clearly-nine-and-a-half, not-five, mom, I-know-Santa-isn’t-real_ , sort of way. “Maybe you can ask Jean to help you pick something out, huh? It seems like he knows his way around these sorts of things.”

My ears _burn_ , and it takes a lot of strength to raise my head and smile at Anita’s suggestion, despite my anxiety gnawing away at my insides.

(The thought of taking Marco to get a suit fitted only adds fuels to the fire. Dear God, I am so _fucked_.)

I try to dispel the tension of being stared at by all three other members of clan Bodt – I’m assuming three at least, but I haven’t glanced over my shoulder at Marco’s father in a while – by wrestling my phone out of my pants’ pockets, and making a show of checking the time.

“Time for you boys to head off?” Anita asks questioningly, leaning forward a little to try and catch a glimpse of the clock on the lock screen. It’s just gone seven.

“Y-yeah,” I reply, somehow finding my voice, “I think … we better bounce.”

Mina interrupts by pawing at her mom’s arm and complaining loudly – but at least it distracts everyone from _looking at me_.

“It’s not fair, mom,” she whines, “I want to go! I’m the one who likes drawing and stuff – not Marco. Marco’s only going ‘cus he likes _Jean_.”

Marco physically splutters next to me; it’s almost comical. His sister doesn’t get why what she just said is so funny – but I can see something almost wicked appear momentarily in _Anita’s_ expression, for sure. Oh, _she_ gets it.

Mina doesn’t mean it in _that_ way, come on. Come on.

I feel probably more than my fair share of _emptiness_ welling up inside my chest. Stomp it back, Jean. Conceal, don’t feel, and all that Disney jazz. She doesn’t mean it in that way.

 _C-come on_.

“I’m sure they’ll take you next time, if you ask nicely, _piccola_ ,” Anita coos, petting Mina’s head lovingly. “But it goes on way past your bed time. Little girls have to get a good night’s sleep.”

Mina pouts angrily, and Anita laughs boldly: a musical, _amazing_ laugh – which I’d love, if I wasn’t way too distracted in the way Marco’s subtly covered his mouth with his fist, and has angled his body a little to the side, as if trying to poorly conceal the colour of his face from me—

“Well, if you boys are off, let me at least grab a photo of the two of you before you go,” Anita chimes – her words sorta going in one ear and out the other, until she saunters over the fireplace and plucks an old brick of a digital camera off the mantelpiece, and waves it in our direction.

 _Oh, she’s this sort of mom. I totally get her angle now_.

Marco’s just as reluctant as me to move, still trying to quietly school his face back to normal, I notice, glancing at him from the corner of my eye. I shuffle awkwardly on the spot, nudging one foot with the other, and tugging at the hem of my jacket.

“Come on, we don’t have all day,” she enthuses, when neither of us really budge. “In front of the fireplace, come on. We never got prom photos, so this is the next best thing, okay?” Marco gives in at this point, sliding up to the row of Jesus figurines and turning to face his mom, fiddling with his hands as I join him, precisely calculating how close I can get without running the risk of touching him again. “Now stand still, and let’s have some smiles!”

I wouldn’t call what I do a smile – more like a snarl crossed with a grimace. Great. I can feel myself dying a little inside as Anita clicks the shutter, my eyes dancing away from the lens just at the last minute as I watch Mina cross behind her mom to return to her place on the arm rest of Mr Bodt’s chair.

The look on his face is weird. It’s almost like it’s puzzled.

When Anita brings the camera down from her face, and I feel Marco sigh notably beside me, Mina chides obnoxiously, “Jean, you look like you’ve pooped your pants.”

Great. Just fucking great.

“Thanks, kid. Really,” I grumble, scuffing my foot on the carpet, waiting for the verdict from Anita. She scrolls back on the review function, and a small frown appears on her face.

“Hmm, Mina’s got a point, you two. Let’s have some proper smiles! And get a bit closer – it’s not like you’re trying to avoid each other with a barge pole now, is it?”

My internal monologue laughs ironically, and if I could punch it in the face, I would do it in a fucking heartbeat. I sidle up to Marco nonetheless, squishing our shoulders together and praying for this cruel torture to end, _please oh please_ –

Oh, but did I mention that I like making things so much worse for myself? ‘Cus I do. It’s a bad habit.

_You know what would be a real good idea, Jean? You know what you could do, just to throw yourself in for shits and giggles? You could put your arm around him. Imagine that._

Mental note to self: do not listen to your own advice.

Anita lines up the camera for round two, and I find myself breathing deeply and staring at my feet for what can only be a second, yet which lasts for an eternity. I don’t know what shitty part of myself coaxes me on, but I rub my thumb across the pads of my fingers of the arm I have trapped between Marco and I, and I … _I fucking do it_.

And it’s not like I go for the innocent-enough friendly bro-arm around his shoulders or back. Oh no. It’s straight into _woah-now-what-are-you-doing_ territory. I don’t even tear my eyes away from the camera, keeping my face as unaffected as possible, and I fucking _loop an arm around his waist_.

Marco tenses instantly, and where my fingers rest lightly against the base of his ribs, he’s as stiff as a board; from the corner of my eye, I sense him twist to look down at me. I feel the temperature inside my cheeks begin to soar, and it’s all I can do to stay calm, pretend it’s normal, don’t make a big scene, _definitely_ don’t glance back at up at him—

I don’t just glance back up at him. I full on stare. Lovey-dovey eyes and all. It’s fucking _shameful_.

The camera clicks – of course it does – and we’re staring into each other’s’ eyes like God knows what.

(Something straight out of a B-romance movie, _that’s what_.)

“Lovely,” Anita says, her smile just as broad as ever. She doesn’t even pause to look back at that photo, pocketing the camera in the front of her apron, and approaching her son. I immediately let my arm drop from his side.

“Well, you have a good night, okay?” she says, finding no embarrassment in squishing her twenty-year-old son’s cheeks between her palms, and dragging him down to her height so that she can plant a smacker on his forehead. “Stay safe, and have fun.” Marco reels back when she lets him go, expression really dazed, but I don’t have time to focus on it when she turns on me, and hauls me down for a smooch on the head as well.

 _S-so that’s a thing_.

“You too, _caro_.” She claps me on the shoulder as I right myself, and I bewilderedly try to piece together exactly what she’s trying to say with that shrewd, motherly smile of hers, ‘cus it sure as hell isn’t just wishing me a good time. “You’ll have to come ‘round some other time and stay for dinner, Jean. But it was lovely meeting you.”

I nod feverously, and steal a glance again at Marco – he seems to snap back into reality when I do, with a shudder. I do my best to smile at him.

“You good to go, freckles?”

 

* * *

 

The thing about this mystical concept called a functional family is that it involves Marco taking a good ten minutes more to say goodbye _properly_.  Maybe it’s down to the fact that he’s still, somewhere, deep down, reluctant to leave – perhaps it’s that same guilt he spoke about once before: being ashamed for having fun without his family, whilst his dad is still sitting in that armchair, suffering through the punctuation of spluttered coughs.

Marco embraces Mina in a massive bear hug, despite her protests, and hoiks her up off the ground, spinning her around and around until her complaints become reluctant laughter.  He deposits her back down on the couch cushions, not before snatching my sunglasses from the top of her head, and replacing them with the tie he’s had in his hands the whole time. He tucks my glasses into the safety of his jacket pocket, and ruffles his sister’s hair affectionately.

“You suck, Marco.”

“I’ll see you later, Mina.”

Marco turns to his dad then – and I realise that they haven’t actually interacted since he came into the room. I watch on silently, hands stuffed deep in my pockets to prevent myself from fiddling, as Marco bends down to hug his dad, who physically seems to creak and crack as he strains to pat his son on the back. No words are exchanged between them, but I guess that’s just how it is.

Anita ushers us towards the front door after that, and as we toe on our dress shoes, Marco panders at his mom.

“Call me if you need anything, mom,” he says, sincerely, “No matter how unimportant it might seem. My phone’ll be on all night.”

Anita sighs, and shakes her head.

“Just go have fun, Marco.”

 

* * *

 

Marco doesn’t say a word as we walk to the car, which leaves me to mull over horrible things like how well his suit hugs all the right parts of his body, what constitutes as suitable small talk to pass the time, and what sort of things he thinks about when he tells his mom to call him if something happens. Please let nothing happen.

“I didn’t know your mom was Italian,” is what I manage to come up with the fill the silence as we climb into the front seats of the Jag. “You never mentioned that.”

“She’s not really,” Marco replies with a shrug as he buckles himself in, curiously inspecting the inside of my car. “Well, she’s half Italian. She was born there, but moved away when she was young.” He pauses, and glances back at the house forlornly, where Mina has her nose pressed up against the glass in that front window again. “She likes to put it on when we have guests over.”

I fiddle with the rear-view mirror, checking out how my hair’s survived, and then adjusting it to see the road once more.

“She’s super sweet though,” I say casually. “I like her.”

Marco smiles softly at me, and then back out of the window as I turn the key in the engine, and the Jag purrs into life.

“I reckon she likes you too,” he remarks quietly. I can feel him slipping into that far-away little world of his, and I’ll be _damned_ if we’re going through that again. If _I’m_ going through that again. Tonight’s meant to be fun. The two of us, together.

Humour me.

“Are you okay?” I ask him, tentatively pausing my foot above the pedal before we set off, hands resting on the steering wheel, before adding, “It’ll be fine, Marco. They’ll be fine. You deserve a night off.”

He doesn’t say anything explicitly, sinking back into the plush leather of his seat, but the sad fondness in the expression he sends my way is something I’m familiar with.

 

* * *

 

We leave the winding streets of Marco’s neighbourhood in silence, which becomes heavier and heavier the further away we get from his house. He stares overtly out of the passenger window, hands clasped in his lap, whilst my knuckles grow ever tighter on the wheel as I try to think of something non-obtuse to say.

God, what did I do to be so useless in social situations? Not that you could even call _this_ a social situation – I mean, it’s just Marco. I can do _anything_ , be _anyone_ , around _Marco_.

I reach for the dial on the stereo to try to find something to fill the empty space; Marco’s eyes follow my fingers, I think, as I twist the frequency to find something that we both know – or at least I can make a fool of myself to.

A lot of it’s local news – almost all the stations have some sort of evening round-up at this time of night. I flick through a handful of those, a couple chart shows blaring tuneless nonsense, far too many corny adverts to speak of, and—

My fingers stop twisting when the familiar opening twang of a song I know _very well indeed_.

And I know he knows it too – eighth track on the mixtape I made him for his birthday, after all. Fleetwood Mac. You can never have enough Fleetwood Mac. It’s basically the first law of the universe.

I start tapping my fingers along to the first verse, gently humming along to the melody, stealing quick glances in his direction to see if he gets the gist. I even reach forward and crank the volume up a little louder.

When the song reaches the first chorus, and he’s still staring out the window, I roll my eyes, and fumblingly reach across the shift stick to buff him on the arm. He starts.

“C’mon, I know you know the words,” I grin, eyes flitting between him and the road ahead of us. “You’re not gonna make me sing the whole thing by myself, are you? ‘Cus we both know that I have a shitty singing voice.”

Marco cocks an eyebrow, and laughs lightly.

“Says you who never fails to find an opportunity to remind me about how much you hate it when I sing when I’m cleaning the pool,” he scoffs, and the genuine humour in his tone relieves some of the stress built in my bones.

“Nah, I’m only messing with you,” I jibe, “I _definitely_ have the worst singing voice. Want me to show you?”

I don’t really give Marco much time to protest, making sure all the Jag’s windows are firmly rolled up, and then spinning the volume dial all the way ‘round, counting myself into the second round of the chorus. I take a deep breath, wiggle my eyebrows at him, and jump straight into murdering the eardrums of everyone within a fifty foot radius of the car.

 _“You can go your own way_  
Go your own way  
You can call it another lonely day  
You can go your own way  
Go your own way—”

 

* * *

 

“Stop! Stop, Jean! Please, stop, I can’t take it anymore!” Marco cackles, bent over double in the passenger seat as he clutches his stomach in pain, tears pricking his eyes. It had taken only two lines of the next verse to get him chuckling, and then all out _hysterics_ by the end of it. (Okay, so, I’d been playing up the caterwauling for comedic effect, but it worked. Look at him. I knew he could still smile like that.) (Just takes me making a fool of myself to see it. Nice.)

That was four songs ago. Turns out this radio station is pretty damn good for playing slightly dodgy, but definitely awesome seventies and eighties music that I happen to know all the words to.

We’re long out of the suburbs of Trost, sand-brown houses and crumbling gas stations replaced with sleek, black glass of city high-rises and the symphony of blaring taxi horns, but it doesn’t want to make me reign in my sudden ecstasy. If anything, it makes me want to sing louder – make all these people I’ll never know, that today, Jean Kirschtein is having a fucking _good day_.

We’re slowing at a junction when the DJ announces an AC/DC track that makes me wiggle in my seat and cackle loudly, raising my hand to whack the volume up even higher and potentially deafen the both of us. Marco beats me to the stereo, passive-aggressively slapping my hand away from the controls with a barking laugh.

“Hey!” I grouse, but my grin is broad as I use the red-light opportunity to turn to fully face him, taking my eyes off the road momentarily. “I like this song!”

Marco titters, jabbing the little red power button just above the CD drive, silencing the fucking _awesome_ open sequence of _Back in Black_. If it was anyone else, I’d have their head for turning off AC/DC in _my_ car. Angus Young’s guitar solo is a God-damn _gift_ to mankind.

“I don’t care!” he squawks, “I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve gone tone deaf!” He laughs brightly, a brilliant sparkle in his eyes as he shakes his head at me. “I can’t take it any more – you were right, you _are_ the worst singer!”

I roll my tongue in my cheek and smirk, self-satisfied, rocking back in my seat.

“Damn straight I am.”

 

* * *

 

Marco doesn’t stop laughing for the rest of the journey – not that it’s a particularly long way once we figure out which badly-lit road is which – and his cheer is infectious. I swear I can feel muscles in my face that I’ve never even used before, it’s _amazing_.

The gallery itself isn’t labelled very well – but we figure it out based on the thrum of people of the sidewalk milling around a bouncer, all dressed to the nines. I manage to find a space to park two streets down, thanks to some quick swerving across the traffic to pinch the spot that a flashy Beemer vacates; and as I’m backing in, trying not to rear-end the car behind, Marco’s giggling finally comes to a close.

When I kill the engine, I twist in my seat to grin at him, but find him chewing on his bottom lip, watching cars pass beyond his window.

“You alright?” I ask, my smile falling away. _We were doing so well …_

“Just a bit nervous,” he admits, a little embarrassed, I figure, as he pulls at the sleeves of his suit. “I … I’ve not been to many things like this before.”

“You’ll be fine,” I assure him, “Just pretend like you know what you’re talking about if anyone tries making conversation with you, and you’ll fit right in.”

He mulls this over for a second, before changing his tone. He folds his hands in front of him on his lapped, pressed prayerfully so that maybe I won’t see how he twitches like some small sparrow of a person. “I don’t want to make you look bad.”

That takes me by surprise, and I sit back in my seat, sweeping my hand through my hair.

“You won’t make me look bad,” I say, stubbornly. “You … I … _no_. You would never. Anyway, I probably do a good enough job of that by myself. So we’re cool.”

Marco puffs his cheeks out – similar to what Mina does when she’s disgruntled – and geez, it’s fucking _cute_. Arrow straight to my heart and all that.

“Hey, c’mon,” I try again, trying to sound more sympathetic. “I’ll do all the talking of you want. Then you can get a feel of it ‘til you get comfy. It’ll be fine. I’ve got this. Come on, freckles, there’s a free champagne waiting with your name on it.”

I wiggle my eyebrows, which makes Marco snort, a chuckle catching in his throat. But he gives in, with a roll of his eyes and a breath of my own sarcasm that has clearly rubbed off on him.

“Alright, Jean. For the champagne.”

 

* * *

 

Thankfully, Ymir’s mean streak hasn’t gotten the better of her, and both mine and Marco’s names appear on the guest list, and there’s a great sense of satisfaction in my chest when the bouncer unclips the ropes around the door and allows us to cut the queue, despite Marco’s apologies to the people we sneak in front of.

The gallery takes up the ground floor and the basement level of a pretty non-descript skyscraper, but I have to give it to Nanaba and their boss, or whoever, because the inside is pretty damn _swanky_. I mean, I’ve been to my fair share of this sort of social things – and there are only so many fake-Victorian style hotel lobbies I can visit before they all start looking the same. But this place is edgy. I _like_ edgy. The ceilings have all been stripped away, revealing a maze of wires and gleaming silver pipes above our heads, which has Marco staring the minute we duck through the door. Industrial spotlights illuminate the black walls and the large, metres-wide mural canvases that occupy almost every inch of space.

It’s also busy as fuck – not that I wasn’t expecting it to be, but it means that I have to grab Marco by the crook of his elbow to avoid losing him as I wheedle us through the crowds to where I’ve pin-pointed the refreshments to be. And he’s still staring at the ceiling, tripping over his own feet as I manhandle him through the masses. What a nerd.

“This place is amazing,” he whispers to me in awe as I thrust a flute of champagne into his hand, and clink a glass of my own with his. I take a sip – it’s not bad. Had worse. I take another, larger sip for good measure.

“Ymir must be thrilled,” Marco continues, dinner-plate eyes wondering over the head of the Trost elite to take in the closest canvas – large a dark grey, with a wild swirl of white circles in the centre. It reminds me of that thing from out of the _Ring_ movie, but I don’t mention it. “To get her stuff put up in a place like this? It’s so _fancy_.”

I can’t help but chuckle at the way he says that, and the way he looks like he’s just stumbled into some sort of Wonderland. His apprehension seems to flown the roost, at least.

“I dunno, she seems kinda chill about it. Not big on all the attention,” I remark, pinching handful of petit fours that pass us by on a tray. I hold out my snatchings to Marco, and he takes one, popping it neatly into his mouth. (I shove all the rest into my gob at once, and flush it all down with another, larger gulp of the fizzy stuff.) “I don’t blame her. Like, if you know a lot of these sorta people, well … believe me when I say that my folks have dragged me to enough social functions to know when clawing my eyes out is a better option than standing through half a minute of conversation with a business broker who can talk your ear off about merges and acquisitions and all the things you couldn’t give a _rat’s ass_ about.”

“I’m sure they’re not all that bad,” Marco says innocently, taking an experimental sip of champagne. “What’s … wrong with their conversation?”

“Mm, you know. Pretending to be interested in this stuff when the reality is they don’t know a pig’s ear about modern art, and they’re only coming along because it’s like … a socially respectable pastime, or they can make money out of it,” I explain, with a shrug. “Or for the free booze, I dunno.”

“Aren’t you here for the free booze?” Marco teases me with a wicked  grin. I feign horror, and buff him on the arm with my free hand.

“Ouch, Marco, ouch,” I laugh, “At least I _know_ that there’s a story behind the art – even if I have no clue what those giant circles over there represent, I’ll give you that. But my _intentions_ are good! That’s totally what counts.”

“Right, right,” Marco chuckles, “It sounds like someone might be a _teensy_ bit of a hypocrite, Jean.”

“And I thought you were supposed to be my friend, _wow_. I see how it is.”

We both laugh, and in our little corner of the crowd, his warmth fills me with a God-damn _glow_. I feel like I’m on top of the world.

I make Marco finish his glass before I hand him another one, deciding to go slow on my own to make it last the night. We’re offered some bizarre looking appetiser by a waiter in a dickie bow, and we both _hum_ and _hrm_ in approval as we pop them into our mouths – and then both recoil when he leaves, because whatever the fuck that was, it was _gross_.

I manage to procure a napkin and gather us up a small stack of _supplies_ , and then with a nod of my head, I invite Marco to grab my elbow again – and he does, without question. Maybe he feels more confident because he doesn’t know any of the people here – or maybe, like me, he knows this is the sort of place we can get away with something so simple and harmless. We’re not nearly the most _ostentatious_ people here, and no-one’s going to bat an eyelid at two twenty-somethings with their arms linked.

We duck through the main throng of people milling around the entrance, and I drag him down the first aisle of ply boards, lined with some of Ymir’s smaller work: more colourful smatterings of paint that I think I recognise from seeing her load her van in the campus parking lot from time to time.

I think it’s safe to say Marco’s dazzled by the whole pretence of it all – the lights, the faint hum of electronic music, the colours, the shadows, the obscurity even amongst so many people, the buzz of bubbles in his system – and I love sharing this part of my life that I thought I hated, with him. To be made up of nights like these, where my chest isn’t tight for fear of drowning, but for want of air, and each breath I take beside him is like a tablet of ecstasy on my tongue to my addiction. I can see myself doing this again. To be cordoned off from the world around us … is nice.

Marco actually likes Ymir’s paintings – he says something in my ear about how he likes their _freedom_. (Yet what _I_ think about is how _I_ like the way his breath tickles my ear when he gets close enough to talk.)

We wonder around the exhibition much the same – my elbow linked with his, pinching food from every passing waiter, and probably giggling a little too loud to be socially acceptable, but you know what? For once – and this is saying a lot, coming from me, and the fucking _anxiety_ that drives me up the bend half the time – I don’t care what everyone else thinks. I don’t care if they’re looking. I don’t care. It’s just me and him, and in place of words comes the weight of my want and the skitter in my heart as he absent-mindedly moves to lick icing off the backs of his knuckles from the fondant fancies we’re gorging on. It’s the wrinkle in his nose, and the quirk in his lips, and how his freckles rest like patterns of four-leaved clovers on his cheeks, and _damn_ – I’m so lucky to just be in his orbit.

When I think I hear my name called out through the crowd, I’m almost tempted to ignore it; it’s faint, and Marco’s laugh, Marco’s smile, Marco’s general _everything_ is much, much more absorbing. I lean in to whisper to him some passing comment about how he’s _definitely_ getting tipsy after only _two_ glasses, when I hear my name again, this time more definitively. Moments later, and a cute, blonde face prizes her way through the tightly packed backs of old men in suits, a radiant smile painted prettily on her cherry-red lips.

“Jean, I thought it was you!” Historia beams, as I juggle our food mountain and my champagne flute into one hand so I can offer her some sort of half-assed hug. She doesn’t release me immediately, her slender fingers holding onto my arms and squeezing gently as she surveys my face as I move to pull back. “You’re looking good, Jean. I’m really glad.”

(Okay, so that’s Ymir sharing information about our phone calls, I see. Maybe Marco won’t pick up on it.)

“O-oh, thanks!” I stammer, “You look great too!”

She really does look great – every inch a Goddess, if ever I saw one. Her blonde hair is effortlessly coifed in a complicated bun on the side of her head, and her long, white-gold earrings trail her shoulders. Her dress is a powdery-pink colour, wrapped around her slender waist in a Grecian sort of style, clipping her legs just above her knees. She tucks a delicate, gold-embellished clutch under her arm as she moves to embrace Marco beside me.

“Marco, you look so handsome,” she chimes, admiring his suit as he tries pitifully to quash his gleeful smile into something more polite. He fails miserably of course, which makes Historia laugh prettily, and tap him lightly on the arm with her bag. “Looks like you two are having a good night then – I’m so glad you could make it.”

“How’s Ymir dealing with it?” I ask, with a crass smirk. “How much of her hair has she pulled out so far?”

Historia rolls her eyes, and delves into her clutch to grab a tube of lipstick which she reapplies deftly – despite me not entirely seeing the difference the new coat makes. She smacks her lips together, depositing the lipstick, before replying dryly.

“Oh, you know. It only took us two hours to leave the flat this afternoon. Nothing too major.”

“Wow, and here I was expecting her to have jumped on a plane to Barbados by now. I’m genuinely amazed she still in the city,” I snipe, taking a quick sip of champagne.

“I was fully prepared to wake up to an empty bed this morning, so you’re not the only one, Jean,” Historia replies with a hefty sigh. “Not to say she won’t still try to bolt later tonight. Poor thing.”

“Is she around?” Marco then cuts in, earnestly. “I’d like to say hi, if that’s alright.” And then he adds, as an afterthought, “And I suppose we could help you keep an eye on her. Three minders are better than one.”

“I was with her just a little while ago,” she says, glancing over her shoulders – but she’s really too short to see anything over the heads of the rest of the guests. “But she was getting a little panicky, so went to get something to drink. Do you guys want to go get refills?”

I shake my head, holding up my half-glass.

“I’m good. Driving. But Marco could use another, sure.” Marco makes a spluttering noise in protest, which earns him a playful jostle to the ribs. “Lead the way, I guess.”

 

* * *

 

It takes a while to snake through the crowds, especially when Historia recognises every second person and has to stop to exchange pleasantries with them, Marco and I just standing awkwardly on the side-lines each time until she’s done. Eventually though, the drinks table comes into sight, and I drag the pair of them the rest of the way, not waiting to hear _ifs_ , _ands,_ or _buts_.

Ymir is nowhere in sight, so whilst Historia starts tapping away on her cell phone to try and locate her raging, not-so-hot mess of a girlfriend, I make sure to pass Marco another glass.

“I really shouldn’t,” he says, shaking his head, despite the fact that he wraps his fingers around the stem of the flute anyway. “We’ve not even been here an hour, and I … I … yeah.”

“I’ll keep an eye on you, don’t worry,” I smirk, idly reaching up to flatten out his shirt collar; he doesn’t freeze up this time, only smiling so damn _prettily_ at me when I pat him reassuringly on the shoulders. Must be the alcohol talking. (But I’m not exactly complaining.)

“Wow, _someone’s_ hitting on their pool boy.”

I genuinely feel a vein twitch inside my forehead as I twist around to see Ymir leant up against the table, long legs crossed at the ankle, grinning lecherously at the pair of us. Congratulations to whoever persuaded her to put on a suit jacket, because she actually looks vaguely presentable for once – no grimy cigarette burns or questionable beer stains to be seen. Not to say she’s not already frazzled as fuck though, because I’m pretty sure I can smell the waft of cigarette smoke on her as she stands, and the bags under her eyes tell a pretty damning story.

“Don’t look at me like that, Kirschtein,” she quips, flicking me on the nose to rid me of the glare I’m whole-heartedly shooting her. “Just callin’ it as I see it.” She wastes no time in barrelling into our personal space, and reaching over to pluck the glass of champagne straight out of Marco’s hands, throwing the _entire thing_ down her throat in one swig. Her face contorts in disgust, and she gags, sticking her tongue out and wrinkling her freckled nose. “Disgusting shit. Where’s my beer, huh?”

“It’s not that bad,” I retort, tipping my glass in her direction and pressing my lips tightly together. “It’s _free_.”

“Its only saving grace,” she mutters darkly, grabbing another two glasses from behind us, thrusting one into Marco’s hands, and keeping the other to herself. “I am going to get drunk as fuck tonight, and it’s going to be _glorious_. I can’t deal with much more of the polite conversation shit, nu-uh. That’s Historia’s game, not mine. This whole thing is fucking _dire_ , if you ask me.”

“But it seems like a lot of people have turned up,” Marco pipes up, ever the optimist. “I’m not surprised though – I really like your work, Ymir.”

Ymir eyes him quizzically, trying to decide if he’s pulling her leg or not, but then decides that _nah, he’s good_. In fact, I might even say she gets a bit embarrassed, hiding her mouth behind her champagne as she talks and her freckles become faint against colour rising in her cheeks.

“It’s no biggie,” she mumbles. “But thanks, Bodt. That’s pretty cool of you.”  She takes a sip of her drink, purses her lips into a taught line of distaste again, and then turns back to me. “Your turn now.”

“To what?”

Ymir shrugs nonchalantly, but her dark eyes gleam with sardonic mischief. “To tell me you like my art.”

“Will you kick me out if I don’t?” I tease; she doesn’t hesitate to kick me in the shins, and I yelp. “Fucking ow, Ymir! Okay, okay, I like your art!”

“Nice,” she grins, as her eyes light up as she catches sight of someone over my shoulder. She raises her hand and waves excitedly. “Babe! I’m over here! Hey!”

Historia looks up from where she’s still bent over her phone a few feet away, and a massive smile blooms on her features; she quickly tucks her cell down the front of her dress, and floats over to us, straight into a hugely indecent, slobbery kiss from Ymir. When she pulls back, Ymir peppers her forehead with even more doting kisses, wrapping her spindly arms around Historia’s waist.

“I’ve been looking for you all over,” Historia says, attempting to smooth down some of Ymir’s wild hair affectionately, a playful pout on her lips. “I thought you might have run off.”

“Naw, babe, I wouldn’t have done a runner without taking you with me, don’t worry,” Ymir leches, tracing her fingers over her girlfriend’s back in twisting spirals, “Plus, I was just saying, this thing’s not _blowing_ as much anymore. Might just about be persuaded to stick around, now that _these two losers_ showed up.”

I shoot Ymir a dirty glare, and she just shrugs her shoulders meekly in response.

“We can always sneak out the back if you’re feeling like you need a breather,” Historia says, busy hands now moving on to straighten her girlfriend’s thin tie. “And no, I didn’t mean it like that, so you can stop whatever train of thought it going through your head, Ymir.”

“Ouch, babe, that stings,” Ymir cackles, attention diverted away from pulling crude faces at me, kissing the top of the blonde’s head and squishing her against her chest lovingly, rocking the pair of them gently from side to side. It’s sickening, they’re so in love. (Pot to kettle, Jean. Pot to kettle.)

We chat for a while, the four of us, and I think Ymir’s glad of it – being saved from having to make small talk with an endless stream of journalists and bigwigs looking to buy some of her pieces. (“I don’t care about the money,” she explains, with a shrug. “I just want a drink.”)

Marco’s eager to ask Ymir more about some of the pieces though, and I reckon she’s secretly over-the-moon about that, unusually willing to open up about the story of each individual canvas that he points to around the room. I’m more than happy just to watch and listen, enamoured by the glimmer of unbridled excitement that dances in his eyes.

Historia pinches my elbow at one point, and looks at me with a knowing smile and a teasing wink, and it’s all I can do to hide my furious blush behind a large gulp of champagne as she chuckles softly at my fluster.

Ymir and Marco are talking about the big piece on the back wall – the _Ring_ movie one – when Ymir suddenly freezes up mid-sentence, and I’m drawn back out of my silent adoration of Marco’s face.

“Ymir?” Historia asks, concerned, “Are you alright?”

“It’s the boss,” Ymir hisses, slinking lower in our small circle, and grabbing me by the sleeve of my blazer to try and manoeuvre me into a shielding position in front of her. “Shit, I think he saw me. Fuck.”

Marco and I both crane our necks back over the crowd, just to make it even more obvious to whoever we’re supposed to be looking for and hiding Ymir from. My eyes pin point a tall, well-built man, dressed sharply in a double-breasted tan suit and white shirt, the square of a red handkerchief poking out of his breast pocket. His shaggy, sand-blonde hair is parted down the middle, and he sports a well-trimmed beard and moustache, and a _very intense frown_ as he wades this way.

“Ymir!” he calls sternly as he shoehorns his way into our circle, parting Marco and I; Ymir just shrinks down further behind Historia, and whines loudly. “There’s a journalist from the _Bugle_ who’s been looking for you for over an hour. If you don’t give him _something_ , he’s going to walk on us. And then there’s a pair from the _Times_ who are after an interview as well – I told them you’d be with them ten minutes ago.”

“I’ll go in a sec,” Ymir whinges, even though she knows approximately zero people in this circle believe her. “I’m just catching up with some friends, but I promise I’ll go in a sec, Mike. _Promise_. Pinkie swears and everything.”

There’s a moment of really awkward silence where Ymir’s boss doesn’t leave, and instead stares her down as she gets more and more uncomfortable and fidgety, and the rest of us stare at our feet. Well, I guess he’s the sort of person she needs to get the job done; he does looks pretty serious.

Just as I think he’s about to leave us alone, Marco – stupid, perfectly mannered, awfully polite _Marco_ – offers the guy his hand.

“This is a great space you’ve got here, sir,” he says, and I squint hard at him. Look at those good manners. They make me sick, _God_. How dare he be such a nice person. “I’m Marco – I’m a friend of Ymir’s.”

“Nice to meet you, Marco,” Ymir’s boss replies, shaking Marco’s hand firmly. “Are you a friend through the university?”

“I’m not actually. I met her through my friend Jean—” He gestures to me at this point, and I resent him momentarily for throwing me in it with the social formalities. “—He goes to the university with her.”

Resentfully, I hold out my hand to the dude, and try my best not to let my eyes be distracted by the plate of nibbles I see pass by over his shoulder. Damn it.

“Jean,” I say bluntly, shaking once. “Nice to meet’cha. Don’t think I caught your name.”

“Mike Zacharius,” the guy replies, “Curator. I’ve been told I have the best nose in Trost for finding new artists,” – and yeah, I’m remembering now, the name in the white print on the business card in my back pocket, it’s definitely this guy—

“Mike! Mike!” comes a holler through the crowd – and gee, please, not someone else I have to talk to. “Mike, the reporter from the _Bugle_ said he was going to leave if we don’t find— oh, there she is! Ymir!”

It’s Nanaba who appears from out of the crowd – still all sharp lines and sleek silhouettes and clean face and perfectly parted hair, and dressed from head to toe in black. They fit in here way better than they did at the community centre – no mistaking them for a drug lord or a spy this time, that’s for sure. They whistle through the crowd, slipping between elbows and shoulders, a look on their face that’s highly-strung. I imagine Ymir’s been giving everyone a run for their money tonight.

“Ymir, did you catch that? Those journalists are getting impatient, and I think—” Nanaba breaks off mid-sentence as their skittish eyes swoop over the rest of us and settle firmly on me. Recognition, accompanied by a surprisingly genuine smile, light up their gunmetal blue eyes. “Oh! Jean – hi!”

I open and close my mouth like a fish, not exactly sure if I’m meant to say _hi_ back, or if I’m supposed to shake their hand, or if just smiling will suffice, or –

Nanaba leaps straight in by turning to Mike, hand resting on his shoulder as they gesture openly to me. My shadow shrinks just a tad with the sudden attention, and I wish Marco wasn’t on the other side of the circle from me.

“Mike, this is Jean, that kid with the portraiture I was telling you about last week – do you remember?”

 _O-oh. Okay. Wow. Did it suddenly get hot in here, or is it just me_?

Whatever it is, there are definitely five pairs of eyes watching my intently right now. I hook a finger over my collar and give it a little tug, to try and loosen it. Not much luck.

“From Rico’s class?” Mike asks, to which Nanaba nods firmly. He brings a hand to his chin, and turns to appraise me, and I empathise with Ymir’s desire to shrivel up and hide, implicitly. “Well, this _is_ a small world.”

I gulp, eyes darting to Nanaba – but they’re occupied elsewhere. You know, _staring at Marco_. Oh God. Please don’t tell me this is gonna go the way I think it’s gonna go.

“Hey,” Nanaba says, narrowing their eyes a little as they study Marco, before glancing back at me for clarification. “This is the man from the work you showed me, right Jean?”

I can just about bring myself to nod. Nanaba hums in appreciation. Marco looks _startled_ , to put it lightly.

“That’s amazing,” Nanaba say quietly, and I’m _this close_ to internally combusting, Ymir’s gallery and taking Marco home be damned. They squint again at Marco, and I watch their eyes trace the patterns in his freckles and the contours of his face, noting only light and shadow and shape. “You’ve got to see some of Jean’s work now, Mike. It’s really something.”

 _Hah, hello puking feeling. Let’s not, shall we_?

Ymir, having kept her mouth shut to avoid attention being redirected to her, chooses this opportunity to elbow me roughly in the ribs, causing me to squawk embarrassingly. My stomach lurches into my diaphragm.

“I didn’t know you drew as well, toots!” she caws, slinging an arm around my neck, “You got any we can see?”

“Ah yes, that would be great,” Mike agrees, clasping his large hands eagerly together as Nanaba nods vigorously beside him. Even Historia is watching me keenly, a sunny smile fixed in place. Oh geez. Oh _geez_.

It’s not like I’m _frightened_ – it’s not that extreme, but inside, my internal organs are _casually grinding themselves into a nervous pulp_. Intestines gone. Kidneys disintegrating. Stomach wringing itself out and yanking on my trachea.

I look to Marco for some support – because suddenly my heart is racing very fast inside my chest, and there’s a nervous twitch threatening to either make me start babbling, or shut down completely. He smiles tenderly, and gives me the smallest of nods, and I wish I was closer to him so that I could steal some sort of clandestine touch of reassurance—

_I’ve never shown anyone any of my drawings whilst Marco was around._

“I, uh,” I begin, mumbling over my words as I scan the sea of expectant faces surrounding me, feeling my knees start to jitter. I don’t know why it turns me into such a spineless jellyfish. “I … it’s Ymir’s big day today. I wouldn’t wanna, y’know, interrupt that or anything, and – and anyway, I left my books in the car, and we kinda parked far away a-and—”

 _Oh boy_.

Marco, sensing my immediate discomfort, pipes up. Kinda with the wrong thing, but I think I can forgive him. Probably. Maybe. We’ll see.

“I’ve got some photos on my phone,” he announces – dare I say _proudly_? The others all murmur excitedly and prompt him to show them, but his eyes remain focussed on my face only. “Jean? Is it okay if I show them?”

I nod, despite myself, but watching Marco’s face light up like a firecracker _for me_ , is worth everything and more. He whips his phone out of his jacket pocket and sets to quickly scrolling through his photo albums until he finds what he’s looking for – clearly evident in the way he face because softer, wistful, _beautiful_. God. Look at _me_ like that, please.

“Here,” he says, handing his phone to Mike, “Just scroll sideways – there are a few. I think … I think they’re a few months old now, but—”

He trails off, and remeets my gaze. I know exactly which sketches he’s talking about – of course I do. Those very first ones I did for him, which he requested of me when he flicked through my sketchbook the first time he came into my room. How long ago does that feel now? A different time, a different place, a different _me_. A whole ‘nother universe where we might have carried on walking down different paths and strayed, and never collided in such a sweet taste of chlorine and camomile that makes my knees so fucking _weak_.

Mike holds the phone up and squints at it like he’s checking a twenty dollar bill for counterfeit. He makes a low, grumbling sound which might be a hum, and then hands the phone over to Ymir’s grabby hands. When he turns fully to face me, I feel my whole body tense up.

“You’ve definitely got something, that’s for sure,” Mike says – but you know, I couldn’t even tell you if he’s speaking English to me, ‘cus of the static and the silkscreen that shrouds my ears and makes me suddenly deaf with disbelief. “Portraiture is not my speciality, but if Nanaba says it’s good, then it’s good. Got an eye for it, that one.” Mike reaches into the pocket of his jacket and rummages around for a bit, my eyes not straying from his hand. “If you, uh— let’s see here – yes, if you just give us a call on this number here, make sure someone’s around, and then drop by with some more of your stuff, we’d love to see it.” He holds out a familiar, black rectangle of card in my direction, but Nanaba swats it away.

“I told you I already gave him a card, Mike. And the lecture. He knows the drill.” It’s so casual – and yet I’m literally on the verge of sweating buckets, still staring at the business card Mike slowly tucks back into his pocket. I hope someone around here knows CPR, ‘cus I’m gonna need it. Nanaba glances down at the watch on their wrist and frowns, before adding, “And we really need to get a move on with these reporters ASAP. Ymir, come on. The sooner we do this, the sooner it’s done and you can escape. Let’s _go_.”

Ymir groans loudly, and hands Marco’s phone back to him.

“Ymir, they’re right,” Historia interjects, petting her fondly, “Come on, I’ll even come with you. It’ll be fine.”

I’m not fine though. I’m definitely _not fine_.

Ymir mutters something under her breath, and starts off through the crowd, Historia smiling and shaking her head, and quickly offering Marco and me a friendly _goodbye_ and _see you later_ , before rushing off after her temperamental girlfriend. We all watch them disappear, before Nanaba addresses me again.

“We should probably go and supervise these interviews,” they say, tapping a slender index finger against the side of their chin, “But I’m really glad we caught you again, Jean. I was hoping you’d want to drop in. Feel free to go and enjoy the rest of the show tonight – the both of you. I’ll try and keep Mike away from any more business talk.”

I shake both Mike and Nanaba’s hands again, being offered more than one further compliment from both of them _which my heart really can’t take_ , and then they swan off into the throng of other guests, once more trying to track down the elusive Ymir. Rather them than me.

I stand in silence for a second – no sound registering in my ears, despite the thrum of buzzed conversation and laughter all around us – until I feel Marco’s hand come to rest quietly on the small of my back. I turn to face him without question, glad, this one time, for the three inches he has over me, because he makes a fair shield as I try to compose myself a little better. There’s stability in the way he keeps his arm threaded around me, his fingers against my back through my jacket like sunlight that breathes flushes into my face, _warm_.

“Are you okay?” I hear him ask as I rub my cheeks with the heels of my palms, trying to process exactly what just happened, the feeling that overcomes me raw, like sunburn feels under showers, so overconcentrated that each droplet that trickles down my gullet burns, _but in a good way_. “You looked like you were about to faint just now.” I can feel the way his smile curls around his words without even having to look up at his face – but I mean, _it’s Marco_ , so I look up anyway. He’s grinning from ear to ear, and positively _glowing_.

“Did that really just happen?” I ask, disbelieving, as Marco closes the gap between us even further, until I’m inches from being pressed flushed against his chest. It’s good though. Feels safe. _Private_ , y’know. Just enough to try and gather my thoughts.

“Definitely just happened,” he beams, his arm trailing up my back, wrapping around my shoulders and holding me tight, protectively, “I’m so proud of you, Jean.”

“You’re such a nerd,” I scoff weakly, but can’t hide my own, dumb-as-fuck expression from blooming. Screw those droplets of feeling, it’s God-damn _cascading_ down my throat and sloshing around wildly in the pit of my stomach, and I would willingly _drown_ in the thought that man, I did good. I did real good this time. (Do you see me now, dad?) “Shit. Shit, wow. Did that really just … _God_.”

“Only telling the truth,” Marco chuckles musically, rubbing my shoulder idly. “You deserve it so much, Jean. All of it. You’re so good at your art, and you deserve people to notice how talented you are, and how hard you work, and how much it means to you—”

“Jesus Christ, Marco, stop,” I choke, ducking my head again, scratching my nose with my index finger like he does when he’s flustered, “You’re making me blush like a damn idiot.”

Marco hums happily, and props his empty glass of champagne on the table behind us, relooping our arms together. For the contactless second, I mourn the loss of his protective arm keeping me close, but when he presses up against my side, our elbows locked, I feel like we’re easily two jigsaw pieces fitting together effortlessly.

“Good,” he says, simply. “Do you want to have another walk around?”

 

* * *

 

Marco and I slink around the show together for the rest of the evening; we don’t catch Nanaba or Mike again, nor anyone else I know through my parents’ circles, but that’s okay. More than okay, really, because it’s a fucking _great_ evening. Marco is chatty, and giggly, and God, his eyes fucking _glimmer_ whenever I say _anything_ , and it’s _magical_. It’s like he has all the time in the world for me, and I’m giddy with it, especially when it becomes more obvious that he’s spending longer looking at me than the canvases on the walls. (The feeling’s mutual, trust me.) I don’t check my watch once, because a part of me fears that if I check the time, the evening’s going to have an end. I don’t want it to end. Endings suck.

We spot Ymir and Historia across the room a couple times, the latter always smiling brightly to whoever they’re engaged in conversation with, and the former always slurping aggressively on a champagne flute or angrily stabbing away at her cell phone – the text messages that arrive in my inbox only get progressively incoherent as the night gets later.

 **From: Ymir**  
save me from this hell.

 **From: Ymir  
** this old guy is tryin to make me sell a painting for like half the price its worth how do i tell him to fuck off and stick his cash where th sun dont shine

 **From: Ymir**  
what are u laughing at. i want to laugh at something im so boooored jean

 **From: Ymir  
** u guys lok rlly cute over there

 **From: Ymir**  
ur so giddy nf funny when ur around pool boy im laughin m ass off

 **From: Ymir**  
fuck me ar u seein the bDEroom eyes hes givin u son u gonna get LAID TONGITE

 **From: Ymir**  
fuk i wanna get laid tonight

 **To: Ymir**  
ymir, ur a drunk mess. please shut up we can hear you complaining all the way on this side of the room ok

The crowds start to disperse after a while, the chatter more lively and the conversation more uninhibited. Marco doesn’t seem very eager to leave just yet though, so I humour him, more than happy to keep wandering around the spotlit floors, until security starts gently ushering people towards the door.

“Hey, hey, there are my boooooys!” Ymir hollers, barging her way through the last trails of people heading towards the exit, with a significantly more inebriated Historia in tow. “We’re gonna go hit the town to celebrate – are you in, _or are you in_?!”

Marco and I exchange an unnecessary glance, and shake our heads in sync. I can see he’s beginning to droop – he blinks heavily, and his eyes seem to struggle to focus as Ymir staggers in her heels in front of us.

“Nah, we’re good. I’ve gotta drive Marco home, so not this time,” I say, moving to give Historia a goodbye hug, and then Ymir too – which is retrospectively kinda difficult, considering how bad she’s swaying.

“Boo, you whores!” she moans noisily in my ear as I hug her, “You better be reeeeady to get wasted at the beach, you got that?!”

“Loud and clear,” I reply curtly, earning a punch in the arm from Ymir, some bizarre form of farewell on whatever planet she’s from. “Well, bye to you too!”

She flips us the bird over her shoulder, hanging off Historia as they teeter towards the exit – and I look forward to tomorrow purely for the stories I’m gonna hear about tonight. Or lack, thereof. There are going to be some legendary hangovers in the morning.

“Shall we get going?” Marco says to me, and I nod, tipping my head towards the door.

 

* * *

 

The walk back to the car is filled with the laughter of drunken people staggering towards the clubs further down the street, falling out of bars, and trying and failing to hail taxis home; but between Marco and I, there is quiet. It’s not so bad though, because we walk shoulder to shoulder, and in my chest, there’s a buzzing warmth that has been growing and growing all night, coupled with the discreet exhaustion that washes over both of us.

When we reach the Jag, I ditch my blazer in the back seat, tossing it over my pile of sketch books, and I stretch loudly, feeling all my joints click wonderfully. I roll the sleeves on my dress shirt higher, and unknot my tie, popping open the top two buttons of my collar – and I feel Marco watch me all the while. He doesn’t say anything, but that’s okay. Everything’s _okay_. I’m drunk with it.

Driving home in the summer dark is something I’ve loved for a long time – even as a kid, curled up along the back seat, there was something ethereal about the whole thing; dipping in and out of the classical jazz on late night radio, the hum of mom and dad’s conversations in the front seat, too incoherent to ever fully make out, and the gentle vibrations of the car window where I would lean my head, watching the blur of yellow street lights in the deep, deep blue of the encompassing night pass by through the glass.

Everything is painted in soft and glassy hues around us now, the stars above consumable like cooking sherry at Christmas that you can’t help but sip, warming, burning, exquisitely _merry_ in the way a cloudless sky can make me feel. Deep blue air that is nothing and is nowhere, and is _endless_.

I flick the radio in Jag on low, switching the channel until I find some bluesy station, the echoes of a saxophone, its tone dark and rich and smooth, caressing us both with a golden touch as we settle into the front seats. Marco’s head lolls against the window, watching me beneath thick lashes as I hum along to the voiceless melody, and as the Jag soars off into the night of the city, I can think of nothing I like better than this, precise moment.

There’s no traffic this far past dusk, so we make good time, the Jag rumbling along the empty streets, black and sleek and _demure_ ; and I catch myself wondering, one hand on the stick shift, if it would ruin the night if I moved my hand just a little to the right, _just a little_. Dropped my fingers onto his thigh. Just rested them there. Could I do that?

It’s hard to tell. He’s been so open, so freely laughing with me all night, so welcoming to touches, that maybe … maybe I could.

I don’t, in the end, because I start thinking about pulling over onto the sidewalk and coaxing him into the backseat, laying him down on the plush leather and exploring, mapping all the chartable constellations on his skin, running kisses down his tanned chest and slipping hands beneath the crisp folds of his shirt; I don’t in the end, because we’re turning onto Marco’s street suddenly – and it’s too soon. I want to drive forever – go far, far away, and take him with me. To leave everything behind, and have it just be us … _don’t think about it, Jean_.

 _Don’t. Don’t hurt yourself like that_.

I pull up behind his pool van, and I silence the engine – and when I turn to face him, his head still pressed against the glass, the faint, yellowing light of street lamps above us reflects in droplets of dew clinging to his eyelashes. The breath in my lungs trembles – and I wish … I wish for something to change. Each tear of his would form bruises on my skin, should he let them fall. But I would suffer each and every one.

“Marco,” I whisper, unbuckling my seatbelt to lean across to gently rouse him. He not sleeping, but he’s dozing, his glossy eyes flickering open in a way that makes my heart both lurch and crumple. “Hey, bud, you’re … you’re _crying_.”

“H-huh?” he quivers, bringing his fingers up to his face to wipe beneath his eyes. When the pads comes away damp, he says, with a breathy stutter, “O-oh.” Paper, paper hearts. Tears make them weak.

“Marco,” I murmur again, “You can tell me.”

He shakes his head deterrently, and folds the sleeve of his jacket around his palm to pat at the salt residue on his face. He exhales coolly.

“It’s nothing,” he whispers back, “I just … Jean, I had a really good night tonight.” He squeezes his eyes shut, and one, single trail of water leaks over his cheek. He brushes it away like it means nothing. “I … don’t think I want it to _end_.”

I can see he’s hurting – and God, it’s not in the normal way. What’s not being said, Marco? What … what do I need to give to you to make it better – because you name anything, and I’ll try my damnedest. You know that, right?

Marco, I have _so much love to give you_. Do you get that? I want to smother you in it, drown you in it, I want you to suffocate in it, I want it to fill your lungs and replace all that fear in your Jupiter heart about taking a step back into the house at the end of the garden path, there.  

His smile is that same one I know like the back of my hand: sad and wistful as he stares out the front window, and focuses his breathing for a moment; when he turns back to me, his face is dry, but fuck, mine’s threatening not to be. Don’t cry, Jean. Don’t you dare fucking cry. You are a _desert_ compared to the _forest_ of things inside of him; you have no water to spare.

“Thank you, Jean,” he says slowly, _measuredly_. “This … tonight was because of you. Thank you.”

Before he moves to leave, there’s that pendulum of silence that I recognised before – the small space that I’ve only just noticed appearing, but now, it’s deafening. I’m meant to tell him I love him – that’s what this space is for. Whisper it, blurt it, kiss it into his mouth. I know it.

He unbuckles his seatbelt. His hand’s on the door. The latch clicks.

“M-Marco, wait a second.”

My hand is outstretched in the space between us – and both of us are staring at it. When did that happen? I blink slowly, and look up, meeting his gaze across the front of the car.

His expression is like a vice to the feeling inside my chest; a wide eyed hopefulness, that I can’t _… I can’t_ …

I want to kiss him – to lean across this space, take his face between my palms and kiss him in a moment of breathlessness, pour all my love for him into the cracks in his bones, and I—

I can’t move.

Why now. Please, _why now_. I can’t keep holding this back – it _hurts_ too much. The ache in my chest – there’s nothing beautiful about it. It makes me want to bleed; and I _can’t bare it_.

I want to tell him that I love him.

I don’t. I don’t, because _I’m the firecracker boy_ , who burns too brightly too quickly, and then dies, and takes with him all his bravado in a plume of smoke and debris.

To say “ _I want you_ ” would sound far too eager; “ _I need you_ ”, far too desperate. To say to him, “ _I love you, Marco_ ”, would sound far too _selfish_.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” Our promise. I am Atlas beneath it.

I watch him walk to the door, only once looking back and offering me the fragment of a wave, which I can’t even bring myself to return. It’s only after the front door of his house is safely shut, and I watch the light flicker on in the upstairs room, that I turn, and slam my forehead into the rim of the steering wheel. The leather sticks to my skin, cold and clammy against where my fire dies once more.

I remain silent, and hope, dear God, _I hope_ , that I don’t sound far too indifferent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is 35.5k words long. That's the longest single chapter I've ever written, by a good 10000 words. And by jove, it was painful.
> 
> I feel a bit hit and miss about this chapter as a whole ... I've been looking forward to having Jean take a step into Marco's world by seeing where he lives and meeting his parents, and I've also been looking forward to writing Ymir's art gallery for an age. 
> 
> On the other hand ... well, I feel like this chapter is sub-par compared to some of my previous chapters. It's hard for me, because I don't feel like anyone moved forward particularly in this chapter, but then - I have to remember - sometimes you don't. Sometimes you stagnate for a while. That happens.
> 
> And God knows we're gonna stir up some shit in the next chapter. It's gonna get rough. 
> 
> So maybe it's okay that this chapter feels a little mundane. Hopefully it's not though, and hopefully you guys do like it! Please let me know what you think! I read every comment I receive on here (even if I can't get around to replying to many of them), and they always make me smile. My Tumblr inbox is equally open, and I try hard to reply to as many of those!
> 
> As always, thank you for the INSANE amount of feedback from the previous chapter. It means the world to me. 
> 
> Get your tissue boxes ready for next time. That's all I'm saying.


	18. Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And every king knows it to be true  
> That every kingdom must one day come to an end."
> 
> "Everything", Ben Howard (2011)

There are sad words, and there are _sad_ words.

Some words are not always sad, some words change in their sadness with whoever’s lips they drip from, some words are only sad when you look back on them with the gift of hindsight.

Some words are sad:  “ _It’s cancer, Jean. My dad … has cancer_.”

Words that break, words that shatter, words that leave splinters of glass imbedded in your fingers – but you pick them out, you know? Maybe it takes time – there are a lot of splinters, after all. Some of them are really _small_ , barely dew drops against and beneath your skin, and they sink down deep. Your body absorbs them. You go a long time never noticing. Maybe you _never_ notice. Maybe you learn not to notice.

Those are sad.

But _sad_. Let me tell you, because, believe me, I know a whole host about those. Of all the words written in books, of scribed in dictionaries, of said by any man or mouse, the saddest are: _it could have been_.

It’s glass that doesn’t shatter, but it boxes you in. I can press my palm up against the giant panes, fingers squeaking as I drag them down, down, _down_ , cool to the touch. I rest my cheek, I lean my forehead, I fog up the glass with the warmth of my breath, and I _shout_ – and all remains silent.

I could’ve done it.

I could’ve said it.

It could’ve been.

The walls of the glass room around me are slowly moving in – some _Indiana Jones_ trap I’ve carelessly triggered, but I didn’t notice in time. It’s too far gone. I’m stuck. Trapped. A _dead man_ , basically. I feel like I’ve done us, Marco and I, both a wrong – something terrible, like robbing a pawn shop, or swallowing bottles and bottles of pills, or shovelling myself into a self-dug grave and covering myself in dirt. It’s a feeling worth choking on, and forcing it down makes me only tremble, alone in my car.

I let my head rest against the slick leather of my steering wheel, listening to the wheezing rise and fall of my chest as I breathe heavily.

 _Get over it Jean. Get over it. It was just three words_.

Three words I couldn’t say.

What can I say? There’s nothing quite like a nice, tall glass of luke-warm _regret_ to quench the thrill of what was – I’ll be fucking _damned_ – a great evening. Everything had gone so well. Everything.

But all that while – those few, amazing hours of time spent at his side, stolen glances and not-so-stolen glances, laughs shared, touches dared – the glass walls had made a great _leap_ in their pressing in on me. They’re suddenly so much closer now, and I feel a squeeze. Heart, lungs, head. Squeezing, unyielding. Too much.  

There are four weeks until term starts – and yeah, I know, that shouldn’t be such a big deal. But that’s four weeks of summer left too, y’know? Four weeks of relative freedom. And that, in itself, is like another weight, coming in from above and below, squishing my feet up and my head down, threatening to ball me up into a tightly packed, little cube of a person.

Summer is ending.

And I know it, in my viced heart, that I have a deadline. I have to tell him before those four weeks are up, because … because I’ll go insane if I don’t. I can’t – there’s no way I can keep this up.

I’m selfish, I’m _selfish_. But I can’t. I can’t suffer this much longer.

I don’t expect anything from it. I can’t put any hope in being that _lucky_ , for starters, and also – it’ll be better for him if nothing comes of it. It will, it will – I have to tell myself that, as I let my resting head tip sideways, to stare forlornly at the street-lamp lit roof of their scrappy little bungalow, of their browning grass, of the abandoned bicycle on the lawn, of the unwatered plants on the patio. He doesn’t need my burden.

But I think I have to know how he feels. Or at least, he has to know how _I_ feel. Holding all this crap inside – it burns, and it’s going to burst. And it’s gonna be God-damn messy – all blood and guts and gruesome stuff – if I don’t.

I have to say something.

But I don’t know _how_.

How to say something without my throat seizing up and my blood running hot and cold simultaneously and my head whirring with all the reasons why, why not, why, _why not_ —

How to not trip and stumble over my words, how to say something to make him know… to make him know _exactly_ how it is. How I feel. Are there words for that? He’s moved me – he _moves_ me. How do I explain the change in _myself_ , to him? How do I do that?

My frustration rumbles out of me as a growl as I twist the key in the Jag’s ignition, and the engine sparks a low thrum like my own. I drive the stick shift into reverse, and swing in a wide arc out into the road, a poor, three-point turn to set the car in a direction _anywhere other than here_ – which is ironic, really, considering outside his front door is probably exactly where I _want_ to be.

The streetlights blur and oncoming headlights blur and my vision blurs, so I have to pull over onto the sidewalk more than a couple times on the way home to rest my head on the wheel and remind myself how to _pull it the fuck together_.

I don’t cry – it’s not like that. I don’t feel like crying. It just feels like there’s so much _else_ going on in my head that focusing on the road becomes apparently _obsolete_ for my brain, and clear vision is not part of the programming tonight. There’s a relief in my chest, and there are memories spun with happiness in my head like threads of gold, and there’s the knowledge of my own idiocy at my reluctance to move forward, which is like touching those gold webs, and finding they burn. It’s a mess – but it’s hard to tell if it’s an _ordered_ mess, or not.

I’m not torn up about this anymore – it’s past that, and I can see now what I need to do, even if it’s only for sake of myself. But I suppose that, in itself, is the frustrating part of it all.

I make it home – eventually – easing the Jag into dad’s parking space on the drive and killing the engine with the hope that it’s as silent as possible. I bundle my sketchbooks into my arms from the back seat and throw my jacket over my shoulder, and slip into the house like barely a breath through an open window. Doesn’t matter anyway – all the lights are off, and mom’s asleep. Still though: I dodge every creaky floorboard on the landing, and gently let my door shut closed behind me before I allow myself a staunch inhale and a flop onto my awaiting mattress.

The warmth of Marco’s smile is what radiates at the back of my mind as I stare upwards at the white swirls on my ceiling, waiting for my world to stop swimming. I think of the glint in his eyes – honey brown and dancing beneath the low light that plunged Ymir’s paintings into sharp contrast; I think of the shadows brushed in striking sweeps across his face; of freckles mapped; of breathes felt.

There’s no helping the smile that blooms faintly on my lips – distant, like a dream, but coloured with all the memories of tonight. I have this much.  It’s not a happy smile – but it’s not sad either. And it’s weird: being both happy and sad, and neither, all at the same time? It’s a paradox in name, but I suppose it’s a truthful one.

I wriggle out of my suit pants, and toss my dress shirt and tie onto the same pile after I peel them off too. I crawl under the safety of my duvet, wrapping the woven fabric around my shoulders, and welcoming a touch not unlike the way Marco’s suit had felt beneath my fingertips, before I grab my phone from my bedside table.

It dips my face in sharp blue light as I open up my inbox – Marco’s name appears only beneath Ymir’s, so he’s easy to find.

**To: Marco-Polo**   
**thank u for tonight. i had a rly good time. and thanks for just being there for me with all that art stuff. u dont know how much that meant**

I press send before I have time to mull – but even after I watch the words disappear into the nether sphere of electronic waves or whatever, I don’t find myself regretting the sappy stuff. I mean it. All of it. I really appreciated him being there tonight. If I’m honest, it’s not nearly _enough_ sap.

I hit the sleep button and drop the handset onto my face for a moment, closing my eyes and feeling the weight of my phone press against the scar across the bridge of my nose. I think I drift off – not deep, but nor does a vibration of a text disturb me from the doze – and it’s only when my phone slides off my face and thumps onto the mattress that I start.

Sure enough – no reply, but it’s no surprise. I’d hope Marco would be in bed. I’d hope he’s not lying on top of his covers, half-awake and fretting about letting a tear escape from the corner of his eye in my presence.

Unless he’s doing what I’m doing. Unless he’s thinking about the way our arms had slotted together to easily as we’d walked. Unless he’s remembering that. Then, maybe, I hope that he’s not gone to sleep yet.

I slide my phone under the spare pillow and snuggle down deeper into my quilt, breathing in the faint must of my sheets, which probably need a wash sooner rather than later. Somewhere along the line, the image of his sunlit smile behind my eyelids fades into obscurity, and sleeps catches me willingly for once.

 

* * *

 

Saturday is hot – scorchingly, making me think that it’s some last ditch attempt from a stubborn summer to remind me that it’s not quite done ruining my life _yet_. There’s a grumble on my lips, and sleep dust in my eyes, and I scramble around clumsily beneath my pillow to find where my phone has travelled during the night. My hand curls around the slightly warmed hard-casing, and I drag it out from the depths of my mattress, blearily swiping across the screen with one, squeaking finger.

**New Messages: 1**

No time is wasted opening up my inbox, and the sleep film across my eyes recedes when I’m drawn to Marco’s name highlighted in bold.

**From: Marco-Polo  
I had an amazing time too, Jean. Being able to be a part of that side of your life was … really fun. Thank you for inviting me! :)**

Oh man, don’t say that. I stop breathing – mouthful of air caught in my throat – and I scan the words once, twice, again. It was sent last night – or in the early hours of this morning, I guess is more accurate – after I’d fallen asleep with the presumption that he, too, might have collapsed straight into bed. Apparently not.

The beads of tears that had clung to his eyelashes in the dim light of the sidewalk as he lent against the window of my car – it spoils any semblance of a grin that threatens to be broad and unrelenting. And don’t even start me on the subjective emotional worth of that God-damn smiley face. A bittersweet aftertaste plastered to the roof of my mouth like rice paper sticking to your palette – it doesn’t budge easily.

 

* * *

 

I laze around in bed for a few hours – the thought of marauding downstairs and having to pass mom or dad or _both_ makes my stomach turn, and flitting in and out of a light doze with Marco’s words playing on my mind is significantly preferable to, _y’know_ , the whole being _awake_ and having to deal with the cacophony of _crap_ that’s more than likely to surface in my head the minute I force myself out of the safety of my duvet. It’s easy to forget about creeping glass walls and _sad_ words when there’s a layer of quilting between me and the outside world, and the echoing hollows of my subconscious is padded with the cottony praise of Marco’s _thankyous_.

It’s the spluttering sound of a familiar engine pulling up on the other side of the hedgerow that eventually stirs me, and I roll out of bed with a gracious thud, my duvet still hooked around my shoulders and my hair on end.

I won’t be repeating the same mistake as last time, believe me. I tug on the pair of jeans slung over the end of my bed and go digging for the cleanest smelling shirt I can find in the pile draped over my desk chair, and just about have time to run a comb through the worst of my hair before I hear cluttering in the yard below.

Glaring noons and white-hot sunlight are something I’m used to – if unwelcoming of – but the hum of the air conditioning doesn’t fill the silence as I scamper down the stairs, and running a hand over my jaw is prickly and uncomfortable with the thickness of the stiff heat caught in the hallway and the kitchen. Great, so I guess that means the central air is out. The summer temperatures really are fucking _unrelenting_ , aren’t they?

I grab a can of Coke for me, and a Dr. Pepper for Marco, from the fridge, and head outside to great him with a nod of my head and a fleeting smile, which he returns much the same. It’s a little sombre, a little reserved, because the weight of _what could’ve been_ weighs heavily on my mind, and the weight of _so much more_ weighs on Marco’s, I’m sure.

He hands me a pool net without having to ask me, and we settle into what is our routine, our balance against a constantly shifting tide. I ask him how it was when he got in last night – he tells me his family were asleep, but Mina couldn’t get enough of the story at the breakfast table this morning – and it almost makes me flush, thinking about the things he might’ve said to his family about me. He tells me how his mom wants me to come around for dinner – I laugh lightly, but he has me agreeing to the proposition when he remarks that his mom is a better cook that he is, and there’s no question that she does the best potatoes this side of the Trost highway.

The conversation is light, like I’m standing on the precipice of the pool, more than just literally – staring down at things that could be said but aren’t, and wondering just how deep they go. I don’t know though – maybe it’s okay to stay floating on the surface – because it feels nice. Okay. Normal.

It’s _nice_ to feel _normal_ every once in a blue moon.

When we finish sifting dirt and debris out of the pool as best we can, Marco moves to check the chlorine levels, whilst I perch on the top step of the pool shed stairs, reading out to him some of the delights of Ymir’s drunk Facebook posts from last night – and he chuckles, whilst I _grin_ , finding more amusement, probably, in the lightness in his expression rather than the strew of indecipherable letters Ymir has spammed her wall with.

“Not sure if I’m more glad that we didn’t go with them or not,” I smirk, scrolling further back through my Timeline, through miles and miles of lewdness. Marco pops his head out of the open doorway of the pool shed, his smile broad, yet still a little dimmer than his usual Hollywood beam. I continue, “I mean, it woulda been one for the books.”

I wonder if the night might have ended differently if we’d accepted the offer to go with Ymir and Historia – a few drinks, and the fiery fuel of liquid courage like lighter fluid in my veins later, and maybe there wouldn’t have been any _what ifs_.

(Jeez. All that is, is just one more _what if_ to add to the fucking pile.)

“They got home safely though?” Marco prompts gently, peering around the doorframe to glance over my shoulder. “Have you heard from them at all?”

“Mm, yeah,” I mumble, flicking my finger back up through my feed to refresh the top of the page. A status update from Ymir herself appears a new, complaining brashly about her migraine and the state of her wallet after last night. “Yeah, here – sounds like it’s hangover central over there though. Not like I’m surprised.”

“I’m glad they had a good night,” he adds, disappearing back into the shed quickly to rattle around with something, before reappearing on the top step to scribble down some figures on a scrap of paper that I’m sure mean something to him. “I could tell how nervous Ymir was.”

“Don’t blame her,” I retort, watching Marco as he hops down the steps to return to messing around with the chemical balance, hidden beneath a small, white drain embedded in the concrete slabs that surround the poolside. “It was terrifying. Especially that Mike guy with the beard and the nose, y’know. Thought I was gonna faint or something when he started talking to me.”

“You were in good hands,” Marco replies quietly, glancing down as he unscrews something from the pipework I can’t quite see. I do see the colour that rises in his cheeks, though, and the tightening in his jawline.

“Y-yeah?” I venture to ask, my voice stuttering frustratingly. The mental image is dumb, and pretty embarrassing, but Marco’s bashfulness spurs me on. “You woulda caught me if I’d fainted, huh?”

The apples of Marco’s cheeks bloom a brilliant red – and how did I ever mistake that expression for him catching the sun? Even his ears are red, and he awkwardly scratches the back of his neck as he continues to fiddle with his equipment, eyes cast down, distinctly away from looking me in the face.

I run my tongue over my canines, and open my mouth to continue to probe him, feeling a sense of reformed bravado being pushed up from deep within my chest, when my phone vibrates loudly with the jingling tone of a new Facebook notification.

I glance down at my Samsung in my lap, seeing the flash of a new message in one of Connie’s numerous group chats – but in the same moment, feel Marco’s eyes fleetingly move up to watch me, and his shoulders heave in something like a disappointed sigh. He looks away again just as quickly, replacing the cover on the drain carefully.

I feel my face furrow into a frown involuntarily, and turn my attention back to my phone, unlocking the group message.

 **Connie Springer:**  
>> so we cool for the weekend of the 28th for the beach right  
>> everyone free?????

 **Sasha Braus:**  
>> you know i am <3

 **Ymir:**  
>> ur god damn message tone just woke me up u little fucker what part of hungover dont u fuckin understand  
>> i swear 2 god im gonna mount ur pruney little balls on my wall

 **Historia Reiss:**  
>> Ymir and I are both perfect for those dates :D

There are replies from Reiner and Eren too, confirming their acknowledgements of Connie’s suggestions , and Connie mouthing off at Ymir, and Ymir smashing at her keyboard in return – nothing out of the ordinary. I glance up at Marco, and find him looking at his phone too.

“You seen this?” I say, titling my cell in his direction. “Those dates good for you?”

“Last weekend of the month,” he says softly, eyes flitting over the words on his screen, before tucking the handset back into the pocket of his khakis. “Last weekend before you go back for the new semester, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I reply, chewing on the inside of my cheek. “’S gone quickly, hasn’t it? Summer, I mean.”

Marco stands, pushing himself to his feet tiredly, and wonders back over to me, his shadow bearing down across my face. He smiles – and I see a glimmer of it even in the sunny planes of his eyes.

“Well spent though,” he says.

He scans my face for a moment, and it’s all I can do to follow every movement of his eyes with my own, staring up at him like some lost child or curious animal, my hands tight around my phone.

Three words echo inside my rapidly emptying head.

 _It really was_.

 

* * *

 

As Marco packs up his equipment, I read him the rest of the conversation, after I reply saying that the both of us are free on those dates. (Naturally, I leave out telling Marco about most of the teasing that Connie and Sasha and even stupidly hung-over Ymir ply me with – he can read all that himself, later.)

My skin prickles and bubbles with a mix of both excitement and reluctance, as Connie begins to babble about what he’s got planned for all of us, and my voice begins to curl at the corners as I read to Marco.

There’s talk of tents, and barbeques, and food, and alcohol, and the ocean, ocean, _ocean_.

There are a lot of things I worry about, and the anxious vortex spinning in the pit of my stomach is felt like a dizziness or the pull of a drowning man. I want to save him, but worry that he will strangle me with his panic – which is a bit extreme, I suppose, but you know me: I’m a cynic. It’s always easier to fear the worst, and then be pleasantly surprised, right?

Three days. All that beach. All that time with Marco.

It makes me wonder: the what could happen, the what I to happen, the what I can _make_ happen.

And then, there’s all that _water_.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t pass, even after Marco leaves, and we exchange a hug that doesn’t settle quite right in the too-much space between us – the unease, that is. It’s not helped by the taste of sobriety in the atmosphere that spans us, nor by the reminder of the approaching end of summer, nor by the fact that I seem to sit atop a fence post where on one side is the spark of happiness from last night lighting a fire in the dry, summer grass, and on the other side is the thought of tears clinging to lashes and things I won’t ever really understand.

I haven’t been to the ocean in a long time – and truth be told, after the age when I started to concretely realise that it was the water that I hated and pushed a thumb tack into that fear of mine, I never really had it planned out that I might go back some day.

It been a long while since I’ve felt this nauseous as well – but I suppose that’s only because the deep-rooted fear in my bones has been smothered and suffocated by other things more recently. I haven’t given it time to breathe, but as Saturday rolls over to Sunday, and that to Monday, and so on, and so forth, I find my old habits don’t die hard, and my fear of water does like to wheeze.

Rinsing my shaving brush, washing my hands, the mandatory jump in and out of the shower – I start thinking about it again. The feeling of water hitting my skin, trickling through the cracks between my fingers, scouring in long, weaving trails down my arms and legs: it all makes me wobble, makes me shiver, makes me grimace when it doesn’t even cause me pain, but—

It doesn’t just go away. I woulda thought I’d learnt that by now, but even the weather forecast that flashes on my laptop desktop, promising rain by the end of the week, is like a constant snapping at the fraying edges of my nerves. Even despite all this heat, and how much I’ve been willing it away – the thought of rain is no longer one that’s welcomed.

Marco doesn’t text me much – maybe one or two replies to a good morning here, or a good night there, and he offers his two cents in the Facebook conversation a few times – but to be fair, I don’t give him reason to contact me. I don’t tell him about the anxious anticipation of a _whole lotta water_ – because making him worry like that has gotta be shitty. It’s okay. Even if my forehead becomes a maze of anxious little grooves, it’s better than burdening him with something so petulant—

 _It’s not petulant. It’s justified. It’s okay to be scared_.

It’s kinda hard to tell myself that, but when I force it into my head through _his_ voice, it becomes slightly easier.

 

* * *

 

It’s easy to say what there isn’t to like about the ocean, in my mind. Wide and wavering and indecisive. Unpredictable.

It’s the seaweed that wraps around your legs and spikes a sick shiver up your spine; it’s the sharp barb of unbowed rocks beneath the soles of your feet; it’s the give of the sand that never quite feels like it’ll hold your weight long enough.

It’s the thought that one minute it could drown you, and the next it could throw you against the rocks – and your feet will never touch the bottom during.

It’s the knowledge that there’s no concrete side to cling onto, and no pool boy to pull you out when your lungs start spluttering. The salt stings, _burns_. Not a good burn.

What a clever adversary – it goes straight for my weakest spot with an unnerving sort of accuracy. No decency, respects no laws or conventions, shows no mercy … and suddenly doing the simplest things of my daily routine is like walking around constantly glancing back over my shoulder. Mainly paranoia, a touch of anxiety, and definitely more than one spoonful of irrational thinking – but that’s fear, isn’t it? World doesn’t stop because you wanna get off.

It’s not helped by the tumult in my stomach and the _tumult_ in my head, and the fact that these last few weeks haven’t been the _easiest_ of my life ( –  but nor the worst, I should clarify), and I know a lot of this feeling has only caught up with me because I haven’t had much breathing space of late.

Maybe if I hadn’t been knocked around so much by the general to and fro of mom, and dad, and Marco, and _life in general_ , there wouldn’t be so many hairline fractures in my bones to fill with the thought of salt water.

Not much that I can do about that now though. Gotta make do and mend. Gotta make do.

Make do.

_“I guarantee, Jean, that you will make it to that place where it won’t bother you so much. For now, we just learn how to live with it.”_

Come on.

 

* * *

 

Wednesday ticks around – the days between here and Saturday having been punctuated by nothing in particular, bar endless reruns of old TV shows on Netflix, a few games on the Xbox, and staring at my phone wishing for something to happen. Oh, and the bouts of unnecessary motion sickness that spring up in the moments between all those things when my mind wonders to the conversation scrolling by on Facebook, and all the not-quite-infectious-enough enthusiasm for this beach trip in just under three weeks’ time.

Mom’s out when I flit downstairs just before noon, making a bee-line straight for the coffee machine and sparing a cursory glance at the pile of unopened mail building up on the island counter in the middle of the kitchen. It’s all addressed to dad – he’s been letting it slide, I see. Or he just hasn’t been home in that long. I don’t know. I don’t spare much thought over it.

I hear the squeak of the back gate flying open just as the coffee machines starts bleeping angrily at me – but as I grab the steaming coffee pot and turn back, expecting to see Marco and a friendly wave in my direction through the window, I am severely disappointed.

“Oh, you’re _kidding_ me.”

I don’t know what I’m happier to see – the fact that Connie and Sasha have both just burst into my back yard, or the fact that Connie has an obnoxious, inflatable pool ring looped over one shoulder and is wearing a grin worth being decked in the face for.

I take a long swig of my coffee, and for once relish how bitter I’ve made it.

I take my time pottering around the kitchen, flicking over the upturned newspaper on the sideboard to check today’s headlines, aware, out of the corner of my eye, of Connie launching the rubber ring into the pool, and Sasha slipping in the back door, pushing her large sunglasses up into her hair line, large eyes twinkling gleefully.

“Go~od morning,” she sings-songs happily as I plant my coffee mug firmly on the marble counter top. “You got my text, right?”

“No,” I grumble, imagining that she must’ve sent something in the five minutes I’ve been downstairs, away from my phone, ‘cus my inbox was sure as hell _empty_ when I woke up this morning. “Something tells me I woulda had some _forewarning_ if I had.”

“Sorry,” she chuckles, shimmying up onto one of the black leather bar stools, “Just thought it’d be nice to hang out, is all! Haven’t seen you in aaaages, Jeanbo.”

“Like, two weeks,” I mutter, propping my empty mug on the draining board of the sink, eyeing the faucet but deciding it best to avoid turning it on. “If that. You’re not that socially _starved_ , are you?”

“But Ymir said you went out with _her_ the other night,” Sasha pouts, swinging her legs childishly, “And you didn’t invite us! Or even just me, Jeanbo, I wouldn’t have told Connie – promise! Why’d you hang out with Ymir and not _meee_? You know I know how to have a good time.”

“We didn’t go _out_ ,” I remark dryly, raising my eyebrows, “Ymir invited me to her art thing, so I went. And she only had two tickets spare. Which was _such a shame_.”

Sasha scrunches her nose childishly and pokes her tongue out at me – I respond with the most condescending look I can muster as I prop the coffee pot back into its stand.

“Rude, Jean,” she jibes – perfectly playfully, despite how hard she tries to contort her face into a disapproving expression. “I totally know lots about art – it woulda been a great date. Connie totally understands our love, it’s fiiiine.”

“I didn’t go alone, Sash. Marco came.”

She physically perks up and her doe-eyes go wide, a grin quickly blooming on her lips instead of a disgruntled pout.

She wiggles her eyebrows teasingly, and I am more than well acquainted with the flash of wickedness that bursts on her face. I asked for this.

“Marco came or Marco _came_ ,” she grins lecherously. The noise that leaves my mouth is a mix somewhere between a sob and a _groan_ – and she just chuckles evilly. I didn’t ask for this.

“Get outside. Outside, _now_ , Sash.”

I kick her ass through the back door myself as she continues to giggle, and I keep my hands shoved deep in my pants’ pockets as I trudge after her across the lawn, stopping a few, deliberate feet shy of the pool. The blush on my face is God-damn _violent_ , and I try hardest to crush any connotations of what Sasha just implied with the force of a mental _steamroller_.

Sasha sheds her shorts and t-shirt with little regard for anyone really – but she’s come prepared with her bikini on underneath. (Although I wouldn’t put it past her to just strip naked in my back yard one of these days if it came to it. Jesus.)

Connie grins up at me from where he’s balanced on the pool edge, prodding at the inflatable ring in the water, testing to see if it’ll take his weight without flipping over.

“Hey man—” he starts, but is cut off abruptly as Sasha _launches_ herself onto the ring from a flying leap, catapulting onto the plastic, and then straight off the other side as the whole thing capsizes on her. “Serves you right, Sash!”

She splutters to the surface, arms flailing as she grabs hold of the ring and pulls her upper body out of the water. Her bangs are plastered to her forehead, and she sweeps them out of her face with a breathy laugh as she snorts chlorinated water out of her nose. Gross.

“Where’d you find that thing?” I ask, gesturing with a surly nod of my head towards the inflatable donut and Sasha struggling to pull herself up on top of it and out of the water.

“Oh that? Well, I met it when I was five years old and we both happened to go to the same grade school and it decided to throw a dirt clod at my head— _oh, you mean the pool ring_?”

I roll my eyes at his shitty joke and he sniggers.

“Found it in our garage,” he supplies casually. “All deflated and sad-looking in a box full of cobwebs and like, a few buckets and spades from when I was little and the folks used to do beach trips. Figured it’d be worth taking it for a spin before we head down to Jinae, right? Make sure it ain’t got no leaks.”

“Looks like it’s floating fine,” I reply tersely, watching with mild interest as Sasha successfully rolls herself onto the ring, only for the whole thing to flip back over again and take her with it, legs and arms flapping wildly. It _should_ be funny – she’s still laughing when she surfaces – but just watching her flounder is unsettling enough for me.

“You mind if I—?” Connie then asks, pointing his elbow at the lapping waters of the pool. I shrug and give him a desultory nod, and he wastes no time in leaping into the water with a cheer and a splash way too big for his skinny-ass frame to have caused.

He swims straight for the ring, dragging himself up into the middle with ease that has Sasha pouting, and I sigh. I sigh, and keeping a safe distance from the pool edge, wander around to the steps of the shed to take up my normal roost under what little shade the awning provides.

It doesn’t take long for Marco to pitch up. I think about texting him, warning him that thing one and thing two have turned up to make his job considerably more difficult, but I don’t in the end – one, because he’s probably driving, and two, because if I have to suffer them, I’d rather I didn’t do it alone.

He freezes when he pushes through the back gate, arms piled high with his equipment, but still I see him draw a smile out of the depths of our secret – and Connie and Sasha will never know the difference.

I hop to my feet and scamper across the lawn to greet him, welcoming his brief, questioning look with a roll of my eyes as I fish the pool nets out from beneath his arm, and hold out my hand for one of the buckets he carries.

“Marco!” Sasha squeaks happily, a few strokes bringing her to the edge of the pool where she folds her arms atop the concrete and smiles brightly up at us, and I make sure to keep walking past her. “Jean was telling me he took you on a date the other night instead of inviting me! Is this true?”

I mutter a string of curses under my breath as I dump my spare of Marco’s cleaning equipment on the grass by the steps, making sure to keep my back to the pool and Connie’s wandering eyes as I feel heat creeping up the back of my neck. Marco stammers, flustered, behind me as he dawdles, falling prey of _thing two_.

“U-uh,” he falters, “It… it wasn’t a date.” Jeez Marco, way to make it sound like someone’s just trampled on your balls. (And it totally could’ve been a date, y’know. Totally. I wouldn’t have minded if you called it that.) “Jean just … invited me out to see Ymir’s art gallery – but I didn’t realise you were interested, Sasha; I would’ve asked Jean if he had a spare ticket if I’d have kn—”

“I’m just messing with you, Marco,” she chirps, interrupting him, and I physically _feel_ the tease of her smirk somewhere behind me, even if I don’t give her the satisfaction of me looking back over my shoulder. “It’s not my scene. Not big on all that … _arty_ stuff. Did you have a good time?”

It’s almost easy to forget about the bittersweetness of his smile when he’s so good at this sort of chipper conversation.

“Y-yeah,” he says sharply, and then, more tenderly, in a way that makes my heart swell, “Yeah. I did. It was a really great night.” (I’m glad I don’t see the expression he makes then, because if I’m judging anything by the tone of his voice, I’d imagine it’d kill me in a heartbeat. Oh boy.)

“Yeah?” I hear Sasha chime, “That’s good. I’m glad _my boy is treating you well_.”

“I am _here_ , Sasha,” I complain loudly, “And I _can_ hear you.”

She feigns the face of innocence as I turn back around, quickly returning to Marco to help him with the rest of his stuff, making sure to squint _hard_ in her direction as I pass her, chin resting on her forearms as she bats her eyelashes.

“Anyway,” I add, gritting my teeth. “The tube floats, so time for you guys to scarper. Marco’s gotta clean the pool, and he can’t do it whilst you two _are in it_.”

“Aww, c’mon man,” Connie pipes up, fingers trailing in the water as he spins languidly on the inflatable donut, head lolling over the side as he watches us from upside down. “We only just got here. It’s no biggie, is it Marco? We can help, if you like.”

Sasha flutters her eyelashes _harder_ – and jeez, _Marco should not be weak to that_ – but he shoots me an apologetic smile and a meek shrug of his broad shoulders. Fine. _Fine_.  (I _am_ weak to _him_.)

They don’t help, of course. Maybe Connie fishes out a leaf or two, lathering them across the concrete slabs every time his floating donut bumps into the mosaic tiles, but they both lose interest quickly, Sasha becoming far more concerned with trying to usurp the inflatable seat from her boyfriend.

Splashing and laughter disturbs the oppressive stillness of the air, but it’s little relief as I shrink beneath the shadow of the pool shed, watching droplets splatter against the concrete and the grass, and hoping that Marco understands why I can’t quite stomach helping out today.

He entertains them for a bit with his laugh – musical, beautiful, just one of the many parts of him I have pinned to my skin as armour – and I suppose I can’t hate on these guys _that_ much. Making him laugh freely is always going to be a good thing, but what they don’t see, what they _won’t_ see, is how it fades after a while, and he swirls his pool net in the water with only a flickering trace of a smile as the sun slowly slides across the sky above us. I know he’s used to others staring at his leaves – and yeah, they’re beautiful, they’re lively, they’re spring-like – but _others_ miss the shadows that grow between them. But I know them. I see them.

“Jeaaaan,” Sasha whines, drawing me out of my spaced-out study of the finer details of Marco’s face from across the pool. She doggy-paddles into the shallows, pawing at the submerged steps of the pool, looking up at me pleadingly. “Stop being such a sour-puss. Come swim, okay? You can’t just sit in the shade all day.”

“Maybe I like the shade.”

“Jean. Come on, come _play_ ,” she insists, wriggling onto the top step so that she can stage-whisper to me, “I’m sure Marco won’t complain if you were to miraculously _lose your shirt_ , if you get what I mean.”

I glance up, but Marco’s attention is focused on flicking out the debris caught in his net, so I reckon – but not sure if I hope – he didn’t hear that. My eyes drag back, trailing across the water between him and I, and I shake my head.

“Not going in the pool, Sash. Sorry.” Okay, so maybe that sounded a bit too severe. She means well. Sort of. If attempting to play matchmaker is well-meaning, I don’t really know. But it’s kinda _overruled_ by other things. “Literally just put my swim trunks in the wash, so … yeah. Can’t.” Minor white lie. My swim trunks are flung somewhere under my bed. But she doesn’t need to know that.

“Ugh, you’re so _lame_ ,” she grumbles, slinking back onto a lower step. “Just jump in in your clothes!”

I can feel my face knit into a scowl, and the imaginary taste of salt and the sound of the sea licks the more wobbly parts of my subconscious. My fingers curl tightly over the stone edge of the step I’m slumped on. It’s … one of the more adverse reactions I’ve had in a while. I try not to think about myself taking a step backwards. Don’t think of it like a linear line I’m walking. Just don’t.

Connie doesn’t look up, still spinning aimlessly in the centre of the pool, legs and arms drooped over the plastic, but Marco does. He looks up, and I allow myself to meet his gaze pointedly, and hold it. Only for a moment though, because Sasha is watching me fiercely.

“L-look,” I find myself saying quietly, “I’ll come sit on the side, alright. But I’m not going in.”

She puffs out her cheeks, but that seems a good enough answer for her as she shimmies away from the steps, flopping back in the water heavily as I push myself to my feet, rolling the cuffs of my pants up around my calves. My knees feel like jelly and I genuinely question their ability to hold me upright, but from somewhere I find the will to move my feet forward, down the stairs, across the foot or two of grass between the shed and the pool, and then into the inch of cool water that sneaks over the top, mosaic-tiled step that scatters the sunlight into a million shades of blue.

The knot in my stomach wrings itself dry with how hard it tugs and pulls at my intestines, _God_.

Sasha skulls backwards towards Connie, prodding him in the leg when she reaches him, and splashing him with a handful of water – but all their commotion goes in one ear and out the other, and I find myself freezing over despite the sun glaring down on the back of my neck and _burning_.

Taking one step into the pool is almost easy when it’s just Marco and me. Because I know he doesn’t mind how long it takes, because I know he doesn’t judge me for it, because I know he’s got me for when it doesn’t go as well as I would’ve hoped. But I’ve never done this when it’s been more than just the two of us.

This is … this is, actually, pretty _big_.

I swallow back the lump in my throat thickly, almost choking on it as I dip my bare feet onto the second step, water rushing up over my ankles and the better part of my calves, tugging sharply at every fine hair on my legs, a beat of a hidden riptide beneath the surface that threatens to knock me off my feet if I give it too much thought.

Can’t think. Don’t think.

Fuck, I feel _sick_.

There’s laughter and bright conversation and I feel dizzy. Sit down, _sit down_ , Jean. This is nothing. _You have to make it nothing_.

I draw air into my lungs like I would suck in the thick smog of nicotinous smoke, and feel the edge taken off of the way my head spins at a delirious pace. Carefully, I lower myself onto the dry, concrete slab at the top of the stairs, curling my toes beneath the water, my eyes – focused, determined, _desperate_ – on Marco, as he casually sets his pool net down on the grass and starts over in my direction, his steps just measured enough that it doesn’t look like he’s rushing.

Ah, he knows. He knows, he knows. He sees. He knows.

I rest my hands in my lap, squeezing my fingers brutally between my thighs to stop myself from fiddling, from knuckles white around the pool edge, from ripping out tufts of grass from the lawn. I bite down – hard – on the inside of my cheek with every lap of water that ebbs and flows over my bare skin, and I know my lip trembles when I exhale.

Fight it. Beat it. Find the place where it doesn’t matter.

It’s only Connie and Sasha. It’s only the pool. It’s only _water_.

 _And push back all thoughts of the ocean, God dammit_.

Marco slinks up behind me, and makes it the most natural thing in the world to hop down into the water, lowering himself onto the concrete beside me with the breeze of his camomile laundry detergent flooding my senses and overpowering the chlorine.

He doesn’t say anything – and he doesn’t need to. He _knows_.

His thigh presses up against mine, warm, unshaking, and it anchors me, drags me out of drowning man’s pull, and shatters the sides of my glass box that’s gradually filling with water from all the cracks I knew were there but always ignored. His shoulder brushes mine, and he lifts his hand to rest on my jittering knee, letting his thumb swipe, just once, over the strained fabric of my jeans. His fingers squeeze, and I allow myself a breath.

“Marco,” I find myself whispering – not a thank you in words, but a thank you in name, and I hope he can feel everything poured like caulk into the vowels of his name as I let them drip like candle wax across my lips, like a prayer for which no words exist.

He doesn’t reply – because I notice now that his mouth is moving and his lips turn up in the corners in a pleasant smile and he’s talking to the others – and maybe I just didn’t notice, but he’s fitted himself in so seamlessly between me, the water, and those guys, that none of us have really noticed. Sasha’s eyes don’t even flit to Marco’s hand on my knee, squeezing tightly again in recognition of my breath of his name, as she tugs Connie and the ring closer to the shallows.

“—can have bonfires on the beaches down there?” she asks, eyes sparkling brightly in excitement, as I belly flop back into the conversation mid-sentence, daring to replace the sick thrill of water with the electric thrill of Marco reassuringly pressed so close against my side. “We’ll have to make smores! Connie, Connie, did you hear?”

“Hell yes – I know a great recipe for smores, it’ll be great!” Connie cackles, slapping his fingers against the hollow plastic of the inflatable ring, “We need to stock up on marshmallows, Sash – remind me when we go on the booze run, alright?”

“My sister and I used to like baking apples over our camp fires,” Marco adds, “Core them first, fill them with Nutella … I’ve never felt so sick in my life, but—”

“Oh God, yes,” Sasha moans obscenely, paddling closer in the water, one arm hung over the edge of the ring. “Smother me naked in Nutella, _please_.”

Connie and Marco both laugh – Connie brashly, and Marco embarrassedly, his free hand itching at the back of his neck as colour blooms prettily in his cheeks, but his other hand stays firmly rooted to my knee, his fingers still, his tendons strained against his tanned skin, and his grasp firm.

“What— what else are you guys thinking of bringing?” he chuckles lightly, daring to divert the conversation away from some of Sasha’s kinks that really _should_ stay in the bedroom.

“Food wise or what?” Connie grins, clearly buzzing with unbridled excitement. “’Cus believe me, Sash and I have one hell of a shopping list.”

“We gotta remember to buy snorkels, Connie – _snorkels_ ,” Sasha pipes up, “And new flippers too, because my mom definitely chucked mine out.”

“I don’t think Jinae is known for its great selection of fish,” Marco muses, but it’s barely a dampener on Sasha’s spirit.

“Oh, no, it’s okay! I’m sure there’ll be _some_ stuff, I mean – we can at least go diving for shells, right? And like, there are crabs, and maybe we’ll be able to find lobsters if we swim out deep enough— just have to practice holding our breathes, heh—”

Ah, yes. The uncomfortable prickle.

“Oh, oh! We said we should bring your old wake board too, right? I read a thing that said there’s good waves off of some of the Jinae beaches – that right, Marco?”

It starts at the base of my spin and skitters, squirms, fucking _claws_ its way up to the bristle of my under cut.

“—as long as you don’t _dunk_ me this time Sasha! I almost _drowned_ —”

It’s like the sting of an insect, a scorpion, brief in its pain, but the venom trickles down inside of me – paralytic in the way in makes my legs and arms so quickly fill with cement and lead and the weight of every ounce of _fluid_ in my body; and spasmic in the way my muscles twitch with the thought of being pressed unrelentingly beneath the waves of salt water.

I can think of nothing worse.

My entire body is tense, waiting for the drop of a pin prick that deflates me, to let all the air caught up in my lungs go rushing out in one fell swoop – but it doesn’t quite come. Marco’s thumb draws circles on my knee once more, his face a perfect picture of absolute composure, and mine … well, _mine_ starts with a fine sheen of sweat on my forehead, and stops with the way my heart flounders at every concentric circle of his touch. I can’t drag my eyes away from his hand however hard I try.

“How about taking some rackets, or a ball – like a beach ball, or a volley ball,” Marco suggests, not a twitch of his flaxen eyes in my direction, and not a hint of how much strain he’s compressing in his one hand on my leg. “Some stuff to do on the sand – just in case the sea’s a bit too rough. It’s always … always a bit temperamental at this time of year. Storm season.”

I see what he’s doing. The pressure on my internal, spring-loaded machine flexes; lessens. I furl and unfurl my toes beneath the water and wriggle the fingers I have trapped between my thighs.

Takes my mind off the water again. He always manages to beat me to it.

He starts Connie and Sasha off on an excited tangent – of Frisbees and ten-pin bowling – and he nods along with a stretched smile to every one of their eager suggestions, but his thumb doesn’t stop smoothing across the rough denim taught across my knee, even when he’s rubbed out every tangle of tension in my system and replaced it free flowing only.

 

* * *

 

Marco can’t stay for long, of course. He tells Connie and Sasha that he has other pools to clean – other housewives to court, as Sasha so deftly phrases it – even though I know we’re always the last on his list on a Wednesday afternoon.

I walk with him to the back gate, welcoming the privacy that the hedgerow between us and the pool provides, even if we are now standing out on the sidewalk. We shovel all his equipment into the van, before I turn to him, aiming for endearing or maybe honest in my acuteness, but I reckon I just look terrified, as usual.

“You could always bring Mina over here, y’know,” I say, watching in earnest as he chews on his lower lip and avoids looking me directly in the eye, more interested in making sure the door to his van is closed securely. “Babysitting’s always more fun when you’re not alone.”

His shoulders roll and he shakes his head sadly, strands of his dark hair falling across his forehead limply.

“It’s okay, Jean,” he murmurs, twitching in the direction of laughter bubbling over the hedgerow, “I … I can’t. You know, it’s— I have to get home to—”

“I get it. Don’t worry about it, alright.”

He meets my eyes, gaze soft, fragile, those flecks of yellow-gold more like splinters of colour than anything else – but his lips curl upwards in thanks. I buff him gently in the arm with a closed fist as warmth pools in my cheeks, but he catches my wrist, fingers wrapping around my bare skin as he lowers my hand – and his hand – to the space between us.

The touch lingers – indulgent for me, like the chuckle on his lips, or the thought of hands running calming spirals at the base of my spine or through the mess of my hair – and it strings breath out of me as a short puff.

“My phone will be on, Jean,” he says, very quietly, concealing his words like a tender lullaby that should really be only whispered into ears, “So if they get too much … you call me, alright?”

He lets my wrist fall freely, and for a moment, I see him consider his own hand like it is some red-hot, lead weight, before he moves to rest it on my shoulder – a supportive squeeze.

“You did really good back there.”

I mentioned the shadows between his leaves before – like he is some great tree around which I’m trying pretty fucking _hard_ to stretch my arms – but now I think about his branches, and the weight of us all leaning on them, and I wonder how far they bend.

I know he’s used to taking the loads of others – I know that. He’s used to absolute strength – but suffering doesn’t always make you stronger, I don’t think. Sometimes suffering is just suffering, and him taking on mine … well, it’s not going to build his character for him. It’s only gonna hurt more.

I scoff softly, and nudge his fingers from my shoulder, despite the fact I miss their absorbing warmth.

“It was nothing,” I murmur, “Don’t worry about me, okay.”

“I can’t help it,” he replies, reverently – and I can’t quite tell if he means it in jest or not. And then, even more quietly, as he glances at me through hooded eyes and those thick eyelashes of his, “You … you know I can’t.”

In that moment, I realise three things. First, that time isn’t measured by the ticking of a clock, but by moments – and this is one, fucking _long-ass_ moment, let me tell you. Second, whatever value I see in myself will always, _always_ fall flat to whatever the hell he sees in me, even on days when he should so easily be the one who comes _first_ out of the two of us. And third, that heartbeats are not felt, but heard and shared, and shared between us, as a simple string of four words reverberates just as good as any pump of squishy muscle in flooding my body with much needed blood. I know he feels it too, pumping oxygen around his body like a God-damn dying man’s _wish_ , because he heaves a sigh that shakes, and he scrunches his eyes shut for just a moment.

“G-go on,” I force myself to say, “Get going. You should … yeah, get going.” I run my hand through my hair, head full of thoughts of glass boxes and deadlines I’ve given myself, and focus on schooling the clog in my throat. “Mina’ll have my balls hacked off if she knows I’ve been … keeping you.”

He deflates in front of me, and nods – only once, but firmly, as he cracks a fond smile in parting that I know is real enough, because it’s for _me_.

“I’ll see you, Jean.”

_Yeah. See you._

 

* * *

 

I don’t have to wait long to see him again.

Going back to sit on the top step of the pool is not the same without him squished up against me, but I force it down and bottle it up, finding the feeling of water licking my calves still daunting, still teasing – some cruel fate lauding thoughts of the ocean before me like a carrot on a string – but it’s not as sickening. I submerge my legs and count to five as I let the feeling wash over me, and recede again, tidally, as Connie and Sasha bark and bicker and laugh at each other as they capsize the donut more than once.

I let them stay for a while – because there’s something to be said about not being alone, because that’s when the really creeping thoughts like to prowl, and these guys – they’re good. They always have been. They were here before Marco, and I survived the first nineteen years of my life _somehow_. They’re good.

We laugh about Ymir and Historia’s drunken escapades from the other night – which apparently Connie has a lot of dirt on, knowing so-and-so from somewhere-or-another, and he can’t help but crack up as he tells us stories of Ymir dancing badly on table tops, and Historia getting the number of some very rich Trost asshole, and then proceeding to stuff the written-on napkin down the front of Ymir’s blouse, and her tongue down her throat in front of the very embarrassed prick-in-a-suit.

We iron out the logistics of the beach trip as well – although _iron out_ really means that they tell me what they’re planning, and I nod along, very little choice in whether I agree or not. A lot of it’s boring stuff – how much the gas will cost us if we split it four ways, what music should they bring for the journey ( _none_ , I tell them sharply), and how much trunk space the Jag has for a few too many crates of cider – but boring is therapeutic, the words sharing just a fraction of the feeling of Marco’s hand on my knee … but it’s more than enough to keep my gall down.

It’s Sasha’s mom bleating angrily down the phone that eventually makes them leave, Sasha rolling her eyes dramatically and Connie whispering loudly to me of how overbearing Mrs Braus has become ever since they sold Sasha’s car for the MOT money to fix the pick-up; I shovel the pair of them out the back gate, still jabbering away as they toss the ring into the truck bed and Connie lashes it down with some mangy-looking climbing ropes.

Fatigue doesn’t wait to dawn on me the minute I watch the scrappy-paint of the pick-up truck disappear around the corner at the end of the street, and, brewing myself another cup of coffee and building a mountain of food in my arms on my way back through the kitchen, I slink up to my room and lounge on my bed for the rest of the day, enjoying the company of whichever episode of _Elementary_ I missed last night.

Sleep happens eventually – and I’m kinda glad my insomnia has taken a much needed break lately – even if I dream that night of ocean waves and the taste of salt on my lips and dissolving my bones to mush, to gloop, to dust.

 

* * *

 

It’s tough to remember that everything passes eventually, especially when I wake up in a cold sweat and my sheets tangled around my calves reminiscent of seaweed or of tendrils of salt water currents, on Thursday morning.

It’s pretty dumb having to catch your breath after eight hours of sleep, but I lie on my back staring at the ceiling for some time after my eyes flick open, tracing the swirls of white paint to match the rate of rise and fall of my chest.

When each expulsion of air no longer trembles, I reach across to my bedside table to grab my cell phone. There’s a message sitting unread in my inbox.

**From: Marco-Polo  
Do you want to come over today?**

It’s … a surprise, I suppose. But it also stirs a swell of warmth in my chest, and my fingers swarm across the touchpad of my screen.

**To: Marco-Polo  
yeah sure! whats the occasion **

**From: Marco-Polo  
I’ve got babysitting duty … and I think you were right about wanting company. :(**

**To: Marco-Polo  
be there in 20 ;) **

I’m not saying I hit the floor on my way rolling out of bed, but … I hit the floor. God-damn duvet tangled around my legs again – I swear, one day, I’ll be able to get off my mattress without falling flat on my ass.

I slide over to my wardrobe, grabbing a clean pair of jeans and my _Ramones_ shirt whilst hopping around on one foot, wrestling with a pair of socks.

If Marco could see me, he’d laugh. Okay, maybe not laugh – probably hide his face in embarrassment out how eager I am for a spot of glorified babysitting. Connie would laugh though. Sasha too.

Hell, _I’d_ probably laugh, if it weren’t for the burn in my face – made worse by the fact I’m alone in my room and already so flustered at the thought of having the chance to spend time with Marco, without overbearing friends, and with the knowledge of what I have told myself I need to do.

I grab a jacket on my way out of my room – what with the forecast promising rain that’s likely to arrive sooner than expected – and race down the stairs two at a time, raking my hands through my hair as I go.

It doesn’t mean much; it’s not something that can be misconstrued as a date (whether I want it to be or not, an entirely separate question), and nor is it a moment where secrets and promises are likely to be shared with entwined fingers or tears, like we’ve battered through so many times before. Marco asking me around like this is entirely domestic, but I think I love that the most. It’s what I want – if I could want, for our future, y’know? I like the domestic stuff, the mundane stuff. Babysitting his sister with him? Sure. Invite me ‘round to do the vacuuming? Count me in. Clean the pool twice a week with him? Fuck, I already do that.

The drive across town to Marco’s is not punctuated by my nervousness this time – and not by having to listen to the obnoxious blare of my satnav either. The early afternoon sun doesn’t glare through my windscreen either, which is definitely appreciated as I whiz across the intersections of the main roads into town, blaring the air conditioning of the Jag as cold as I can suffer it.

Marco’s neighbourhood seems to attract the _good side_ of the sun like stained glasses charms light to scatter into a dozen different directions – it bustles with a peaceful, homely atmosphere, with dogs pottering along without leashes as their owners exchange smiles with friends over front yard fences, and with those same groups of kids kicking about a ball over the rippling asphalt, filling the noon-baked air with shouts and childlike enthusiasm.

I pull up to Marco’s house with a smile on face – drawn out, principally, by the sight of him and Mina kicking around a deflated-looking soccer ball on their patch of front lawn, Marco diving dramatically onto the browning grass as Mina makes a strike at their makeshift goal.

He lies chest-down on the grass laughing – wickedly laughing, and I swear to God it feels like just _looking_ at the happiness in his eyes adds ten years to my life – and as Mina runs to collect the ball, I watch him recognise the car as I park against the sidewalk, pointing and calling to his sister over his shoulder as he clambers to his feet, chuckles still rolling through his frame like wonderful, little seismic shifts.

I roll down the window of the Jag as Mina comes running up to the driver’s side, the soccer ball tucked under her arms and her freckled cheeks red with exertion, as Marco, behind her, continues to brush down his shorts for grass stains.

“Hey kid,” I say, unable to hide my grin as I lean out of the open window, elbow resting on the door, and the other hand on the keys as I kill the engine. “That was one hell of a goal I just saw.”

She puffs out her cheeks and her chest, shoulders drawn back as wide as she can manage as she raises her chin proudly.

“You’re on Marco’s team,” she tells me bluntly, “He needs all the help he can get!”

I don’t think I need telling twice.

The moment I step out of the car, Mina thrusts the soccer ball into my arms and darts away onto the front lawn, hands resting on her thighs as she readies herself to play. I personally can’t remember the last time I held a soccer ball, let alone kicked one around – sports were always pretty hit and miss for me at school, and soccer was definitely a flying _miss_ , especially compared to the God-damn bottle rocket that was Connie with a ball at his feet.

I nudge the car door shut with my hip, but don’t bother to lock up this time, shoving my keys into my pockets and jogging up to Marco.

“So, when you said you wanted company,” I smirk as he draws himself tall, a little out of breath judging by the way his shoulders roll, “You actually meant your sister was handing your ass to you and you needed _help_.”

The sunshine is like powdered gold reflected in his dark eyes as he flashes me a blinder of a smile, perfect, glorious, a little bit breathy – but if that doesn’t make me fucking _gleam_ back in return, I don’t know what would.

“Would you have come if I’d said I wanted to play soccer?” he teases, knocking the ball out of my hands to my surprise, and hoisting the deflated leather out of my reach with a grin so sublime I don’t think I even _need_ Mina’s soccer skills to knock me on my ass. He’s _glowing_ ; so genuinely sweet, and filled with the right touch of shyness and boldness, sculpted in the little dimples like quotation marks around the quirk of his lips.

“Probably,” I admit sheepishly, pawing at the tuffs of dry grass with the toe of my sneaker. “But I suck at soccer, so I guess it’s kinda lose-lose for you, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he says, around pursed lips threatening a shit-eating smirk, cheeks blooming with a confident blush twice as bright as anything the sun might throw at us. He tosses the ball lightly in the air and catches it with ease. “Do you want to kick off, or should I?”

I hold my palms face up as I gesture for him to take the wheel with a playful shrug of my shoulders; he rolls his eyes at me, and it’s like a _spark_. Wouldn’t have expected the lurid sunshine and Marco Bodt _sassing_ me to make me feel so suddenly alive and blazing with it all. But it does. It sure fucking does.

It doesn’t even faze me that I have the same level of coordination as a baby ostrich – because whilst Mina is too dead-focussed on stealing the ball out from under my feet, her tongue clamped between her lips in severe concentration, Marco flops around like some sort of beached whale, just as awful with a soccer ball tripping him over at every opportunity, and just as giddy with laughter at me as I am, at him.

Mina is great though – some sort of not-so-secret whiz kid, not afraid to tackle the ball out from between my ankles, and race between mine and Marco’s shoddy defence to score goal after goal. (Marco does manage to score us _one_ in return, I might add, even if it’s only down to him loudly exclaiming that he hears the ice cream van approaching, and the speed at which Mina’s head whips ‘round is super-human, and makes me double over with laughter, as Marco dribbles the ball past his sister in her distraction.) (She’s not happy at that, snatching the ball off him with a punch to his arm and a pouty complaint of him being a no-good _cheater_.)

It’s been a long time since I’ve worked up a sweat this good, and against the heat of the afternoon sun, and the prickle of dying grass beneath the soles of my feet after I abandon my shoes mid-way through the game, I’m wiping my forehead on my shirt more than one, disgusting time. Not that Mina minds, too focussed on beating our asses into the dirt, and I’d imagine nor does Marco – I catch him, a few, guilty times, drawing up the hem of his t-shirt to dab over his neck and face, and I’m not blind to the peak of flexing muscle, beautiful, dark skin, and glimpse of a happy trail I get the pleasure of stealing from him every time he does.

Damn. The sun sure does make you thirsty, right?

 

* * *

 

Marco tells me – in between Mina scoring goal after goal through the two piles of old shoes they’ve mounded up on the grass, and Marco and I having to consistently pause to catch our breath – that his dad is at the hospital today.

It’s nothing serious – and I regret the way my heart does hitch in one, horrible moment – just a routine check-up that Anita has taken him to, but Marco apologises to me none the less, tells me he’s sorry for calling me over, but that he _needed_ the company, much more than simply wanting it. (And that the soccer game really had nothing to do with it in the slightest.)

“It’s okay,” I pant, hands on my knees as I double over searching for breath between boots of the ball, “I get it. You don’t have to explain it to me, man. I get it.”

He looks at me quizzically – unreadable in the glances I know he steals at me through the rest of the game – but maybe it’s him finally seeing how much I’m willing to wear my want to help him in any way I can on my sleeve.

The final score is _a lot_ to Mina, and _one_ to us, and it’s only the final score because Marco waves his sister off when she insists they play another quarter, and tells her he needs a break otherwise he’s sure he’ll keel over dead on their front lawn, and their mom _won’t be happy to see that when she comes home_. Mina grumbles to herself, but is occupied easily enough by setting up a row of shoes and practicing dribbling the old soccer ball in and out of them; Marco tugs on my sleeve tiredly, and guides me over to the steps of the porch, where he slumps onto the creaking wood with an enormous, relieved sigh.

I drop down next to him willingly, stretching my legs out with a satisfying crack as I fan my shirt against my neck, trying to get some degree of air flowing over my chest.

“Well, I’m pretty sure a career in soccer is out the window for me,” I chuckle wheezingly, graciously appreciating how well Marco’s sweat-damp shirt clings to every curve of his chest and stomach as he lies back against the steps, flexing his arms behind his head and puffing out air like a steam train.

“You and me both,” he agrees, “I don’t know how she has so much _energy_.” A gentle breeze sifts the air, welcome, and so caressingly soft and intimate on the skin that it’s near embarrassing.

“Sounds like you’re getting on a bit,” I joke lightly, straining my neck a little so that the wind might hit as much of my sticky skin as possible. “How’s old age treating you, huh?”

Marco thumps me graciously in the arm, feigning horror on his face as his mouth forms an affronted, round o-shape.

_Care-free._

“Excuse you, Jean, I’m only ten months older than you,” he huffs, and I grin, swatting him lightly in return. “I could ask you the same question.”

“We all know I’m a professional couch potato,” I jibe, lying back on the stairs too, folding my arms on my stomach and twisting my neck so that I can look him in the eye, and trace the thread of four freckles over his nose, whilst we’re on our backs. We’re close enough that I can feel each puff of his breath against my face, warm and clammy. I scrunch up my nose, which only prompts him to blow sharply onto my skin, his smile playful, and the redness in his complexion not just down to intensive soccer.

“You want ice cream?” he asks me airily, pulling himself up to lean on his elbows, eyes cast down on my face. I glance over at Mina, still plundering around the front lawn with the soccer ball, her long hair scraped up in a high ponytail, and maybe it’s asking too much to want him to just stay lying next to me for a little while longer – because let me tell you, the peace is wonderful and the view is _good_ – but I suppose ice cream sounds nice too.

I nod, and he smiles brilliantly, petting me on the arm as he stands and stretches, the band of his shirt riding up just a little on his back and – oh G-God, yep, that’s definitely a nice view. Wow.

“Mina, do you want an ice cream?” he calls to his sister, whose nodding is far more furious than mine.

Marco dashes inside, each porch stair groaning under his weight as I watch him, from upside-down, disappear through the screen door they have protecting the house from invading mosquitos. Mina dawdles over after a moment or two, and as I feel the soccer ball roll against my feet, the porch step I’m sitting on bends as she steals Marco’s place, dark eyes intently watching for her brother’s return.

He doesn’t take long to come skipping back, clutching an already ripped-open cardboard box crusted with ice, plastered with the faces of some entirely questionable children’s characters.

“There’s only one left, Mina,” he says, delving in to grab something that’s trying to be a yellow square of a popsicle with bubble-gum eyes, “But I don’t know which one it is.” He hands her the clear packet, and she squints hard at it for a second, before announcing, patronisingly, “It’s obviously _Spongebob_ , Marco.”

Well, let me just say that that’s the most terrifying _Spongebob-_ shaped popsicle I’ve ever seen in my life.

“Right, right,” Marco chuckles breezily, reaching back into the box, “Jean, I found one _Klondike Bar_ , and one _Bomb Pop_ – which one do you want?”

“Marco likes the _Bomb Pops_ ,” Mina pipes up, earning a glare from her older brother. “What?”

“Let Jean choose, Mina,” he scolds, propping himself at the top of the porch steps, “Which one do _you_ want, Jean?”

“The _Klondike_ is fine, Marco,” I snicker, extending an open palm for him to drop the ice cream sandwich into. He frowns, seeming a little reluctant to give it to me, but his love of rocket-shaped popsicles clearly wins out. “Thanks.”

I haven’t had a _Klondike Bar_ since I was a kid – I can’t remember the last time I saw any sort of popsicle in the freezer at home, and ice cream has never been a thing, what with mom preferring those wishy-washy sorbets that are supposed to help her lose ten pounds in a week, or however it goes. Vanilla ice cream and chocolate is a timeless combination though, and I can’t help the semblance of a greedy moan that stumbles out over my lips as I take a cursory bite of the sandwich, Mina to my left positively _gnawing_ the head off poor, old, demon- _Spongebob_.

“Good?” Marco grins, a tilt of his head and a colour unfading in his cheeks as he pops the wrapper on the _Bomb Pop_ and peels the plastic away from the red, white, and blue ice. I nod and garble a _yes_ through a mouthful of heaven. God yes. _So_ good.

Not as good as the sight of him tentatively taking the first lick of that popsicle though, the flash of pink tongue swiping a thick stripe up the side of the brightly coloured ice. Jesus have mercy.

Think about _Spongebob_ , Jean. Think about pulling his eyeballs out, think about ripping his head off with your teeth, think about – oh God, don’t think about how Marco’s hollowing his cheeks to t-take that p-popsicle, _oh God_.

The _pop_ -sound is lewd as he pulls it out of his mouth, curling his tongue to catch the drips already threatening to fall onto his fingers. The only reason I don’t _pop_ a God-damn boner is the knowledge that his ten-year-old-fucking- _sister_ is sitting thirty centimetres away from me, and currently desiccating a cartoon character.

Stay strong, Jean. Stay strong.

Marco laves his tongue over the red tip of the popsicle, and then sucks – _hard_ – and I feel my soul evaporate from my body, as a drip of vanilla ice cream that has spread stickily over my fingers drops onto my lap.

“S-shit,” I curse, remembering myself too late, “I-I mean … he – _heck_.”

Mina eyes me, unimpressed, chewing aggressively on one of _Spongebob_ ’s eyeballs. Marco’s tongue runs across his lips, catching the taste of artificial sugar, as he draws the popsicle away from his mouth and grins at me – the red and blue dye has stained his tongue and lower lip slightly purple.

“Watch out, there’s another drip,” he laughs, craning his arm to catch the bead of vanilla ice cream rolling over my thumb, with his index finger, as I gawp unsparingly. He dabs it on my nose playfully, before licking the residue from his finger deftly.

I want to cry. Or at least, I want to expel my heart from my throat along with most of the blood from my body because – _why_. Why me. Why does he look so good with purple-stained teeth. Why do I have a dollop of ice cream on my nose. Why this.

Marco turns his attention to his sister whilst I’m still trying to remember how to stop buffering.

“Mina, you’ll get brain freeze if you eat it that quickly.” His laughter is musical as he scoots down one step lower, biting a chunk off the top of his popsicle that works for me as an instant _boner-kill_. Good. Good. That’s a good thing.

He dotes on her like a mother hen, swiping the strands of her long ponytail from her shoulders where her ice cream threads to drip, holding it behind her neck and ruffling the top of her head as she takes another bite of _Spongebob_ with teeth that are clearly made of _steel_.

“I feel kinda bad for _Spongebob_ ,” he admits, and she snorts.

“ _Spongebob_ deserves to be eaten. He’s _annoying_.”

I take another bite of my _Klondike Bar_ , gracelessly lapping up the drips of ice cream and trying not to drop slabs of half-melted chocolate all over myself, forcing myself to stay focussed on eating. And not on _Marco_ eating, as he playful teases his sister and licks delicately at his God-damn _p-popsicle_.

“Mr Bossard said that they were going to ban the ice cream truck from coming onto the school playground,” Mina pipes up, slurping the last remnants of her ice cream off the wooden stick, and then popping that in her mouth to chew on as she twists around to face her brother more full-on.

“I think that’s fair enough,” Marco remarks, “I’d have to _roll_ you out of school each day with the amount of ice cream I know you’d eat. And think of how much of your pocket money you’ll save.”

“Next year is still gonna suck,” she replies grumpily, wrinkling her nose and folding her arms. I polish off the last of my own ice cream, licking my fingers quickly, and scrunch up the wrapper in my fist.

“You’re going into fourth grade, right?” I ask, with a tilt of my head, “I remember when I was in fourth grade – first field trip of the year, and Connie – my friend – had persuaded me to swap packed lunches with him. Didn’t know at the time, but his milk carton was more than a few days out of date, and I didn’t even make it off the bus before puking all over myself and the teach. That haunted me for the entire semester, believe me. I doubt your fourth grade can suck more than mine did.”

“That’s gross, Jean,” Marco scolds me, his frown spliced with a disgusted grimace of a grin. Mina seems to take that all in her stead, nodding severely, apparently far more understanding of the social norms of grade-school and what an embarrassing thing that must have been for me. (And it _was_ – Connie and Sasha didn’t let me live it down for _weeks_ , and they were the ones supposed to be my _friends_.)

“School is boring though,” Mina then grumbles, grabbing the soccer ball from the foot of the stairs and cradling it in her lap as she picks at the peeling leather. “Third grade was boring. Fourth grade will be _more_ boring.”

I remember Marco telling me before about how she’s struggled to make friends at school – struggled to fit in with the other girls, struggled against teachers encouraging her not to _be such a boy_ when she gets in dirt fights on the playground, struggled against other kids teasing her about her freckles or about how her brother picks her up most days in a rusty, old pool-cleaning van. I’d imagine _boring_ is just the half of it. Can’t say learning long division or being outcast by a bunch of snot-nosed ankle-biters is how I would’ve preferred to spend five days a week when I was coming up ten years old.

“I don’t get excited about going back to school like _Marco_ ,” she adds, dramatically stressing his name. “But that’s because he’s a nerd.”

“Marco wants to go back to school?” My eyes flit over to him once more as he cleans off the last chunk of ice from his popsicle stick with a flick of his tongue. He then flexes the wooden stick between his fingers, and it fractures.

“Marco _doesn’t_ want to go back to school,” he says gently, directing his words at Mina, but looking at me briefly as he answers my question, before returning to fiddling with the splintering ends of the popsicle stick. “ _Marco’s_ got a job now. And Marco has trouble-making _sisters_ to look after.”

He nudges Mina with his toe, and she swats him away with a huff.

“But you still have all those books in your room,” she announces plainly, “The really heavy ones, and the one with the skeleton on the front, and the one with all the gross pictures—”

It’s curious that he hasn’t sold his textbooks yet – which is what Mina’s getting at – because he’s sold everything else that seems to mean an iota to him. His laptop went ages ago. And he drives his dusty, company van around on personal errands too – he doesn’t use his parents’ car. Clearly, he’s still holding onto the threads of a hope that he might still be able to go back to school if this – _all this_ – ever blows over.

“I just haven’t gotten around to getting rid of them yet,” Marco shrugs at his sister, “But I don’t think I’ll be going back. I’m getting a bit old for all that school stuff, aren’t I? Besides – you _have_ to go back for fourth grade, Mina.”

She pouts angrily, tucks the soccer ball under her arm, and hops to her feet with a _humph_ – returning to her game of dribbling the ball between the piles of old shoes she has laid out on the grass. Marco breathes a heavy sigh, before sliding down onto the same step as me, knees drawn up close to his chest.  

Marco’s want is painted as clear on his face as that stripe of freckles that spans the bridge of his nose, but sticking my neck in and asking him: “ _so why don’t you?_ ” – that’s not going to help. Money, Mina, his family … it all comes first for him. It always has to – because if it doesn’t, he’ll eat himself from the inside out, rot away to bones, to carcass, to ash like me. He can’t afford to think about things like going back to school.

He has to let it slide off his back like raindrops on the roof – even if his mouth is a gutter of a smile and collects so much water and debris that you’d have me thinking it was already autumn.

You don’t pick an umbrella if it’s holey, but sometimes it’s the best thing you’ve got – and maybe I’m the best _he’s_ got.

I slide up to him, the step creaking, and, sharing my unnecessary body heat with him like he did for me yesterday at the pool side, I drop my head onto his shoulder resolutely. He tenses up, but doesn’t push me away or shift beyond me reach – only murmuring, hesitantly.

“Jean … ”

Maybe it’s just a poor excuse to touch him whilst I’m brewing the courage in my chest to tell him what I want to tell him. But I like to think I can be more than just _that_.

“It’ll happen, okay,” I find myself saying, scanning the grass as Mina kicks the soccer ball around and readjusting how my cheek is squished against the seam of his t-shirt. “It’ll happen.”

He’ll make a damn good doctor one day. Consultant, surgeon, whatever he wants – he can do it. One day. It’ll happen.

No obstacle can last forever.

His shoulder is rigid beneath my head, as if he’s holding himself as still and statue-like as possible – breaths short, a quiver in his jaw – and I wonder if it’s because the thought hurts, or because … or because of other things. I wonder if it would make it easier for him to face things if he knew _about me_ ; if I _told_ him – or would it make it harder.

His jaw trembles, and then clenches.  I imagine I can hear the thrum of his heartbeat booming in the cavity of his chest – one beat for his mom, one for his dad, one for his sister, a stolen one for all the hopes and dreams he had to throw away on the back burner in order to clean swimming pools for a living. I wonder if one of those drumbeats sounds for me, and I wonder if telling him that I share it would lessen the effort required to pump the blood of dozens around his body.

He shifts, his shoulder rolling beneath my cheek as I feel him move his arm behind me. It’s probably just a whole lot of hope that imagines the tickle of his fingers reaching for my hair, the whisper, the fragment of a thought that he deigns … _to touch_ , to muse with the ashen-blonde strands – just as a wheezing, dirty-grey Honda Accord wheels onto the driveway. His hand – delusion or not – falls away.

Anita is in the driver’s seat, spectacles resting on her nose and hair scraped up into a messy bun on the top of her head, and Mr Bodt – Matthias – is in the passenger seat, head resting against the streaky window, and eyes closed firmly. Marco is on his feet in a second, barely giving me time to peel away from him. I think it’s probably rude of me to say that the glaze of peaceful summer melts away, but something definitely seeps away in that instant, or maybe, it’s the return to reality that I’m feeling.

Marco darts across the brown grass and the weed-cracked paving in the same time it takes me to haul myself to my feet, joints cracking and muscles groaning from where they’ve seized up after cooling down. He opens the door for him mom and they immediately fall into hushed conversation, Marco’s father finally stirring, but his narrow gaze remaining distant as he stares blearily out of the windshield. Mina sweeps her soccer ball to a standstill, just as I see Marco _blanch_ as he peers into the back seat of the car.

It’s difficult to watch – the mixture of the severity of Anita’s smile as she climbs out of the car, the gauntness of Matthias’ face as he watches his wife and his son wrestle a collapsible wheelchair from the back seat, and the look on Marco’s face that tells me this is new.

Marco unfolds the tangle of metal and plastic and wheels with a crease between his eyebrows and a taught line of his mouth – so far away from the person I was laughing with over our inability to play soccer less than an hour ago, so filled with the boundless energy of a real, brilliant _summer_ –as he should be. He pets the seat for a feel of its durability, and squeaks the wheels on the lumpy driveway to see how smooth it moves, before rolling it over to his mom. She pushes it around the hood of the car as Marco darts ahead, opening the car door on his father’s side.

I don’t know whether I should help or not – whether or not it would be an unwelcome intrusion that would not lessen the pain on the faces of Marco and his father. Glass walls spring up in front of me, and I’m left with my palms spread flat and flush and helpless, only able to watch as Marco persuades his father to let him lift him out of the car.

I can see from the way Matthias grips the arm rests of the wheelchair that it hurts his pride more than it physically hurts _him_ – but maybe that’s worse. Anita rubs her hand over the crook of her husband’s neck to calm and sooth, but he doesn’t react, unfocussed eyes intent on the crevices in their driveway as Marco dips back into the car to grab a cane – which he deposits in his father’s lap before taking over for his mom in pushing the chair.

I see no meaning in his illness – no glory, no poetry, nothing to redeem the face of a broken man who can barely stomach looking at his own feet as Marco pushes him up the garden path. The erosion of his desire and will to live is like sedimentary rock beaten by a storm, like chalk submerged in water – the dissolution hasn’t happened slowly, and it’s cloudy, _murky_ with misery and self-loathing.

“Jean, _caro_ , how are you?” comes Anita’s voice – and it takes me a second to realise she’s addressing me, and I whip my eyes away from the revolving wheels to look her in the face as she reaches me. Her smile is broad – all endearingly crooked teeth and dimples around her full lips – but she shares the same readable character as her son; it’s forced, _so forced_ , and I could pluck the strings of tension that line her forehead.

She welcomes me into a hug and a kiss on either side of my face, before I pull away.

“Do you … do you need any help?” I ask, debating whether or not to look Marco in the eyes – and choosing, instead, to address Matthias directly. (I know that’s what I’d want if I was in his stead. It’s the least I can do not to treat him like he’s defined by the thing that’s eating away at him, however much that very fact has defined a lot of mine and Marco’s relationship over the past few weeks.) “W-with the stairs, I mean.”

“Would you?” Anita says, clapping me on the shoulder, “I don’t think my back will hold out like it used to.”

I swallow the lump in my throat as Marco wheels his father up to the foot of the stairs, and I crouch down to slide my hands under the footrests and find a comfortable grip. I look up, to make sure Marco has a hold on the back of the chair, but my eyes catch Matthias’ as I raise my head, and in his bitterly-tinged silence, I see volumes of his emptiness and his _shame_ at his cancer.

Shame. _Why_ —

For illness? For weakness? I don’t understand it, but it’s there, painted a clearly as daylight on either of our faces as I help lift him in his wheelchair up the porch steps – there, along with something more, something unsettling and … and _resigned_. I try to stifle the puff of breath that escapes my lungs as we set him down, stepping out of the way as Marco wheels his dad inside.

“Would you like to stay for dinner, _caro_?” Anita asks me kindly, eyes gliding over Mina gathering up the pile of old shoes and her soccer ball out on the grass, before settling on my face. “I was going to make _cioppino_ , and there’s always more than enough to go around.”

“I—” I start, trailing off as Marco reappears at the front door, ushering his sister into the house as she trots up the stairs, squeezing between Anita and I. One look at his face tells me all I need to know – he’s retreated into his shell, however cracked and splintering that might be, and his eyes are sullen and downcast and void. “I … I gotta get going, but thanks for the offer. I – uh, maybe another time?”

“Any time, _caro_. You come back any time,” she smiles at me, parting with another kiss on my cheek as she gestures to Marco to take her place on the porch, before shuffling inside.

Marco doesn’t look me in the eye for some time, staring off into the front lawn, trying to seek some sort of composure for the sudden downpour I can see drenching him from the inside out. His hand twitches at his side, as if he means to devolve to his nervous trait of rubbing his nose or scratching the back of his neck, but his arm stays firmly rooted at his side.

There’s no real reason for me to need to go home. What’s waiting for me there – an empty house, the worst sort of silence between me and mom, maybe my dad if I’m particularly unlucky – and even if there is food on the table, I won’t feel like eating it.

But Marco won’t want me here when it’s like this – right? He shouldn’t have to tread lighter than he already does … not that I want him to be treading lightly around me when it comes to his dad though. No. Not when I want to be sharing his burden like he shares all of mine.

Giving him space is still important. Even if the sort of space that would comfort me, if our positions were reversed, might be the fragments of space between steadily rising chests or closely twined fingers. But I can’t assume that it would be the same for him.

 _Next time, Jean. Next time. Tell him next time. The right time will happen_.

“I’ll see you Saturday, Marco,” I say, clapping him on the shoulder, even though my body wills me to bundle him up into as encompassing a hug as I can manage. I give him a little squeeze, but his frame is like ice, like concrete, and he doesn’t budge to my touch. “Look, you … you call me if you need anything, yeah? Nothing’s too small a thing.”

He nods, and I let my hand drop as I feign a smile for him that I hope is believable enough.

 

* * *

 

The drive home is punctuated by the faint taste of vanilla ice cream on my lips, but it’s not nearly as sweet any more.

 

* * *

 

Rain clouds bloom over the hillside; rolling, billowing white balls of soaked cotton, a tangible weight in the air when I throw open my bedroom window that night. It’ll be a few days before they break – the anchor-man on whatever news broadcast I have on in the background rambles something about the early hours of Saturday morning – because it always takes longer than you expect for the rain to sift down from out of the hills.

I can already taste the moisture on my tongue though, and it’s a stark contrast to be felt between the burning summer days we’ve grown accustomed to, and the humidity of the sunset sky tonight. There’s a crackle in the air – a foreboding sense of change in the weather patterns and the onset of the storms, and I’m torn between welcoming the oncoming downpour like droughted grass, and fearing it, for the days I’ll be spent cooped up inside, resenting the pound of rain against the roof and windows.

It’s a shame, because there was a part of me that was looking forward to the rainy season – the chance to be able to sit in the safety of my house and watch the sky replenish the life in greyed-out Trost; enjoy it like a silence that isn’t empty – a rejuvenating white noise that might keep other thoughts and things at bay.

Not anymore. The tick of the ocean still has me on edge, despite memories of Marco’s soothing hand on my knee, and the quiet comfort in his sun-drenched presence.

He hasn’t rung me – and doesn’t – not for the rest of the evening. I sit on my desk chair, scrolling through endless miles of Facebook, or at my widely flung window, with my arms folded on the sill and my head resting on them, eyes moving between the rolling clouds on the horizon – which seem to be so endlessly fascinating – and my phone, which doesn’t light up once.

It’s okay though – because saying things like “call me if you need me” is a trivial enough thing in itself. That’s assuming Marco will have the energy to identify a need, should it arise, and that’s a hard ask, considering the look I saw upon his face when they rolled that wheelchair out of the car today. It’s light years beyond what I should’ve asked of him – or given him, really. I should’ve just provided him with something concrete; told him I’d pop ‘round to see him again tomorrow, or bring over some groceries, or offer to take Mina off their hands for a few hours. Even just told him that I would ring.

I feel like I realise what I should’ve done always too late.

I won’t hear from Marco tomorrow, I know that much. But I hold it in my heart that his space is just as important as my running interference. I can shield him and shelter him as much as I like – I can distract him by playing soccer with his sister, or by taking him to any number of art galleries, but at the end of the day, he needs his time with his dad.

One day isn’t going to hurt. It’s going to help.

 

* * *

 

Or so I hoped.

 

* * *

 

Here’s the thing about the universe that has taken me nineteen years to learn: sometimes pain is a storm that comes out of nowhere. You think you know the dull ache of suffering – but it’s only a drizzle compared to the hurricane that arrives in billows of raging winds and savage rain. The clearest, driest of Trost summers can end in a downpour. Can end in lightning and in thunder.

Maybe I should’ve taken a hint from those building rain clouds, because the worst happens a little over twenty-four hours later. What is the _worst_ , and how can you judge it? How do you know when to save your _worst_ for, when the reality is, with so many years ahead of you, the worst is likely to happen again and again. But believe me, I label this one correctly. You think to yourself: it’s too soon, how can it happen like this? But it’s always going to be too soon, too sudden. I told myself before that nothing lasts and _kingdoms always end_ , but this is not the way I wanted it to go. It could never be.

It’s early – Saturday morning, I guess you’d call it, and the pre-dawn light that slips through the cracks in my blinds is like a fog is born of pale yellows and musty whites. The pinks and golds you might normally expect from a swiftly approaching sunrise are replaced by the film of clouds beyond my window which I vaguely acknowledge through sleep crusted eyes.

Nothing seems to breathe – that time of the morning where everything is transfixed; an hour of silence. Save for my grumble when I roll over onto my front, burying my face in my pillow and swarming my duvet around my shoulders, rueing whatever part of my internal body clock decided to wake me up at stupid AM, especially when I went to bed probably only a few hours ago. Groggy with mindless sleep, the pitter patter of raindrops on the roof and on the window is like a lullaby I’m not quite aware of, but the tune cradles me none the less. The weatherman was right at least … finally getting some rain in the valley. The gentle thrum against glass is ruled by the faint shrillness of a ringing, somewhere, _somewhere_ …

A phone, maybe? Sounds like a phone. Why would someone be ringing the phone at … at whatever time this is.

Sleep dredges me back down into its depths with a sure hand swept across my eyelids, and I drift in and out of consciousness, some mirage of a dream dotted with the distant trill of mom’s voice, muffled by doors and distance.

I peer out of my cocoon at my bedside clock – the hands are blurred, but I’d put an estimate on it being just gone five … not a time any human being should ever have to bear witness to. The cloudy, dawn-soaked outlines of my room fade into obscurity with the dull resonation of mom’s voice still mixing with the rain, and a dreary yawn chokes me, wriggling all the way down my throat to the very tips of my toes beneath the blankets.

I try to summon the remnants of a good dream – not one filled with splashing waves and dragging currents – but one filled with filtered sunlight falling on a freckled face in a peaceful and undisturbed sleep.

Mm. Undisturbed sleep. That would be nice. I can hear mom’s voice louder – definite, now – not a dream. Why is she on the phone … at five in the morning?

I can’t discern the words – just a mumbled string of murmurs and vibrations through the covering of my quilt that I have pulled over my ears, but—

But it’s hushed. It’s severe. (And I mean, more severe than one would be, receiving an unwelcomed phone call at this time in the morning because, believe _me_ , I wouldn’t have given them more than a _fuck you_ in greeting if I’d picked up.)

I train my ear to listen, but it’s hard, caught in the cattails of sleep and wear. Mom’s voice seems to grow nearer with every droning second. There are footfalls on the creaky floorboards of the landing, and my door creaks open without a knock. Mom’s voice fills the dawning silence.

My heart stops. I don’t know why.

Well, it’s mainly confusion – what with mom standing in my doorway, ear pressed to the receiver of the house phone, hair ruffled and large eyes bright and wide as she stares at me, her composure unnerved and fidgety.

But deep inside, I think I know something’s wrong. I think it’s perfectly clear when her voice rings out again down the phone line and across the stretches of invisible wires, this time not shrouded by the cotton wool that clogs my senses. It’s a cold panic that swarms like a fleet on insects over my skin; like waking up from a nightmare you didn’t know you were having, in a cold sweat.

“ _Anita— Anita, honey, it’s going to be okay— honey, he’s right here. I’ll pass you right over_.”

All that stuff I said about glass boxes and moving walls – fuck that. Fuck _that_. Just one finger’s worth of pressure against the pane, and it all shatters beneath me, and I plummet. I’ve been riding the crest of a steadily curling wave, and on the other end of the phone I’m being handed by my mom, I can feel the looming shoreline approaching. And we’re about to crash with a thundering clap against the brittle sand.

When these things happen, it doesn’t take words – just a look. And with the dread that fills and overflows from my stomach, I look up at my mom with an unspoken question as I wriggle out of the confines of my duvet and wrap my fingers around the warm plastic of the receiver. She draws her thin satin dressing-gown around her shoulders, and she shakes her head solemnly.

I know.

‘Course I do.

Some part of me has prepared myself for the inevitable over the last two weeks. Is this the inevitable? I guess so.

The room is cold, despite the humidity of the rain that beats down on the slate-grey tiles of our rooftop. I feel the icy roll of breath as air fills my throat, a cold burn on my insides as everything fills with frost.

But, oh _God_ —

I don’t—

I can’t.

It’s gotta be a joke. Some cruel stretch of my sleep starved imagination. Some—

 _But why else does someone phone you up at five in the morning unless it’s an emergency_.

“H-hello?” I don’t even recognise my own voice. And as I press the receiver against my ear, I can barely recognise _Anita’s_ voice through the incoherent gasps of tears that make the line ricochet with crinkled white noise. Her sobs are enough to confirm mom’s grave shake of her head, and to bounce around the hollow hole that has appeared in my chest, as if someone has grabbed a shovel and has been scooping out all the good from inside my ribs, but has finally hit hard rock.

“Jean? J-Jean, _caro_ , is that you? I’m so— I’m so sorry … for calling, I—”

I work on instinct only – and thank God for that part of me that keeps on ticking despite the fear ingrained in my bones leaping at the chance to take a bite outta me over what I’m waiting to hear.

“Yeah – yeah, it’s me. W-what’s … what’s going on? _What’s happened_?”

I feel so helpless – like I’ve been stranded out in the middle of the sea and left to swim back to land by myself. Anita stumbles over her words like she’s reciting me a prayer made of my name.

“ _Caro_ , I— is … Jean, _Jean_ , have you seen—please tell me Marco is with you, _caro_.”

Marco? Why would Marco be—

“He hasn’t been home all night, Jean, and I can’t— if something’s happened to him, I couldn’t—”

“I … I haven’t seen him,” I bite out, as mom settles herself on the end of my bed, her fingers tightly clasped on her lap as she watches me intently, eyes glistening in the pale light of my room. The breath I draw is sharp and arctic as I steel myself for words that _transcend_ sadness, and topple the scale to which I’ve been comparing my _should’ve_ s and _could’ve_ s. “I— Anita, is— did Mr Bodt—”

A tiny, _broken_ sob.

“ _Yes_.”

Yes. _Yes_. Anita’s tears roll like waves down the phone line; so tired, so spiralled with layers and layers of grief, suffering – _everything_. How is this fair? How is this _fair_.       

I saw them all two days ago. I looked into Mr Bodt’s – Matthias’ – eyes as I’d helped in his wheelchair, and I’d seen—

What had I seen?

Two days ago. It’s not right. It’s not _right_. There’s no pleasure left in remembering – no. It’s been stripped like paint off the wall, and now I’m bare, and helpless. There is no joke here.

Do people really die so quickly?

“A-Anita, _I’m_ —”

What _am_ I? Am I sorry? Sorry means nothing; _I_ am nothing – I am a voice on the other end of the phone, I am a hollow well, I am not the person who knows how to rock someone and take their grief and make it my own. To hold back floods of tears and despair – I don’t know how. Grief is water, grief is fear, and I stumble beneath them both.

I can’t even tell you how I feel – it’s _something_ , yes – but I can’t place it. How can I? I barely knew the man, I barely know Anita, but still – oh God, it’s like a rip, a tear, a searing burn even when the room around me feels so cold. I hurt for them.

For Marco.

Oh God, _Marco_.

“Anita, did—” I take a breath, but it shakes. Mom slides closer up the mattress to me, her thin hand coming to rest on my jittering leg, trying to calm me. I barely feel her touch; not when voices in the background on Anita’s end of the line can be heard, and crying unmistakeably Mina’s.

They don’t deserve this. Anita is so sweet, so homely, and Mina – oh God, she’s not even ten years old yet, how is she meant to—

And Marco. Marco, Marco, bowed but unbroken, but now—

No. No, no, _no_. This can’t be happening. It’s a bad dream. I’m still asleep. A delusion of five AM. Please. Please let it just be that.

I can’t believe it. It’s an overused phrase, but I can’t. Everything is far away – too far to touch, too far too feel. Unreal.

“H-how long … how long has Marco been gone?” I try, although everything that leaves my mouth amounts to nothing more than a spooked whisper.

Anita sniffles loudly, trying hard – _so hard_ – to packet away the quivers in her voices and the spine-raking sobs, and she forces her voice to steady as best she can.

“A-about … six hours,” she manages, “He … he went in the ambulance, but— but a-after, when Matthias, he—” She breaks mid-sentence, and I wait for her tears to settle, swinging my legs out of bed so that my feet can rest on the floor – the hard wood beneath my toes is cold, but not cold enough for the way it feels like my head is burning up. “After … after, my husband p-pa– _Marco_ … he left. I haven’t … I haven’t seen him since we were at the hospital. H-he hasn’t … he hasn’t come home, and _I don’t know where he is_.”

I scramble for my cell phone on my bedside table, hoping to see a flurry of missed calls and unanswered voicemails and unread text messages – but there are none. My inbox is empty.

“I’m— _Dio mio_ , Jean, I’m so sorry for calling you, I— I just, I don’t— I don’t know what to do. I’m so sorry, _caro_.”

She doesn’t need to be apologising to me. Not now – and I’ll be damned by these Bodts and their selflessness, I know it – not when she’s the once to whom I should be laying condolences, should I ever figure out how to make them mean enough.

“Y-you … Anita, you don’t need to apologise, it’s fine,” I say, “It’s … anything I can do, please just—”

Please just tell me. Anything. I’ll do anything.

“Do you— do you know where he might be?”

It’s a frantic moment of thought – but only briefly. Not when the boiling feeling within my head seems to part, and its bubbling turns to simpering; turns to stillness. I have an idea.

I leap to my feet, startling my mom, who hiccups as she chokes back the worry that has wound her up like a tight spring.

“J-Jean?” she squeaks, fumbling to reach my wrist and pet me like she feels she should. I rip my arm out of her reach, keeping the phone pressed firmly to my ear as I lunge across my room to throw the hoodie I have draped over my chair over my pyjamas. I grab the closest pair of sneakers and _ram_ them onto my feet, and toss my cell phone and my car keys into my pockets.

“I— I have an idea,” I blurt down the line to Anita. “I have a-an idea where he is. I’ll find him, okay – don’t worry. _I can do that much_.”

She garbles _thank yous_ stained by more tears into my ear as I lace my shoes, and ask her if there’s anything else she needs us to do. My heart thunders inside its cage, rattling at my ribs like the bars of its own iron cell. It’s like a _crunching_ sort of pain.

“Caro, _caro_ — it’s— I … it’s okay, caro, my sister’s here, and you’ve done enough, and I—” she snivels, “Please get him home to me. I just need to know he’s okay.”

I murmur a _goodbye_ into the receiver, and the line goes dead, silence now filled with gravely interference – whether I have the phone still pressed to my ear or not.

There’s no time to waste. Need to find Marco. Need to be with Marco.

I thrust the phone into mom’s outstretched hands, and am flying through the door before I can begin to process even a scrap of these crumbled walls of glass. My strides are long and brisk, and mom struggles to keep up with me as she trails me across the landing.

“Jean – honey, sweetheart – let me drive you,” she trembles from over my shoulder. “It’s not safe for you to drive if – if you’re _upset_.”

I am upset, that’s true. But I can see it in her face, when I glance quickly back at her, that she’s expecting me to suddenly break – to shatter, to panic. My personal reaction isn’t the priority, mom. My feelings can wait. I’ve had _fucking_ years’ worth of experience in having to hold myself together.

“It’s fine, mom,” I reply – too gruffly, but who can blame me? I have my cell phone in my hands, and I’m dialling furiously as we descend the stairs. “Stay— _stay here_. Anita might need to call again.” My instructions are cold and callous, but it’s like I’m not even talking to mom – just a person with her face, because I can’t concentrate on _her_ right now. I’m not talking to _her_ – I’m only talking to the person who might be able to help Marco, and his family. I don’t want to listen to _her_. She slows behind me, no longer trying to keep up with the speed that I fly through the house, and clutches the house phone tightly against her chest. She’s scared too – but not in the same way as me. Not for the same reasons.

I hear the door to the spare room creak as we reach the bottom of the stairs, and I deign to look back up to the landing at the last moment. Dad stands in the doorway, stubble standing out on his jaw against the soft, grey light, and arms folded curtly over his broad chest. Mom half-turns back towards him, and I’m gone. _I’m gone_.

I press my cell phone to my ear as I batter through the front door, practically tripping over myself as I stagger down the garden path to the driveway; I don’t realise how much I’m shaking until I raise my car key and try to click the button to unlock the Jag, my thumb trembling erratically.

The dial tone echoes in my ear three, four, five times – again and again as I try to get through to Marco’s unanswering phone, but he doesn’t pick up. My heart spikes when I hear the intake of breath on his voice mail message, before his happy, chipper tone begins to spout _crap_ that I can’t be _dealing_ with, and I slam my thumb down on the end-call button with more force than my phone deserves, throwing myself into the driver’s seat of the Jag.

I shake my head like a dog, splattering the leather of the seat and the steering wheel with rain I never even felt falling, but that has collected in my hair; and I rake through the glove box for my Bluetooth headset, clipping the little, black receiver to my ear and positioning my cell on my lap as I pull the driver’s door closed behind me.

The car muffles the sound of the rain, and, somehow, the hammering of my heart beat too, and I allow myself a second to rest my forehead against the steering wheel and _breathe_. It’s cool against my fiery skin, and I try to picture the blueness seeping into my veins, _extinguishing_.

If I were Marco, I know where I’d go.

 

* * *

 

I rue the distance between my house and the outlook, and every red light I’m forced to stop at between here and there.

I dial Marco’s phone three times – the first two ring until they reach voicemail, and I spew a cord of profanities both times, fingers clenched around the wheel and temples fit to burst as I glare daggers at the traffic lights, daring them to test me any longer and to _turn fucking green already_. But the third attempt rings just twice – before it cuts abruptly to his answering phone. That doesn’t just _happen_. That involves actively _hanging-up_.

It’s enough to know that he’s seen me trying to reach him; even if he’s taken one look at the caller ID and chosen to ignore it. It means he’s okay – in body, anyway – and not stranded in some ditch somewhere. That’s enough to put my foot to the peddle and cut through the last red light that tries to fuck me over, spinning a sharp left up into the hills.

The rain lessens the higher I climb – the snare beat on the windshield becoming just pin-pricks, and then silence – but forever tied to the memory of this moment, and that in itself is probably worse than any immediate downpour. I keep the radio off, and the only sound becomes the whir of the engine as the road winds through tracks of orange-brown sludge and prickly gorse.

The memory of two days ago is what pricks me; the feeling like wading through one of those thickets on the other side of my window, a hundred little thorns scratching at my arms and legs.

I wonder if he’d known he was going. I wonder if the doctor at the hospital had told him that day: _this is it. It’s going to happen soon_.

Pfft. If only fate was so kind.

Mr Bodt had looked so empty; my hands hooked under the front of his wheelchair, and his pale fists clenched around the cane in his lap, and the fleeting connection between my eyes and his – maybe he had known. Marco had told me that night on the roof that what hurt the most was that his dad had just _given up_.

So maybe he knew it was coming. Maybe he felt it.

But Anita hadn’t. Mina hadn’t. Even Marco probably hadn’t – and it must’ve been too soon. For me it’s too soon. He was alive – _I saw him_ , Mr Bodt – just two days ago. It is too soon. It _was_ too soon.

But what is soon – _is_ this soon? Is two days too soon? Five days? A week? Ten years? It’ll always be too soon; a scab picked at until it scars.

They’ve been fighting this for over a decade. They must’ve known. Must’ve had to push the thought back so many times before, with each time Matthias received his clearing, and they had breathed a momentary sigh of relief.

And the final time, when his PET scan lit up like Trost on a clear, summer’s night. They must’ve known.

But I doubt it stems the pain.

I turn onto the dirt track that tributaries the main road, the wheels of the Jag not kicking up dry sand this time, but splatterings of mud. Something pulls me back as I creep the car along the trail, an invisible wire tugging my heart up into my throat as I peer, squinting, through the windshield, and wait to see if—

I’m right.

And that would _mean_ something, if it wasn’t here and now. If me being _right_ about Marco Bodt wasn’t at _this_ God-damn moment in time and space.

Marco’s van is parked – abandoned, more like – in the centre of the plateau: wheels caked in orange dirt and driver’s door left open.

My outlook; our outlook. The place where I once told him to get everything off his chest. The place where no-one would hear him. Shout to the horizon.

That was a long time ago.

But this was also the place where I think I fell in love with him, you know? Or at least, put the final nail in the … _yeah_. In me realising I’d been _falling_ in love with him.

The night with the fireflies. Yeah. He’d told me I only had to be good enough for myself.

That’s not entirely true though, is it?

I ease the Jag to a stop, and drop the handbrake, my eyes immediately coming to rest on the figure curled against the stone pillar of the tourist information board in mourning.

I’ve gotta be good enough for the both of us.

 

* * *

 

The sky is growing lighter with the approaching sunrise, and through the gaps in the bundles of cloud that hang low over distant city skyscrapers, I see flecks of that pink and gold – but a promise not quite reachable. The threat of more rain is suspended in the air.

I wonder if Marco’s been sitting out here all night – if he weathered the rain in the cab of his van, or with his back against the stone lectern? I hope it’s the former – and his clothes look dry enough for that to be the case as I slip out of my car and take the first few, tentative steps towards him.

Knowing what to say is harder than taking any desperate phone call from his mom; harder than any conflict with my dad; harder than any moment spent wondering when is the right moment to tell my pool boy that I love him.

Nothing I can say will change a thing. Not right now.

His legs are drawn up against his chest, and he has his arms folded on top of his knees, chin resting on them as he stares out over the horizon. His face is very still – and his expression hard to grasp until I’m right up close; cheeks dry, and dark eyes empty, and his grief, in its stony silence, is like a house: where chairs no longer hold you, and mirrors no longer reflect you, and doors no longer let you in or out. Not open or closed – but _bare_. He’s bare.

It’s unnerving, because he’s so still, and I feel any wisp of wind would be nothing more than a breath whispering over the stone shoulders of a statue. No quiver in his jaw, no tremble in his shoulder, no tracks of tears over his marbled, freckled cheeks. Not a blink. He doesn’t react, not even when I settle down next to him in the sandy, gritty dirt.

I see in him the throes of shock – the bruises that come after the blow, and he is purple with them. I see in him myself – and yes, the me that was pulled out of the pool that time by his strong arms might not have shared the _silence_ of his contusion, but it’s panic and it’s pain, and if anything I have learned this summer, it’s a mouthful of empathy. We all know pain – just different kinds of pain – and that’s how I am able to see it in him, without his lips even having to curl over the letters in my name.

He is in pain.

And I’m short-circuiting.

I told myself that my words are meaningless. I told myself that, but they come dripping out nonetheless. Of all the things I could possible say, of all the combinations of words in the English language, you wouldn’t even want to light a candle for what I fucking _choose_ to say.

“Your mom … is really worried about you, y’know.”

As if that’s going to help anything. Marco – or not Marco, and instead this stone soldier of a boy who’s just been stripped of any semblance of happiness he might have been clinging onto for the last few weeks, few _years_ – doesn’t reply, doesn’t _move_. I wonder what he’s looking at – the far reaching space that his eyes are so opaquely focussed on – and know that it has _nothing at all_ to do with whether his mom is concerned about him. Of course he knows that. Of course he knows that she’s worried about him.

I promised Anita that I’d find him, but I think I promised Marco more. I promised him to be everything he ever needed of me – even if I said it in fewer words and with less elegance – because God fucking _knows_ he’s done that for me up until now.

But still, my mouth is like a tap not connected to the reservoir inside my head, and it spews forth obsoletion.

“Y-you … probably don’t want to hear this, but … you should call her. Give her a ring in. She’d appreciate it.”

He moves then, but not much; his gaze drops from the empty space over the city as he presses his forehead to his knees and buries his face in the circle of his folded arms. He may be bruised, and his stone skin might be a poor front for porcelain, but I know that there are wounds that will never show on his body, in the rigour of his breaths or in the tight curl of his spine; that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

His strong shoulders flex with each breath. I say the words I’d promised myself I wouldn’t say, as my heart fills up with water.

“Marco, I— _I’m sorry_ , Marco.”

It sounds so false. Meaningless. Easy. Because how does _sorry_ shine a light on anything he’s feeling? How does _sorry_ lessen the blow? _Sorry_ just reminds him that my devastation doesn’t hold a light to his. Throwaway condolences are a paper-thin band aid over a wound that I should be knitting back together with better words—

– or better _actions_.

I shift myself closer to him, and his skin cold, even through the layer of my hoodie as I sandwich myself up against his side, hoping, praying to whoever might listen up there, that my presence might cushion him if he’s still free-falling – my shoulder, his shoulder; my thigh, his thigh; my heart—

Forbid my fingers leave more bruises on him; more purple blossoming marks beneath the smattering of freckles – I’m gentle. I’m so gentle. I will be the _most_ gentle—

I wrap my arm around his shoulders with the most gossamer of touches that I can muster, soothing my fingers over his far arm, and I give him a little pull – just a little. To pull him into the crook of my neck, to cradle him against my chest, to let him know that it’s alright, it’s _alright_ —

“ _Stop_.”

It’s alri— _what_?

Marco’s hand, splayed on my chest, is pushing me back. My arm falls from his shoulders in a second.

“Jean, stop. I … I can’t do this.”

His voice is low, wounded, and his eyes – molasses and brimming with hot liquid – don’t disturb the firmness in his lips. He’s looking at me, and I’m staring back at him, with both my hands now spread in the dirt, and I— _I’m lost_.

Can’t do what? D-deal with this? I know – I know that much. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Because I know that it’s hurting, and I know I can be a crutch, and I know—

“What do you need me to do?” I say, my breath quick as I find the deep severity in his rigour alarming. His calmness scares me. My heart rackets against my ribcage, trying to tear every vein and every artery out of their place.

I’ll do anything. Anything he needs. Just … just—

Just cry. Just _cry_. Or complain, or— or tell me about all the things about your dad that make you feel— something, Marco, _something_. Just cry. It’s okay to cry.

But he … he shakes his head. He remains stone. That’s not what he meant.

“I can’t do _this_ anymore, Jean.”

His hand on my sternum pushes harder, squeezing air and squeezing bone, and I shuffle backwards, if only to make the space he clearly needs. His eyes are brimming – clouds, waves, _water_.

What do you do when an already broken person is breaking more? What amount of glue and frantic hands can stop them falling to pieces right in front of you, when you’ve known all along their wings are made of wax, and maybe – _certainly_ – this plummet back towards the earth was never meant to be beautiful, and always meant to be inevitable?

“What … what do you mean?” I whisper, fragmentally – but it’s as if those shards of my words puncture his skin, and he winces, twisting away from me again.

There’s a tear that rolls down his cheek, slicing a pathway through his freckled constellations, and I feel him slipping through my fingers like grains of sand, like drops of water, and we’re heading towards a cliff that I don’t want to go falling off. There’s a different sort of dread in my stomach now – a dread that’s threatening to careen out of control with the next words that are scraped from his lips.

“This. Us, Jean. _You_.” Another tear, and he wipes it away with a smear of his wrist across his face, and a sniffle that raises my hackles. “Whatever … whatever this is, I can’t. I can’t … _can’t_ do it anymore.”

I never thought I wouldn’t be the one smacking my own self-destruct button, but here we are. But it’s a big, red, flashing _beacon_ of a thing, and I am – have always been – a head rush, a sinking weight, a mess – so how can I blame him for— _for_ —

He doesn’t really mean that, does he? Did I hear him right?

Like a broken record, it’s all I can do to repeat myself, “W-what do you mean?”

Marco clamps his hands over his head, knotting his fingers in his hair as more tears begin to flow freely over his face, and his lips susur the same phrase, over and over again, like he’s whispering himself a song, a lullaby, a prayer.

“I can’t do this. I can’t do this.”

I don’t— I just— What do I need to _do_?

“I can’t do this.”

He’s hurting, he’s hurting, he’s _hurting_ , he didn’t mean—

Us. _Me_? What does … what does that mean?

“ _I can’t do this_.”

It’s pouring out of him, and he’s crumpling, like a man who stares in terror at his worst fear— like a man who stares in terror _at the sea_.

What do I do? What do I _do_? My hands are no substitute for _glue_.

I roll up onto my knees, and try to press my hands against his shaking shoulders, but he throws me off with a heave that has his quiet tears descending into sobs and depthless spirals that _drown_.

“I can’t do this, Jean; I can’t, I _can’t_.” Ricocheting out him like machine gun bullets, and it’s all I can do but try to absorb each hit to my chest like a good, painted target. Take the shot. Take the shot. I daren’t get any closer because I fear he’ll shatter if I try. “I can’t, I— I can’t, because you—”

Because _I_?

It’s like being towed through a maze by someone you trust so dearly, and for so long – and they suddenly let go of your hand. No betrayal – nothing like that – but confusion, and fear, and the hedges are so tall and their shadows so long. I’m lost.

 “Because I just— I don’t under … understand you, Jean, and I _don’t know_ … don’t know how I’m supposed—”

I’m kneeling in the dirt, and the sun is rising through the rainclouds that shroud the city, and the boy I love is crying, _and I can’t touch him_. He reels away from me. How is this something someone could ever deserve – either of us? How is this the way his narrative was ever meant to play out, what stupid, predetermined path could ever have meant to bring him _here_ —

“I can’t … I can’t— I won’t, I— I can’t clean the pool any more, I can’t—”

That shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, but I love him.

“Not with – _hnnn_ – not with, this, this … all these _mixed_ —”

I don’t know what he’s saying, but I love him.

“M-mixed signals, and I c-can’t, not when I— o-oh, oh God, I—”

And it _hurts_ , because I love him.

“I c-can’t cope with this, with _you_ … can’t cope … not on top of everything else. I can’t. _Can’t_.”

He’s sobbing into his hands now, and his fingers are running with rivers of hot, salt water, and if ever there was meant to be a storm, it’s the one that crosses his brown eyes, that quickly becomes the rocks that ships shatter upon in the torrential gale; and aren’t _I_ a ship. My hands float desperately over his shoulders, a buffer of space like the repulsion of a magnet keeping me at bay, the opposite of a black hole that doesn’t pull me into its abyssal vortex, but that shoots me out and away, _far away_ —and it’s the hurtling that’s hurting more than the landing ever will.

What words will reach through the hurricane of a storm at sea, or through the sound of a ship splintering on the land, or through the endless vacuum of space – but I try. I know my voice is getting louder. I know I’m getting desperate. I know I’m scared. And I know none of those things are fucking _fair_ on him. There’s nothing else I can do.

“Marco … Marco, please, _Marco_ , what do you mean? What is _this_? What are you talking about, I don’t understand, _I_ — what do you mean? What do you _need_ , Marco?”

It’s terrifying, the way his seismic sobs just _stop_. But worse is the _disbelief_ that crosses his face as he raises his head to stare at me, and the stab of guilt I feel rupture my gut and pour my insides out all over the wet sand.

“You don’t … you don’t know.” It’s not a question, it’s a statement, and it fills me with tar that’s red-hot and swamping, and it turns every atom inside my body _black_. Marco whispers the same words again, and his eyes are wide; the thing I don’t know – it’s _shocking_ , that’s what it is. “You don’t know … you don’t— you don’t know.”

He struggles to his feet, staggering like something’s nipping at his heels as he keels away from the tourist information placard, running his hands through his cowlicked hair over and over again. On instinct, I reach out to grab him back, twisting my fingers in the hem of his shirt; his next sob is a whine.

“Please let go, J-Jean … let go.”

I’m shaking my head, tugging only harder on his shirt, holding him forcibly within my orbit. Oh God. Here comes the word vomit.

“N-no, I— Marco, I can’t, not when you— you’re saying that you can’t deal with m-me, but I— just tell me what I need to change, Marco. I need to make sure you’re okay, and you’re clearly not okay, and I—”

“Go _home_ , Jean.”

I blink – slowly, owlishly, I don’t know – but I let my hand drop. Marco expels a pent up breath that seems to shake.

“W-what?”

“I s-said: _go home_. Please, just— _just go_.”

Cold, isolated, desperate – for an answer, for an explanation, for a remedy. Anything. I hate it. But his eyes tempest, and he backs away when I lurch to my feet and try to reach for him again, shaking his head from side to side, distraught, his lower lip quivering.

“I can’t deal with _us_ anymore.”

Alone, confused, the last place in the world you’d ever want to be. Somehow, I get the feeling I deserve this. He doesn’t. He _doesn’t_.

He doesn’t want to deal with me on top of his grief. I’ve caused him pain – more pain, I don’t know what sort of pain, but— but just fucking look at him, just fucking—

It’s not just now, it’s _always_. Can’t deal with _us_ anymore. Can’t deal with _me_ anymore. That’s what he said. That’s what he _said_.

I don’t know what to do. And it’s a panic I shouldn’t be feeling – because I’m not the one crying, because I’m not the one reeling, because I’m not the one who’s just lost their _father_ —

But it’s panic. How can I not know what its teeth feel like when they sink into my skin, how can I not know what it feels like to be laughing hysterically to an empty room, how can I not—

I’m scared of _everything_. Not Marco though – no, never Marco – but I’m scared of what’s he’s telling me. I’m scared of what I might have done, now that’s it’s torrenting out between his broken hiccups and wet sobs.

“ _Just go_.”

Tell me why I leave. Tell me why I turn heel and walk back to my car. Tell me why I don’t stay, why I don’t fight for something I don’t even know is breaking, why I don’t try harder to make sure he’s _okay_ – or not okay, but _safe_.

I’m meant to be stubborn. That’s what I am – Jean Kirschtein is stubborn, Jean Kirschtein is an obstinate _idiot_. Well, idiot may be.

Tell me why I’m looking back at Marco through my rear view mirror as I strap myself into my seat, and he is bent in prayer, in pain, over the rickety wooden fence at the lip of the outlook; arms rigid, shoulders heaving, and he cries.

Tell me why I twist the key in the engine, _and I drive away_.

 

* * *

 

I don’t make it far; I roll the Jag into the parking lot of the gas station at the foot of the hill, and I just … _stop_. I stop functioning.

The sunlight breaks through the clouds over the low-slung roofs of suburban Trost, grimy and yellow and not at all beautiful or worth mention, other than the fact it burns too bright against my retinas, and I bow my head against the steering wheel, for the second time in too few days.

 _I can’t do this. Us, Jean. You_. It echoes in my mind, jumping on the shoulders of every other thought and dunking them beneath the rippling surface of everything else swallowed up inside my head.

Me. _Me_. Walking disaster. Enormous _burden_.

Stupidly in love with him, and—

I bet he knows. I bet that’s why – if not all of it, at least a driving part of why. I bet he knows, and it makes him squirm. I love him, he doesn’t love me, and why should he have to keep up with the _façade_ of being comfortable with that, with the tall child afraid of water and afraid of telling him the _truth_ , when he’s trying to deal with _so much else_?

And he said all that stuff about mixed signals, and not wanting to clean the pool anymore, and— _fuck_. Just fuck. There’s no other way to explain it. Fuck.

_He’s hurting Jean, he’s hurting. Give him space. He lost his dad six hours ago. Give him space, for God’s sake. Don’t judge him on the things he says when he’s crying his fucking eyes out. Learn to be a fucking grown up._

I’m a piss-poor excuse for a grown up. I shouldn’t have left. I should’ve at least offered to drive him home. At least forced him to dial his mom.

I’m useless. So fucking _useless_ – and what fucking excuse do I have? This is just me. I’m _useless_.

I hate this stupid sunlight, and this stupid summer that was only _pretending_ to be a fucking summer, because all along it was going to end in a whole lot of water and a whole lot of rain. I hate the way the sun refracts off every shiny surface in my fucking overpriced, token-of-my-father’s-love, piece of _shit_ of a car, and I hate the way the heat is going to make the asphalt boil and the air shake once the dawn passes.

I hate the way this God-damn gas station crumbles – how the asshole with his Jeep takes up two of the fucking pumps, how no-one’s taken the time to repave the potholed tarmac, even when the rest of the city is so sharply made up in black glass and money. Hate the way the woman pumping gas into her little, red Fiat is watching me suspiciously, frown lines carved out of her forehead like canyons.

I hate myself the most, of course. Hate. _Hate_. Sears flesh and boils blood. The need to shout, to yell, to scream, at whatever will take it all. _Hate_.

 _Turn around Jean. Drive back to the outlook. You can’t just leave it like that_.

 

* * *

 

Promises are easily broken. Maybe it’s just because you never understand the enormity of what a promise is when you make it; it lulls the heart and soothes the soul and maybe it makes you feel like a good person for once in your shitty life, but that’s all it amounts to. Words can be twisted until they mean nothing. You can stuff your mouth with promise after promise, and all that happens is you end up with vomit down your front when you can’t keep them down any more.

I break both my promise to Anita, and my promise to Marco, when I slither back through the front door of my house, little more than an hour after I left in such a rush. The television is on low in the living room as I kick my sneakers off against the doormat, the trails of my mud-splattered pyjamas slimy against my bare feet as I trudge through the hallway, peaking through the door at mom – alone – clutching a mug of coffee in one hand and the house phone in the other, perched on the very edge of our white-leather couch, and paying zero attention to the flickering images that pass across the TV screen.

I’d prefer it if she didn’t see me, because I know my stomach’s churning and I’m becoming volatile the longer I stay open to the air, but her ears must’ve picked up my slamming of the front door and my squelching across the wooden floor. She looks up when I appear in the doorway, and leaps to her feet, abandoning everything in her hands as she scampers over to me.

There’s too much of her – the oily, musky scent of her perfume is too strong, and her manicured hands sweeping damp hair out of my face are too much – I don’t want to be touched, not by her. Not by _her_. Please, get out of my face.  

She babbles like a brook, cooing and cawing, and I hate it all. Weak apologies, asking me if I’m okay – and I’ve not been fucking okay for a long time mom, but fuck, it shouldn’t even matter that I’m not okay, because Marco, _Marco_ —

And has she forgotten what she did? The fact that we haven’t been talking for two weeks, and now – _now_ she decides to put her hands all over me and smother me in perfumed words and condolences – how can they mean anything? How can they?

She lied to me. Five years, ten years, nineteen years? I don’t know. We haven’t gotten over that yet, have we, mom? Any words of yours are more meaningless, more _obsolete_ than any of mine.

I’m not thinking straight. I’m not. It’s going to boil over. My fists tense and curl at my sides.

“Jean, baby, look at me – are you okay? Sweetheart, honey, look at me?”

“ _Don’t_.”

“Jean?”

And in that moment I discover that it’s easier to handle anger than it is to cope with grief.

“Don’t mom. Don’t. I don’t want to hear it; I don’t want to talk to y—!” The end of my sentence falls off into an unintelligible, but pained grunt – too winded by my own words and the force of their expulsion – and I swat her prying hands away with a flick of my wrist. She startles, stumbling backwards one, two steps; but her frantic confusion is only momentary.

Mom is not stupid, however _vapid_ her outer appearance might suggest – she understands. She understands, and even when she scowls, no lines of age appear in her forehead or between her finely plucked eyebrows – she’s been back on the Botox. Slowly, _weakly_ , she pulls her dressing gown tightly around her chest, closing up the triangle of skin I can see of her skeletal collar bones.

“Are we doing this _now_ , Jean?” she murmurs, staring at the floor and lips barely moving. “You haven’t spoken to me in two weeks, and we’re doing this … now?”

It’s anger, it’s hurt, it’s stress – it’s a whole stew of messes, and they want to be heard _now_ , yes. Right now.

And it’s ridiculous. And she doesn’t deserve it. Only I deserve it. But my filter has all but dissolved away, and I don’t know how to stem my _frustration_ from burning holes in everything. I want to break things, I want to _break_ myself, I want to shatter on the rocks and not have to pick up the pieces, I want to burn and boil and bust, because I’m so tired of all of this _crap_ , all of this crap in my life— what did I fucking _do_ to get handed this bad a fucking hand, huh?

“Now seems to be a good as time as any, right?” My voice is rising, and the hairs on the back of my neck are prickling. Something inside me wants to shout, and I feel _sick_. “I mean, _mom_ , might as well get _all_ the shit over and done with today, _right_?!”

Mom takes a deep and steadying breath, but to little avail as she trembles.

“This is not the time to be doing this, Jean. Not today. You’re upset. _Not today_.”

Not today. Not today? Why _not_ today? What makes today _any fucking different_ , huh?

“If not today, then when?” I snipe, “Tomorrow? Few days’ time? A few years’ time? Heed your own advice next time, mom – you never once … never _once_ told me about dad, you know that? And for fucking _years_ I’ve thought I was keeping all that _shit_ a secret from you, and do you know how _fucking_ much that killed me, mom – _do you_?”

It shouldn’t be coming out like this. But once the blood starts flowing from open wounds, it’s hard to stem the flow of all the rotten things inside your body.

“Jean …”

“No, mom, you don’t have the right to fucking _tell me_ when we’re going to _do_ this, you get that? Now. We’re doing this _now_.”

My hands are flailing wildly, and my anger is surging out of my sadness and my greyness and my emptiness, and I resent every horrible fucking thing that’s about to leave my mouth, because—

Because the child in me has to say it all, but the adult in me knows it’s not the way. But the screaming is always going to be the loudest, and it’s always going to cancel out all rational thought, and I just—

I _snap_.

Red-hot anger takes away a lot of heartache – even if the heartache is the catalyst.

“You knew. You fucking _knew_ , mom!” I’m yelling now. Yelling, crumbling, throwing my hands up in the air, because I’m done. Done. “And what – you stayed because _what_? You didn’t tell your own _son_ that his father is fucking every God-damn secretary in his office? You let me believe – _mom_ – you let me _believe_ that I was helping him keep the fucking _secret_ , and because what? Because you wanted to keep the house? The car? Because without his fucking _credit card_ , how are you supposed to get your hair done, or your nails done, or your _face_ done – you’re _pathetic_ , mom. And you think I can seriously listen to anything you say? Are you for fucking _real_? Marco’s dad just died, mom, and you think your fucking _sorrys_ and your fucking _words_ mean— mean _anything_ right now? You don’t care. You don’t care about anything except your _cushy fucking life_ , and you don’t care—”

It’s when she wipes one finger beneath her lower lashes that I come skittering to a car crash of a halt; bend metal and crumpled engines and blood on the asphalt. My heart thunders in my chest, and blood pounds in my ears, and regret is dawning like the sunrise just outside the door, and mom wipes away a tear as she blinks heavily to try and pretend that I haven’t just said to her the worst possible things in the world.

“How … how can you—” The last few drips come spluttering out of my mouth like phlegm in the potent silence. “How can you live in the same house as him, mom? How can you qualify putting up with that? To _me_? How … _how can you_?”

Mom doesn’t say anything. She just absorbs my words like a sponge, catches them like a net, feels their sting like razor wire, but does _nothing_. She lets them cut her, and it’s not my blood lacerated on the road – it’s hers, now. She is quiet, and she is still, save the way she flicks droplets of water from her cheeks, and it’s worth knowing that all the people in my life seem the suffer the same degree of trauma: _asshole proximity disorder_. And I’m the asshole.

Except _asshole_ doesn’t really cover it, does it – not when mom shakes her head, and her face screws up with oncoming floods, and she pushes past me without a word, heading straight for the stairs, and _away_. Crying. Bleeding. It’s all the fucking same.

I give her a few minutes head start – all the while standing in the doorway of the living room, knowing that I’ve crippled myself behind the steering wheel – and this collision bears my name, and my name only. My hands shakes, my knees shake, _I_ shake like there’s one thousand volts of electricity coursing through my veins and I’ve just been thrown into a running bath tub. You could comb my hair and watch sparks fly from the ends, and you could tap me with your fingers and watch me fall to pieces.

Fire burns quick, and bright, and then it’s just ash. Just like me.

It’s seven AM in the middle of August. Trost bathes in the respite of much needed rain, and the summer sun shines bright as it rises over the hillsides that line the valley. The city has woken with one less person in it, and a handful more people who wish they weren’t as well. And my footfalls are silent as I climb the stairs, and all the floorboards of our landing creak beneath my weight, and my mattress springs as I flop down onto it.

I don’t cry. I don’t _feel_ like crying. I don’t _feel_ anything.

It’s that same crushing greyness – the flat line that comes with depression that no-one ever warns you about; you only hear the romance, only the beautiful sadness, and that’s never ever true anyway. There’s nothing God-damn _beautiful_ in feeling like you’re dead on the inside before you are on the outside, there’s no poetry in guilt, and there’s definitely no silver lining to the clouded memory of Marco coming apart at the seams, and the way my words bit at mom, and just—

This, I know this. I say it time and time again – because I’m a fucking _drama queen_ , or whatever you want to call it – I don’t even _care_ anymore – but this is it. With absolute certainty, this is rock bottom. This is what the _worst_ , possible thing feels like.

And it’s no some grand, emotional breakdown. You spiral through the fear, and through the anger, and then you’re left with wretched numbness, and it is, in fact, so horrifically _mundane_ , this rock bottom.

Rock bottom is knowing that I can’t even cope with my commonplace; a touch, a look, a thought. An inability so extreme and debilitating that it makes everything that so much more unbearable, however grand, and however lovely, and however _well-meaning_. Rock bottom covers everything in dilute blood, but you never even realise that fact because all the lights have blown, and you’re all too absorbed with trying to feel your way through the dark, only to trip over nothing and fall to your knees.

Rock bottom is that feeling that the only thing that could ever matter – that _will_ ever matter – is this one, apocalyptic moment, and the simple fact that I had a helping hand in all of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All roller coasters have their tipping point. This is ours.
> 
> I have a few things to say.
> 
> First, a whole bunch of thank yous. Firstly, to Saro, for the stream of snapchats about how to eat popsicles seductively. I learned a lot.  
> Secondly, to everyone on Tumblr who answered my call for stories about the loss of loved ones. It was entirely eye-opening and humbling, and I hope you can see how much I learned from you guys presented here, in this chapter. I really hope I've presented the situation realistically. Please let me know your thoughts - I am open to concrit and how I can improve my presentation of the turbulent stages of the grieving process, as we'll be exploring that more in chapters to come.
> 
> Next, I suppose, it's worth saying that this really is the big plummet. Things will get better for the boys from here on out, even if it is to be a slow healing process. But that doesn't mean they can't heal side by side. I hope what happens in the next chapter is both truthful to the situation, respectful to my characters, and satisfying to you guys. I've really tried my best.
> 
> Please remember that Jean does not deal with Marco's grief in a good way /at all/. He's very lost, and he's very confused, and if you are dealing with the loss of a loved one, I thoroughly recommend a quick Google, because there are a lot of good articles out there on how to deal with it, and also, how to deal if someone you love is dealing with it. Please bare with Jean. He's an idiot, yes. But he's gotta learn.
> 
> In terms of music recs for this chapter, please check out: "Everything" (Ben Howard), "Porcelain" (Marianas Trench), "Bulletproof Weeks" (Matt Nathanson), "You Don't Know How Lucky You Are" (Keaton Henson), and "Always Summer" (Adrian Johnston).
> 
> Many thanks for the reception from the last chapter - hearing from you guys is everything to me. There's no feeling quite like waking up to an inbox full of feelings. Hearing how the story has effected you, or how you relate to it, or even just your concrete thoughts on the style - that means a lot to me.
> 
> Please charge all tissues to my bank account. Until next time (which will be significantly less miserable).


	19. These Waters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I fell in love with you like droplets in the ocean.

To walk on broken glass – but slowly – is the only way to describe the feeling that shatters in my chest. So very slowly, that you feel every inch of ragged pain spear and slide upwards into the sole of your foot, every squelch of oozing blood that paints your footprints red, every step forward lacerating a mesh of fine, gruesome lines into your skin—

Slowly. The pain is not quick, and does not come in dramatic bursts of crimson behind the eyes. It is gradual, a building wave that never breaks as it creeps further and further up the rocky shoreline. It’s a wave of malignant greyness – and I know it well, but never this much. Never as much as the feeling of it lapping at my jaw as it threatens to submerge the last few centimetres of me gasping for air above the surface. Never as much as the feeling _not_ of perpetual weightlessness and no control – but the feeling of one thousand tiny pricks to my skin, needle-deep and piercing, puckering me with holes that bleed out milky-red into the water.

It’s like swimming through a sea of shards – with each stroke your arms are sliced and your fingers stain red, and stopping hurts just as much as moving. Your skin catches and you peel yourself away with every breath in your lungs that makes the glass move painful against your ribs, until you are nothing but a squirming discollection of bones waiting to be taken away by a tide that doesn’t seem to be coming.

They say keep swimming – keep fighting. Keep fighting ‘till you’ve reached the faraway shore, ‘till you’ve won, ‘till you’ve found your way home and the sun comes back from behind the clouds and your heart learns how to love the mornings again, but— I’d like to meet these people who say these things. They’ve clearly not worked _so hard_ , only to _hate_ themselves to sleep at night with the pain of bleeding out unseen.

The crying doesn’t last long anyway, so maybe it’s just a cruel joke on the part of whoever makes the rules – hot and salty tears burst and die like a firework in silence. They wet my cheeks and wet my pillows, but it almost feels like they just fall for the liberty of it all – I don’t feel like crying. I don’t _want_ to cry. I suppose it just happens because that’s how my brain deems it suitable for me to react before the rest of me catches up, and the waves of greyness threaten to spill into my mouth and _drown_ me. I have to be pitiful.

To hell with small boats and shallow waters – what part of me, what part of _us_ , Marco and I, was made for shallow waters? I should’ve seen it coming; should’ve expected the feeling of my feet lifting up from the sandy sea bed and being swept away, only to be thrown back onto the glass rocks, now sharp and ragged. Should’ve known not to trust myself with good things and absorb them so selfishly. Should’ve known I never _deserved_ those good things: Connie and the others, mom, _Marco_.

These are mountains that have plagued me all my life, and I’ve thrown my shoulders out too many times trying to move them – I should’ve learned by now.

It’s hard to know what feels worse, when feeling anything _at all_ is hard graft: the hatred of myself for not seeing what a problem I was causing for him, and for everyone, really, or— or the fact that he _didn’t want to let me in_. He didn’t.

After all we’ve been through, he couldn’t tell me. He didn’t want to. And that’s inherently selfish of me, yes – because it’s not mine, and _never_ mine to demand of him, but I—

But I keep on spiralling back down to it. Spiralling down, and down, and _down_. Maybe if I fall down far enough I will bury myself beneath enough soil or burn myself up in the molten-metal heart of the world and no-one – especially Marco, especially mom, especially _me_ – will have to deal with who I am.

_I can’t do this. Us, Jean. You._

I never wanted to hurt him. Or anyone.

 

* * *

 

We all know how this story goes.

I am tired of the world, and I’m sure the world is tired of me too; it spins on, and the sun rolls in a great arch across the sky, but the air in my room is hot and stagnant. I can’t tell you how long that day lasts – but I can tell you about every swirl in my ceiling which I trace with my eyes, or about how the insides of my eyelids look when I grind the heels of my palms into them.

I replay everything and nothing inside my head, flitting between the memory of his face and the sting of his words and the hurt in mom’s eyes when I’d taken all that out on her, and blackness.

Or, not quite blackness. That feels too solid a thing, too intense a thing. It’s grey. A very dark grey: dull and lifeless and I’m thoroughly deserving of it as it slowly pushes thoughts from my head and replaces them with fog.

Some people count sheep when an inability to sleep keeps them awake at night. I don’t. Maybe if I _don’t_ sleep, I won’t have to face waking up as myself, y’know?

 

* * *

 

There’s a part of me that almost expects – or at least, _hopes_ that I’ll wake up to a text message or a missed call or the sound of _tap-tap-tap_ on the pane of my window. It’s the same part of me that forces faith into the side of Marco that drags everyone else into orbit around him; the part of me that cruelly banks on the slight of kindness that he sure as hell owes to no-one.

It’s too grand a wish, and he owes me nothing. I don’t deserve the breathing space to demand anything more of him now – or ever, maybe. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and that scares me. It wakes me in a hot sweat, with perspiration thick on the back of my neck and forehead and behind my knees; an ache in my chest that resonates at a shifting equilibria, forever flinging itself between far too hot and burningly cold. Maybe it will _freeze_ itself inside of me so that I might stomp on it with my heel and _shatter it_.

It’s fear, but not as I know it. Not fear of the known, not fear of the things I see every day – but fear of the unknown. I don’t know when I’ll hear from Marco again – I _will_ hear from him, one day, I think, but maybe that’s worse. Knowing it’ll happen, and knowing I won’t have the words to apologise and make everything better, and knowing that things will _change_. Knowing that he will be different and I will be different, and there are things we know about each other now that are— just _different_.

I’ve lived a long fucking time being different, and it sucks, let me tell you, but this— I would trade one hundred days of ostracism to get rid of the fear of what will happen when I see him again.

If. _If_.

If he wants to _see_ me again. I don’t think _I_ could look _me_ in the face again, so I wouldn’t blame if he would want to do the same.

Maybe it’ll be by a phone call. Or a text message. Or a passing comment from Levi or the speedos guy next time one of them _who’s not Marco_ turns up to clean the pool.                                                

Maybe it will just die quietly, without a word, but in mutual understanding.

 _He never needed a problem like me_.

That’s what scares me the most, I think.

It’s the same part of me that places hope in Marco that doesn’t hesitate to tell me that I‘m being melodramatic – and I suppose there’s something to be found in that fact alone: the fact that the me of last year, the _me_ of before this summer, would never have been able to twist his fingers in the silver-strung edges of the cloud like that and force myself to find hope, even when there might be none.

I try to tell myself that the storm will pass, and giving him time to breathe is what needs to be done, and only that. Giving him time to mourn, and giving him time to come to terms with what he needs to do with himself, and what _I_ need to do with myself.

Oh, but I already fucked that up _royally_ , didn’t I?

I shouldn’t have taken it out on mom – all the hurt, and the confusion, and the pain that’s been building up for such a long time. For longer than I‘ve known Marco. She didn’t deserve any of that, and she’s stuck being my _parent_.

So she lied. But I did too.

 _But I did too_.

Would it have been better if she’d told me that she knew? Would I have been able to live with myself just as shamefully easily as I did, knowing we were both staying in this house and forgiving him – _my dad_ – in some sick way, by doing so? Knowing that both mom and I were on the same page, yet neither of us having the strength to pull away from the tether?

Yeah. It was easier being weak alone.

I’m such a God-damn hypocrite. I shouldn’t have yelled at her like that. She cried. I made mom _cry_ – what sort of piece of shit son _does that_?

Oh right. Me. Me, because I’ve become awfully good at making people cry over the last nineteen years. Awfully good at watching people walk away from me for what I’ve gone and _done_ ; when I’m  on fire and but the only thing they owe me is to walk away to save their skin from being scorched.

 

* * *

 

Forcing myself out of bed is hard, but my stomach growls like a dying whale, grumbling in demand for food, even though I doubt I’ll be able to stomach it, let alone taste it. The house is too white – and it’s like I’ve never noticed how white the walls are, or how white the couches are, or the paint on the kitchen cabinets, or the front door. It’s all white: sterile, lifeless, eerie, I suppose. My footsteps echo loudly as the stairs creak, or as my naked feet stick to the wood or the tiles in the heat that shouldn’t be clinging like this to such pale walls.

The silence is also white – muffled, I suppose. The weight clogs the pores in my skin, like a thick film painted like plaster of Paris onto my face, my arms, cracking with every stiff movement as I drag my heels through the kitchen.

Dad’s letters are still piled up on the counter top, unopened, but organised into neat, sharp-corned piles by size and shape. The marble gleams in the daylight beyond the windows that overlook that back yard – morning light, afternoon light, I’m not really sure. It’s yellow-white, too, after all, and it seems to merely mingle with the blinding dissipation that haunts the air. There are no dishes drying next to the sink, no shoes left abandoned by the back door – everything is clean, neat, perfected. The housekeeper doesn’t come for the next three days.

It’s not a serene sort of whiteness, no. The house is white as if shrouded in dust sheets, as if all our furniture makes for opaque, amorphous shapes in the corners of my eyes, and the still air is cold with the pale shade of understanding that seems to latch onto my trails of disappearing hope.

No-one comes home that day. Not mom, not dad. I don’t even hear the mailman at the front door, or the neighbour’s terrier yapping in their back yard, or the usually familiar sound of sirens in the far, summer distance. It almost feels as if the world has gone away somewhere without me, and no-one cared to tell me where that was.

I spend the day _existing_ , because there’s really little else I can find it in myself to figure out how to do. I shave – and the razor on my face feels blunt. I shower – but the water makes my stomach churn and lands me with fifteen minutes spent crouched in front of the toilet wondering if I’m going to empty the contents of my guts. I lie on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, and find my fingers twitching for a cigarette and my blood pumping for a nicotine fix, but a sickness rising in my throat when I think about lungs filling with spluttering, black tar.

The feelings in my chest are just visitors – they come and go as they please, and sometimes, _this time_ , they’re not all that diligent about wiping their feet. I flit between the prick of heat behind my eyes, thinking about Marco and his dad, thinking about mom, thinking about _my_ dad, my future, and even everything that ever happened with Eren and the others, and the unfathomable greyness that perpetuates my _everything_ – and nothing. A nothing stained with moody footprints of wandering consequences, maybe, but it’s chilling. You’re meant to feel more than a burdening apathy, but— I don’t. That’s just how it is.

It’s at the same time too much and not enough, like some sort of cotton bulk stuffed down my throat that threatens to make me gag, but the heaving never quite escalates to something more. It doesn’t purge me of anything poisonous, and instead keeps it all stewing and festering deep within, where I can’t get rid of it, however hard I try to shove two fingers metaphorically down my throat. I’d give a lot to be able to vomit up all the anguish, all the hatred for myself, all the _hurt_ into the toilet bowl, but— I’d just end up having to swallow it all again. That’s how it always goes. You always just have to drink it back down, however hard your eyes water, and however much it burns your throat in its chloric acidity.

That acid doesn’t just stop in the inside of my mouth or plastered up the lining of my throat; it seeps from follicles in my skin, from the fine crevices in my fingertips, so that when I touch others with my hands, they’re not fixed, they’re not miraculously put back together or saved from cracking – they _dissolve_.

I hate it. I hate that.

The house remains deathly silent even after night fall, and I’ve never felt unnerved about being home alone ‘till now. I wander aimlessly around the house, collapsing onto the sofa only to stand moments later, surfing through TV channels but finding nothing to watch, and staring at the coffee pot long after it’s finished brewing. Everything feels like a lazy Sunday, imposing itself for far longer than its due: days, weeks, months – and the ever-present cloud of foreboding, like the feeling of a Monday morning approaching but never arriving, doesn’t leave me be. It’s waiting for something you know is going to be dreadful, even though the most painful thing is the knowledge that the worst thing you’re doing to yourself is wishing your life away for something else – something not present.

I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s emptiness, and it’s fullness, and it’s an omnipotent haze of thought and no thought that makes me question if anything was ever real. And not real, as in:  is what I feel for Marco real? Is our friendship real? I know it is. It always will be. What I’m feeling is a disconnection, like that twinge felt when reading the same word over and over again until it stops being a word and loses all its meaning. Yeah, that’s it. Losing the meaning of what it means to feel something stronger than a generic apathy for myself and everything I‘ve ever fucking done.

It’s really dumb that I don’t see the note left on the breakfast bar until then – a square of once-folded paper that I had been too cloud-headed to notice earlier. Mom’s scrawl, unlike the spotlessness of the counter top it rests upon, is uneven and messy and rushed. And curt. Very curt. She’s gone to stay with a friend for a few days, it says. There’s food in the fridge, it says.

Love, it _doesn’t_ say.

I scrunch the note up in my fist, and hold my fingers against my mouth as I swallow the bile down, hard.

Fucked up. I fucked up.

Our big white house, with its marble countertops and its fifty-two inch TV and its double garage and swimming pool, is too big for me. Staying here is like a pressure building up on the inside of me, stretching and ballooning my skin, pulling it taut over pockets of hot air, but never bursting. Feels like it might, but I know it won’t. It’ll just keep building until I force myself to get used to the feeling of being scraped too thin, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to get used to it.

It’s the selfish reasoning that I caused this feeling, yet won’t accept it, that drives me to fling whatever clothes I can lay my hands on into a duffle bag that I sling over my shoulder, and press my cell phone to my ear as I put the empty hallway and bottomless feeling as best behind me as I can manage.

I do wonder why I don’t ring Connie or Sasha, or Eren even – because there would be some poetic justice to the end of our story if I went to _him_ for help now, wouldn’t there? It would be like tying off the loose threads in a satisfactory knot, but … alongside everything else, part of the tidal guilt that swells inside my chest is for him too, and the shit I put him through. Real life doesn’t resolve itself so neatly as to give me and him that sort of closure.

Maybe it’s the same reason for Connie and Sasha – because I know them too well, and they know me too well. Maybe I don’t want to deal with that. I want something uncomplicated, and in the spirit of eighties’ movie references that I’m suddenly reminded of, when I’m halfway down the driveway towards the Jag, I end up calling Ymir.

Uncomplicated. I think that’s a good way of describing the weird sort of camaraderie I’ve developed with her over the last few months.

She answers after the dial tone drags out for a little too long and I begin to squirm, but she asks no questions when I ask her if she’s got a couch in her dorm room going spare. I guess she can tell by the tone of my voice; I guess I’m that readable. It doesn’t really matter.

 

* * *

 

Ymir’s dorm is a fifties-build barrack of a thing, all single-glaze windows and square, bulky lines of white concrete, and it’s a sort of cruel irony, I suppose: its _whiteness_. At least it’s different though, at least it’s ugly, because that gives me something to consider rather than marauding nothingness.

Not many students live on campus over the summer. I guess it must be pretty lonely having to traipse empty halls and look out onto the view of the university campus sweltering and shaking under the summer heat, especially with Historia back and forth between her parents’ house and here.

Ymir leaves me standing in the porch for a good ten minutes after I ring the bell to be buzzed up – an angry text message or five later, and she comes hopping down the stairs with a smirk and her hands in her pockets, and lets me in as I huff loudly.

“So I was thinking PlayStation, beer, and pizza?” she grins, and it’s hard to tell how forced a sentiment she stretches across her wolf grin. Doesn’t matter. Beer sounds good.

 

* * *

 

I crack the tab on a can of her _cat piss_ , and we make it through one race of Mario Kart (in which she hands my ass to me and I am on the receiving end of every God-damn red shell in the history of mankind), before she breaks the pretence.

“So, parentals, huh?” she asks, leaning back against the couch, balancing her controller on her knee as she takes a slurp from her can. “You wanna talk about it?”

Ah, I wish it was just that simple. I wish I could just have a good moan about my dad, and then bury it all amongst tipsy laughter and video games. That would be _really_ uncomplicated.

“I fucked up,” I murmur quietly, pressing the rim of my can to my lips, but not tipping the bitter stuff down my throat. “I fucked up big time.”

“Well that, I figured,” Ymir guffaws, rolling her eyes playfully until she realises my face doesn’t change from being fucking _morose_. “Oh. Shit. What’cha do?”

I lower the can and tap my fingers against the side: the sound is tinny and the beer sloshes around inside. I chew on the inside of my cheek, and something tells me that it’s not my information to share, but I guess common sense and decency has been more than thrown out of the window lately.

Still, I can barely find my voice when I do say it.

“Marco … Marco’s dad … he passed away a few days ago.”

Ymir’s short eyebrows shoot up into her hairline, and her thin lips twist out of their permanent, self-satisfied smirk to form a round o-shape. She runs a hand through her bangs, and lolls her head back against the spine of the couch, staring at the ceiling of her grimy, student digs.

“ _Shiiit_ ,” she breathes coarsely, exhaling roughly through her lips. “Shit. That’s rough.”

I can’t say anything, but I nod, clutching my beer in two hands now, before deciding to prop it on the floor. I draw my knees up onto the cushions and wrap my arms around them, resting my chin on my clenched hands.

It is rough. And I haven’t even been thinking about it from _that_ point of view – only my own. Only how it relates to Marco and I.

Here one day, and gone the next. I wonder how that must feel? How do you go about acclimatising to something like that?

I try to picture it: putting myself where Marco must be standing, and imagining it’s my dad who’s died, but it’s not the same. Not because there’s a difference between the relationship Marco had with his dad, and what I have with mine – because even though that’s true, it wouldn’t stop me mourning if my dad was dying, even if he is a God-damn bastard _scumbag_. But because I think grief like that is something you don’t know – _can’t know_ – until it happens, and even after, it’s very difficult to describe truthfully.

“How’s Marco doing?” Ymir asks, jostling me in the side as I threaten to slip off into no man’s land inside my head. “Oi, Jean. How’s he doing?”

I rest my forehead on my arms and scrunch my eyes tightly closed; I don’t want to see her expression. To be honest, I don’t want to see _anything_ , I just want to curl up and go to sleep forever, but the insides of my eyelids are the best I can come up with right now.

“I fucked up,” I repeat softly, _greyly_. “I made it worse for him. I fucked up.”

Ymir shuffles on the couch, and I hear the clink of her can as she sets it down, along with her controller, and mine, which I’d abandoned between us. She readjusts herself on the cushions, crossing her legs in front of her as she twists to face me.

“You’re a moron. I hope you know that,” she says, plainly. “What did you say to him?”

I shake my head against my arms, and I don’t want to reply.

The truth is: I didn’t say anything, did I? Not specifically. Maybe it was a combination of all the things I said; of all the things I did. Or maybe it was what I didn’t say. I don’t know. I still don’t know.

“I don’t know,” I breathe. “He … I— he said a lot of things. I didn’t understand it. Still don’t.”

“So you guys had a fight?”

“Yes – _no_. No, not— not really. He told me that— he told me, I—” I snake my fingers into my hair and curl my fists tightly around my roots. The dull, tugging pain is something to hold onto. It’s easy to let the words spill from my mouth – only because I don’t want to be holding onto them so tight. Ymir is not Ymir in that moment, and just another pair of ears. “That he couldn’t _deal with me_ anymore. Couldn’t cope.”

_He thinks I’m a burden. That’s what he thinks. He didn’t need to phrase it like that, but that’s what he thinks._

Ymir makes a grumbling noise of assent, before stretching her long legs out, and making sure to dig her toes uncomfortably into my thigh.

“Doesn’t sound like Marco,” she muses. She doesn’t get it. It came from Marco’s lips. _That_ makes it sound like Marco; _that_ makes it echo around inside my head in his voice. “Is that it?” she says.

I tell her that it is. I don’t think I want to tell her about what I said to my mom – because that was conscious. I don’t need sympathy, and more than that, I don’t think I want her to know. Because my family is _ugly_ , and I’m _pathetic_ , and I’m wanting to tear my hair out over everything I said. The pain over Marco is enough to vocalise, and enough to be _it_.

She huffs, and I twist my head blearily to look at her as she folds her arms across her chest. I could really use the rest of that beer, but I get the feeling she’d swat it out of my hands if I made a grab for it.

“What d’you think you did, then? To make him say that stuff,” she asks me, and believe me, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve asked myself that over the last two days, I’d—

Well. Never mind.

Ymir quirks her eyebrows and mentally taps her foot as she waits for answer, her expression making me swallow thickly. Y’know, if I didn’t hate myself _so much_ , I might tell her. Tell her why I think Marco doesn’t want to deal with me anymore. What a mess I am, what a car crash of a perfect-pretending family I come from, the _water_. That I probably depended on Marco for far too much, and gave him not enough in return. That maybe he knows how I feel about him, and he doesn’t want that, not now.

Maybe I could tell her, if I wasn’t _me_. If it wasn’t like this, and I didn’t feel so … so void inside. Instead, I mutter:

“You … _you know why_.”

She frowns, but I think she gets it, and something behind her dark eyes clicks. She knows how I feel about him; no amount of teasing text messages will hide the sincerity in that fact. It’s become so obvious lately.

“You _like_ him, huh? For real?”

“Yeah.”

“And you think he said that stuff, ‘cus … he knows? Or—?”

Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.

I move to tuck my head back into my arms and sulk, but Ymir kicks me aggressively in the hip.

“H-hey! That hurt!”

“Damn straight!” she snaps, “Are you really telling me you think you _fucked up_ because you reckon Marco knows that you _like_ him? And you’re blaming who – him, _you_? – for reactin’ like this, when his dad’s just fucking _died_? Jesus Christ, Jean, give the guy a break. Give _yourself_ a break.”

She kicks me again, and I slap her foot away. Not that it deters her from lecturing me.

“All that lovey dovey stuff? It can wait. Give him some space; let him sort his life out. He’s allowed to talk a little weird, for Christ’s sake. Let you sort _your_ life out. It’s like I always say: who needs all that love _crap_ when silicon and strap-ons do _exactly_ the same job while you wait for an answer. A bit of patience will do you good, you idiot.”

I frown, but uncurl myself from my protective ball of arms and legs, straightening myself up against the back of the couch. I narrow my eyes at her.

“What the fuck sort of advice is that?”

“Ymir-branded advice” she states proudly, nose in the air. “It’s one of a kind, and I usually charge, but I’m feeling generous ‘cus you look so fucking miserable. But I’m _serious_ , Jean. Historia and I, we went through some rough stuff when we started dating. I had to wait a long time for her to— _to be ready_ , y’know? She had a lot of personal stuff going on, but I love her. So I let her figure it all out. Patience is a virtue, and all that crap.”

She doesn’t really wait to see if her words sink in, stretching out her cheesy, sock-clad feet onto my lap forcibly. She folds her arms behind her head, and leans back, watching me down the length of her freckled nose.

“I know you’re not here for good advice, Jean,” she continues brashly.” I figured out that much when ya’ rung me. I don’t do good advice, we both know that. But listen, you gotta get your head put straight. I’ve seen you two, and I don’t think Marco would, _y’know_ , throw _that_ away. Poor kid’s probably all over the place right now. Not thinking straight, not saying what he means, I dunno. It’s just a thing. A thing that’ll pass. It’ll be fine, so don’t beat yourself up about it.”

When she phrases it like that, it almost feels like it could be nothing. Almost. So many almosts.

Just like: there’s _almost_ a possibility that things will go back to how they were before. There’s _almost_ a possibility that he might love me as much as I love him. There’s _almost_ a possibility that I didn’t make a mess of everything we had.

Marco’s capacity for compassion, for tolerance, for forgiveness … is unparalleled. But not indefinite. It can’t be. People just don’t work that way, and I don’t know how much I’ve hurt him. I mean, _a lot_ , I guess, considering everything that he said, the weight of his hand pushing at my sternum, the sterile burn of the things that spluttered over his lips at the outlook.

I don’t want to beat myself up about it. But I think that’s just me: I have to have someone to blame. And it can’t be Marco. It has to be me. Just like I thought it was mom; but it was me. And I pretended it was Eren; but that had a part of me in it too. Always me.

I am always scared. That’s what it boils down to. And I’m scared of what’s going to happen next, because I can’t begin to guess. It’s an out of control spiral, yet the fast-approaching ground is something I can’t even fucking _see_.

What am I supposed to do when I see him next? How do I make it better? How do I apologise? How do I stick a Band-Aid over something so wide and so deep?

“I don’t think I can go to the beach with everyone, Ymir,” I say. _I don’t know if I can get my shit together by then_ , is what I don’t say.

“Fuck off!” Ymir crows, shoving me again, this time with her fist on my shoulder. “’Course you can. You got two weeks to get over your melodrama; you’ll be _fine_.”

She says that, but _fine_ and I haven’t been on good terms in a long time.

 

* * *

 

At least talking to Ymir drags me out of some of the grey depths I’ve been sweltering in. She doesn’t want to talk about _me_ for very long, and I don’t blame her. (I’m not sure if I resent it though, because maybe the metaphorical – or literal, seeing as it is Ymir after all – slap around the face would do me some good.)

Her brand of advice is harsh, but … probably fair. It feels fairer the more I drink and the louder the buzz in my forehead seems to get, blocking out the second guesses that threaten to crop up whenever I whip my eyes away from the TV screen. Ymir barks down the phone at the pizza guy, and the poor idiot looks like he’s ready to crap his pants when he arrives twenty minutes later with a stack of steaming boxes, only to have a wad of cash be shoved in his hand and be booted out of the door pretty literally.

The pizza makes me feel sick, in the end. It’s all the alcohol in my system – the cheap beer – that completely bypasses the happy buzz and the cloudy inebria, and goes straight to the: _I might chuck up my guts if I even move_ stage.

Ymir gets me another beer from the obnoxious, Coke-can shaped mini fridge tucked away next to her TV, and tells me to press it to my forehead as I curl up into the corner of the moth-eaten couch, feeling pretty God-damn sorry for myself. She plays another few rounds on the PlayStation by herself, until the can against my forehead loses its chill, and she seizes it from my grasp to throw down her throat, burping loudly as she slurps up every last drop.

I groan painfully, hooking the collar of my t-shirt up around my nose and eyes, and burying my head into the fabric as she crumples the can in her fist – _too loudly_ for my beer-flooded ears and the rhythmic hammering going on inside my skull.

She hops off the couch with more motor skills than I’d give her credit, and kicks away all the remnants of our pig-fest with her feet, before tripping her way out of my line of vision, only to return a couple, hazy minutes later with some crusty looking sheets and a pillow, which she throws onto the sofa beside me.

“Get some sleep,” she says gruffly; I wheeze out a moan as I tip onto my side, my head flopping onto the pillow with a _thump_. “You’re a fucking mess, you know.”

Yeah. Yeah, _I know_.

 

* * *

 

The hangover is definitely not worth it, and definitely not welcomed alongside everything else. I wake up, legs tangled in the old sheets, and my throat feels like sandpaper, and my head like it’s filled with treacle: sticky and sick and so clogged up it feels like it might leak out my ears. I taste stale beer at the back of my throat, and it makes me gag as I roll clumsily off the couch cushions and onto the floor, where I try really fucking hard not to retch.

I haul my ass to the bathroom – which _is_ thankfully the bathroom, and not Ymir’s room which I fall into – and throw up my guts into the toilet basin, fingers white-knuckled around the porcelain rim. It doesn’t cleanse me, it doesn’t _purge_ me – not like I want it to. Each heave of my stomach has my spine rippling and my lungs twinging as they contract with every garbled groan and splattering of beer-coloured gruel into the water below.

Ymir finds me half an hour later with my forehead pressed in prayer against the cool porcelain and my breaths calmer, less laboured. She mumbles something I don’t quite hear, and I watch her blearily from the floor as she tries to run a brush through her crow’s nest of hair and then splashes her face with water.

“You want an Aspirin?”

I nod feebly, not even trying to catch the packet she flings at me, which ricochets off the floor and into my leg. I swallow them dry and suffer even inch of them as they slither down my throat as I hammer weakly on my sternum to try and aid them down.

Ymir’s not the sort of person to make you a full English the morning after heavy drinking; not the sort of person to rope you in to chopping mushrooms whilst she makes omelettes with a wry little smile. (Brain, why. _Why are you thinking of that now_.) Instead, she slumps on the couch munching stale cereal by the handful out of an open box, and I nurse a glass of water, legs drawn up to my chest and my stomach queasy and exhausted.

We don’t say much to each other, but that’s fine. I’m happy enough to dissolve into the grey-green flicker of her cheap, bootleg cable as she channel hops, and focus more on the dull ache in my head, rather than the dull ache in my heart. I think about asking her if I could kick around for another night, but when we hit the commercial break, she heaves herself to her feet and turns to face me.

“You want a lift? Or are you okay to drive yourself home?”

“I’ll drive,” I mumble, pinching the bridge of my nose and I gather the strength I need to stand.

I dawdle around her dorm room, packing up my stuff and half-heartedly rearranging some of our mess from last night to make it look like I’ve at least _tried_ to clean up, but Ymir just watches me with folded arms and a tapping foot. I feel like shrinking into myself, and that’s almost what I do when I finally approach the front door, duffle bag slung over my shoulder and purple-crescent bags slung beneath my eyes.

“Sort yourself out,” she says to me, through a frown that I hope is more out of concern than anything else. “And let Marco sort himself out. Don’t _actually_ fuck it up.”

I wince at her words, but can’t imagine I can look any more pitiful than I already do. “Thanks for letting me stay, Ymir.”

“Just get your white ass out of my flat, okay,” she grouches, hanging from the door, “I’ll see you in a few, yeah, Jean. And don’t worry so much about stuff. It’s not as bad as you think.”

I wish her words could instil more courage than they do in me, but it’s barely a wisp of a thing that they light up. It doesn’t keep me all that warm with reassurance, you know? But I guess it has to be something. I don’t really have much else to hold onto, and I want – I really do – to be able to believe what she says.

_Don’t worry. Give him some space. It’s not as bad as you think._

I breathe deeply, but straightening my shoulders as I walk is still just out of reach.

 

* * *

 

Mom’s still not home when I get back; there’s a space on the shoe rack that I never noticed before, and her purse is not hung up on the inside of the cloak room. Stepping out of the house hasn’t changed much; inside, it’s still whitely suffocating, and the air is thick and hard to breathe, but I feel, at least, that I might be able to hold my breath for a little bit longer now, with Ymir’s harsh words ringing loudly inside my skull.

My feet are leaden weights as I drag myself up the stairs, throwing my bag onto my bed with a bounce, and myself onto my desk chair, which spins me with it – a regret, because it makes my vision swim and my hangover come knocking painfully loud in my temples.

I load up my laptop, and can’t deny the way my heart sinks a little with the weight of a sharp anchor strung through it at the sight of no messages: Facebook, Skype, or otherwise. I turn the brightness right down, and I open up Connie’s conversation thread after a few, long moments of pause with my finger on the mousepad.

My hands hesitate above the keyboard, fingers barely gracing the black keys as I feel the stretch of my breath rise in my throat as a heavy puff, sifting through my lips like a curse. I think about how Ymir would bust my balls. I think about how Connie and Sasha _will_ bust my balls.

But when I think about having to suffer three days by the ocean – with Marco, or without Marco – and under the pretence of a happiness rarely enjoyed, I feel the bile gurgling away in the pit of my gut again.

I don’t want to deal with that. This is me sorting myself out. This is me giving myself space. (Or at least, that’s what I tell myself to placate the internal nag of Ymir’s voice smothered by the pollution of a headache.)

And more than that – I don’t want to force Marco into that situation with me. I don’t want us to have to deal with what’s happened when we’re surrounded by everyone, you know? That wouldn’t make him happy. That wouldn’t do anything to quell his pain, and that’s all I really want.

I _can_ care less about what I might’ve done, I _can_ care less about how my head swims with the throes of anxiety, depression, whatever chip of suffering I’ve been given to see me through my life – but I can’t ignore the want of needing to know that he’ll be okay.

Not today, not tomorrow. Probably not in a week, a year, any time soon. I don’t need to know if he still wants me to be a part of his life, I don’t need to know what I did to be such a burden to him, I don’t need to know if there’s an inkling of hope that maybe Ymir is right, and his actions were grief-spurred only out of great need for breathing space and flotation device above the waves—

I just need him to be okay, eventually. I’ll do what I can to make that happen, and if that means pulling out of this beach trip, I think I can manage that much. It’s not like I was ever looking forward to it as more than a chance to spend with friends, with him – and I can see my friends any day of the week now, thankfully. But I need to renew that same chance with him. I need to do what I can to help him fix himself and pull himself back together.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
_> > hey guys so i think im gonna have to pull out of the trip_  
>> somethings come up  
>> sorry

I feel guilty for letting them down. But my presence there won’t affect their ability to do anything; won’t affect their chance to have fun. They won’t even notice if I don’t go, and that suits me just fine right now.

I watch the clock in the corner of my screen roll over once, twice – it doesn’t make it to three minutes, because Connie pops up on a separate, private chat. (Except, it’s not Connie, as it turns out. It’s Sasha, _on_ Connie’s account.)

 **Connie Springer:**  
_> > WHAT_  
>> jean why :’(  
>> you’re so lame how could you do this to us :’(((  
>> it’s sasha btw

My lethargy probably cushions the blow of her words, but it’s not more than I was expecting.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
_> > sorry sash  
>> family stuff and u know how my dad is_

Oh man, using _him_ as an excuse has to be a new low. I massage my forehead in gentle circles as I lean the weight of my head into my palm. I could use a nap. All this keeping myself upright is … too much right now. Close my eyes; ignore the world. Sounds like a great plan.

 **Connie Springer:**  
_> > first marco and now you :’(_  
>> i thought you wanted some time with the bae  
>> and now neither of you are going :’(((

I feel the churn in my stomach again – maybe beer, maybe not. Probably not. Sasha’s words definitely don’t sit well on my shoulders now, or in the cavities inside my chest. I feel my acid touch burning at their edges with the connotations of what she means: my stupid _wet dream_ of a thing in craving unadulterated time with Marco like that, and also—

The fact that he feels he has to pull out of this thing too.

_It’s because he’s grieving. It’s because he’s suffering. It’s because of his dad, Jean. You’ve gotta remember that, or this is gonna eat you up and not even bother to spit you back out._

It’s not because of me. Breathe.

It’s not because of me.

 

* * *

 

The next two weeks are bad, but probably not as bad as they could’ve been. I think Ymir managed to rattle something inside me enough to keep me functioning, let’s just say that.

But they’re slow. And slow is painful, because minutes drag, and buckle under the pressure of things I don’t want to think about – but do. Every tick of the second hand on the clock spans hours, and I’m aware of the moment of anticipatory silence between each; the reality should be that so much extra time should heal the wounds dealt, but it doesn’t quire work like that. Wounds remain – maybe each revolution of the clock hand knits them together with scar tissue and lessens the pain, but it doesn’t kill the ache. Sometimes, I move the wrong way, and it all comes flooding back in an arterial spurt, and it’s that flush of blood that has me lying on my back on my mattress trying to even my breaths more often than I want to acknowledge.

Two weeks; fourteen days. It would be okay if you weren’t taught to presume the source of grief is finite. Sometimes it’s _not_ , and it’s hard to know that when you’re suffering from it, because how can you know what the next day will bring? I don’t know if I’ll wake up to a stolen text message, or the burdening want to curl up under the covers all day and rue every selfish breath I ever drew into my lungs. I don’t know if I’m going to hate myself less or more when I wake up; I don’t know if it will fade into just pink lines of lacerations on the memory, or stay raw.

Most days, it stays raw.

It’s waking up at the crack of dawn, haunted by the way the rain curls its tendrils around the valley for days at a time; listening for returning feet or voices at the door. Watching the clock tick and the hours go by; past increasing, and future receding; possibilities decreasing, and regrets mounting.  

My phone stays dead; three days after our run at the outlook, five days, a week, _longer_. There are texts from others – from others whose names I glance at and forget, throwing my phone onto the pillow next to me, and throwing my wrist over my eyes like a histrionic teenager. For every day that passes where there’s no word from Marco, there is me, not trying to get in contact either. It’s the only way I know how to deal with it – if you can ever call it _dealing_. Retreating away from everything.

It’s almost worth making fun of it like that – my lethargy. I’m a God-damn drama queen, and I would be first to take the piss out of myself if it didn’t hurt so damn much. And not a wrenching, twisting hurt – far from it. Instead, a wretched, subtle ache that doesn’t ever go away, and I am constantly aware of it on the edge of my peripheral every time I open up my inbox and see it empty, and then proceed to scroll through months of sunlit text messages from days gone by. I regret it every time, and I growl to myself as I minimise out of what can only be described as the sting of lemon juice on fresh cuts. It’s sharp. Like fragmented glass.

It gets worse than that too. It becomes standing in front of my closet in the mornings, and learning I own five _Ralph Lauren_ polo shirts in white, and another two in powder blue, and one in green. Fourteen pairs of stupid, designer socks (who needs designer socks?), a sweater, and a button-up shirt, all embroidered with that dumb, polo-playing horse, and— and an empty hanger in the midst of it all. Marco never did return that one shirt he borrowed from me all that time ago.

And it’s dumb. It’s so dumb. Because it’s not the fact that I miss him; not the fact that going so long without talking to him and feeling this _hurt_ is unhealthy, but at least understandable; not the fact that the terms we last left it on weren’t the best. I don’t even think it’s the fact that I’m worried about him – because I am, and I haven’t heard a thing from him, or any of the Bodts since – but even that has dulled. I think it’s simply the fact that standing in a towel, staring at the insides of my closet, where I can only find clothes that my mom picked out for me when she still believed I was who my father wanted me to be, can make me think only about how the sunlight refracting off the pool surface would dapple to well the shirt I lent him that fit so nicely. That’s it. That’s literally it.

It’s not that I depend on only him for my happiness. That’s not it. I lived a long time without him – and there were a _lot_ of good times before him. Mom. Connie and Sasha. Everyone. I could call myself a city in the sense that it’s me who inhales the dreams, the laughter, the lives of the people who live inside my little world, and they paint streets, avenues, billboards glowing under neon light inside my chest; the roads they walk are the very branches of alveoli inside my lungs.

Mom. Connie and Sasha. _Everyone_.

Myself. There were days where I loved myself, that’s true. There were days where I felt proud of the skin I live in; proud of what I can create with my hands; proud of what I could be for other people. I can be happy from that, I know it. And I will be again, y’know? When this passes.

But Marco. Marco makes me the _most_ happy. That’s not a bad thing, is it?

I think when you find someone who tastes like such clarity; whose words never wilt like flower petals in the autumn; whose laughter melds a shield out of your bones and gives you the strength to fight any of your own demons – I think you know. You gotta hold onto that.

That’s why the days blur. There’s no iron to be smithed to fix the shattered pieces of my sword and my shield; no liquid pewter metal to cast over the cracks that have sprung up in my defences. Without Marco pointing me in the right direction, it’s hard to know where I’m meant to go. He teaches me what to do, and how to pick up each foot and place is firmly in front of the other. Maybe he doesn’t realise it, and maybe it was never even explicit half the time, but there were crystalline fragments of his precious countenance that adorned me in my iron – things about him that rubbed off on me, and help me upright whilst I search for footholds of my own.

(And now it’s like I’m hanging off the side of the cliff, fingers and toes curled around clefts in the rock, and the top so clearly in sight, but no-one shouting at me from below about where the next handhold might be, or encouraging me to finish the climb.)

The cliff sides to climb, the mountains to overcome, the hurdles to leap over and not trip on my own feet, are plentiful.

The Facebook conversation rambles on. There are words exchanged about my lameness for pulling out of the trip – and I realise I shouldn’t have made the amateur mistake of posting my decision so publically – but it dies out quickly, just as I had expected. They talk of other things, and I watch the words appear at the bottom of my screen in the little blue window, but my fingers poised on the keyboard barely twitch. Eventually, I don’t even fool myself into the pretence of wanting to reply. Eventually, I lift my hands from the keys, and I stare at letters that don’t try to form words inside my head, because I don’t feel like that level of coherence.

I try to draw, and it’s hard at first. Placing a pencil between my fingertips is alien, and it’s like my hand doesn’t recognise what it’s holding; lines that usually come to me like sweeping sled tracks on the page don’t come at all, and when they do, they’re rough, and clumsy, and I smudge them with the heel of my hand. Pages end up crumpled in the trash, and even the thought of preparing anything for Mike or for Nanaba cannot fuel me to find eyes that don’t look back blank from between sheaths of white paper. There’s something like cement encasing the fluid movement of my wrist and the dexterity of my fingers; it’s like wading through thick-setting concrete, and it snagging at your feet and trouser legs with every tumbling step. You try to make progress, but it’s caked you up to the knees, and it’s drying solid.

Mom comes home after four or five days, and that’s when the cement seeps beyond my legs and into my chest, filling every inch of empty space within my rib cage, freezing my heart, my lungs, every organ in a concrete grave. With every breath I inhale sharply when I cross her in the hallways of the house, my lungs constrict, and the concrete sweeps into that space in the blink of an eye; laboured breaths and heartache is what I know every time she avoids looking me in the eye, her gaze cast down at the floor as she navigates the steep verge of not crying in front of me. It’s a nail in my self-built coffin, and maybe if I hammer it in hard enough, it’ll crack the solid bulk filling every space and every vessel inside of me – but I don’t know if that’s better. Some sort of structural fault, some fault line veining through my flesh that threatens to make me crumble.

It’s a greyness that has no real explanation, in the end. I’ve tried to right it in many ways; tried to explain its ins and outs in the best words I can string together into formulated sentences; tried to wrap my hands around its neck and smother it when it sleeps; but ultimately, I don’t think there’s much sense to be made out of a feeling like this. I think that’s the awful mundaneness of depression. You want to label it, and you try so hard to justify it, but sometimes – many times – that’s impossible. Impossibly _frustrating_. Especially being aware of this fact in its entirety. I said that we all know how this story goes, but the truth in that is the simple fact that the only thing certain is that I’m lost. Floating, somewhere far, far away. Maybe the weightlessness is good. Maybe the detachment is good. The numbness isn’t.

 

* * *

 

It’s a Wednesday when I’m woken up to the sound of splashing in the back yard – but there is no gentle humming of music, and no soft laughter of my mom’s to congeal the fluid ache within my heart.

I grab clothes from the floor – not caring what they are, or if they smell particularly – and wriggle them on with about as much grace as a floundering seal. The light beyond my blinds and curtains in grey – like the sort of light you see at dawn, but it isn’t dawn.

I creep over to the window to peak out between the slats; clouds hang low in the sky over Trost, still clipping the hills of the valley in the distance, painted with splodges of purple-grey that threaten more bursts of sudden rain.

The short man – Levi – is cleaning the pool in the back yard, with an expression that reminds me of those clouds above. (I wonder if he might have heard from Marco.) (I try to silence that tangent of thought almost immediately).

There’s nothing to watch about him – he cleans the pool diligently, inspecting every surface until it’s spotless, and does it all in maybe half the time it would take Marco. But like I said: there’s no tune hummed on his lips, so I don’t want to look.

I grab my cell phone out of habit when I retreat from the window, flicking open the lock screen to find yet another text message in my inbox that I don’t particularly want to read. It’s from Connie, and I open it up anyway, despite the fact it’s undoubtedly full of a lot of unnecessary punctuation.

 **From: the coolest guy youll ever meet**  
hey jean u wanna hang out today ???? im goin shopping for some food for the beach n sash bailed on me :(

 **To: the coolest guy youll ever meet**  
i already told u im not going

 **From: the coolest guy youll ever meet**  
yeh i know but … u can still keep me company at the store right ???? it’s a scary place

I blink down at the string of text messages I’m holding in my hand, trying to find some loop hole in some contract he’s trying to get me to sign. Another message pings through as I’m debating what his ulterior motive must be.

 **From: the coolest guy youll ever meet**  
please ???? its gonna suck that ur not comin at the weekend. ill even buy u a beer if u meet me at target in an hour

All that cement in my veins must be getting to my head, because although my legs feel like lead – my whole _body_ feels like lead – I wonder if the fresh air will do me good. Maybe Connie will have some tall, rambling tale to tell me that will distract me from the endless tirade of _nothingness_ that preambles inside my head.

 **To: the coolest guy youll ever meet**  
fine. be there in an hour

 

* * *

 

The big Target on our side of town is too far to walk, but barely far enough to justify driving; I’m pulling into the potholed parking lot just ten minutes after slinking out of my house. I spot Connie’s truck from a good way off, its rusty roof poking above the heads of the other cars in the lot, and its nose sticking out of the front of the space he’s badly left it in.

I find an empty one a few rows down from him, and swing the Jag in nose-first.

Connie is loitering against the hood of the pick-up when I retrace my steps back to him, crushing a cigarette under his sneaker when he sees me approach.

“Hey, man!” he calls with a wave, which I mirror. “You feelin’ like you’re ready to carry a lot of stuff?”

“You shoulda called Reiner if you wanted some muscle power,” I dead pan, but Connie brushes off the monotony of my tone with a grin.

“You make it sound like I don’t want to hang out with you,” he taunts.

“Well, you coulda picked a better spot than fuckin’ Target,” I retort. He laughs brashly and slaps me on the shoulder, cackling something about _who wouldn’t want to spend their Wednesday afternoon in the fruit and veg aisle_?

We don’t actually go _near_ the fruit and veg aisle, but I doubt that needs clarifying. Connie delegates me the shopping cart, and I drag my feet on the floor as I meander it after him as he darts from shelf to shelf, the soles of my sneakers squeaking on the hard floor. He fills up the cart with junk food mainly, tossing in packs of hot dogs, and hamburgers, and multipacks of chips, and candy enough to feed a small army, and I really hope this is all not just for him and Sasha, because I don’t want to be going to visit them in hospital for diabetes this time next week.

I lean my weight on the handle bar of the cart, letting myself be pulled along slowly as I trail after Connie as he debates over more snacks he really doesn’t need.

“How long is your shopping list, _Jesus_ ,” I moan, as a pack of bread rolls comes flying from over his shoulder, and narrowly misses my face as it thumps into the cart.

“Hey, we’re gonna need lots of energy, okay!” Connie quips, and I debate reminding him that a diet of _Reese’s Pieces_ and beef jerky isn’t exactly going to give him _energy_. “And it’s not all for me, _geez_ – it’s for Sasha too!”

I snort sardonically at that, but Connie doesn’t seem to notice, grabbing hold of the front of the cart and suddenly tugging me forward furiously, my feet scraping along the floor as I lose my balance for a second.

“Oh, hey! They have clearance on some of the seasonal stock! Let’s see if they’ve got any beach stuff!”

I don’t ask why Connie buys a set of _My Little Pony_ buckets and spades – “they’re the only one’s they’ve got!” he tells me defiantly without me even having to say _anything_ – and I don’t ask about the volleyball net, and the super soakers, and the inflatable dingy that even comes with its own oars, all of which he throws into the cart, bringing the pile higher than the edge of the metal bars. He seems happy at least, bouncing with energy and excitement, and I’m glad for him, I suppose. I’m glad he’s looking forward to this. If I could throw all my happiness into building sand castles or riding the waves in an inflatable lifeboat, I would. I would.

I don’t look at how much the grand total comes to when it flashes up on the cashier’s screen, and if Connie baulks, he hides it well – but I reckon that would require an iota of common sense, and I don’t think spending over a hundred dollars on food and inflatables is the definition of that.

I help him load the plastic bags into the cart, and we trundle out into the parking lot, before he decides to leap into the cart alongside all of his groceries.

“W-woah, dude!”

He wriggles in alongside the food, piling a few of the carrier bags onto his lap, and then tilts his head back to look up at me.

“My feet are tired,” he pouts, “Push me back to the car?”

“Again, you got me doing the leg work,” I say, swatting him on the top of his bald head, “But you asked for it.”

I don’t know if monotony has anything to do with a place, or with a person, or with the situations you surround yourself in every day; monotony, in its infliction, is probably just the quality of the sufferer. There are no dreary sights, only dreary sight _seers_ , and as I kick off from the asphalt, hauling my legs up onto the cage of the cart, and we go hurtling across the car park in a rickety shopping trolley, I’m not a dreary sight seer for a moment.

The tarmac rumbles beneath us, and Connie rolls with laughter, clinging to the sides of the cart as we tear across the tarmac, narrowly avoiding being hit by reversing cars and running over an old biddy with her buggy.

“Stop, stop, we missed the car!” Connie crows, causing me to dig my heels into the ground and screech us to a sudden halt that throws the bald idiot forward into the cushion of multipack chips. “Turn around, turn around!”

I wheel us around, which takes a colossal amount of strength and a lot of groaning swear words, and push the cart back towards the pick-up, a few spaces back across the lot. Connie hops out with the ease of a one-legged, baby giraffe, almost face-planting on the asphalt if the hood of the truck wasn’t there to steady him, and I help him unload all the bags into the back seat.

“I’ll take the cart back, alright,” I tell him, just as he’s trying to shove the box of the inflatable dingy in the foot well of one of the seats. “Hold up a second, ‘kay?”

“Wait, wait – hang on, I wanna go in the cart again,” he squawks, managing to lodge the box in the space with a concerning crunch of cardboard. “There!”

“You’re nineteen, not _five_ ,” I say, though I find the strange rumble of a laugh clinging to the edges of my words as I spit them out. Kinda forgot _that_ was a thing, y’know. It feels weird to find a twist of a grin begging my features. “Your mom never let you ride in the cart when you were a kid?”

“Nope,” Connie grins, slamming the truck door, and then vaulting back into the, now empty, trolley. “Didn’t even let me ride shotgun in her car ‘till I was fourteen. It was a childhood never lived.”

I roll my eyes, but I feel a little scratch in the black and white shield of my tedium, and it reveals a shred of colour that rises as a dry laugh in my throat as I wheel Connie back towards the trolley park. He drums his fingers against the sides of the cart, and I lift my feet from the ground with every other step, letting both of us whiz along unimpeded.

Well, unimpeded I say, until I’m manoeuvring Connie-plus-trolley into the line of other parked carts, and he points out the security guard marching angrily towards us, shouting the for us to _get the hell out of that cart before he drags our asses out himself_.

Connie launches himself out of the cart, and is tearing back across the parking lot before my brain can even begin to process the fact that he’s gone. I spin on my feet and race after him, air pumping through my lungs and the racket of the security guard fading quickly, and throw myself between the cars in the lot, twisting through a maze of wing mirrors to catch up with Connie. He splats against the side of the pick-up hollering for breath, arms clutched across his stomach as he sinks to the floor in a fit of mad laughter. I collapse against the rusty door too, wheezing as I double over, but the snickering spills out of me and dissolves into hysterics that _hurt_. (And for more reasons than just the way in which my diaphragm _aches_ , I realise later.)

When my laughter subsides, I glance warily back over my shoulder and the roofs of the other cars around us, to make sure we weren’t followed, but it looks like we gave the guard a slip.

 “I knew not _all_ of the life had been sucked outta you,” Connie cackles, slapping his knees and resting his head back against the side of the car, tears of glee forming in his eyes.

“Just because you wanna get us in trouble at every opportunity,” I wheeze back, trying to slow my hiccupped breathing. “You’re a piece of work, Springer.”

He shoots me a Cheshire Cat grin, and we both evaporate into rattling laughter once more. It’s freeing, for a moment.

 

* * *

 

I’m barely through my bedroom door before I hear my laptop _bloop_ from where I left it open last night on my desk. I throw down my car keys and cell phone, and I slide into my chair, swiping my finger over the mouse pad to wake it up to find a new message sitting pretty in the corner of my Facebook tab. He must’ve rushed straight to his computer too.

 **Connie Springer:**  
_> > so we see u on friday yeah ????? :D_  
>> gonna beach it up with us !!!!!  
>> i know 4 a fact now that u aint got no parent stuff goin on u grumpy poop  
>> u cant pull the wool over MY eyes so easily

I sigh dramatically, but it doesn’t stop the spread of a goofy grin stretching the muscles in my face that I haven’t used in what feels like an age. Trust him to take me to the store and parade around buying groceries just to give him an excuse to scope out just exactly _how_ miserable I’m feeling. He really _is_ a piece of work. He’s always able to read me like a fucking _book_ at the most inopportune of times, when I’m counting on him being his usual dullest bulb in the box. Shaking my head, I place my fingers on the keyboard, and type out a reply.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
_> > i suppose someone has to babysit u two walking train wrecks_

 **Connie Springer:**  
_> > IS THAT A YES !!!!!  
>> also rude much but i will frgive u ok_

It’s a yes. I feel like I should’ve put more faith in Connie Springer’s ability to change the game – he was the first. He was before Marco. He was the one who teamed up with me on the playground, even though I was jealous of him for stealing Sasha away from me. He was the one who blackmailed me into trying out for the middle school football team, only because he was secretly too nervous of the eighth graders to go alone. He was the one who persuaded me to try asking Mikasa out, and the one who picked me up with a pack of cigarettes and some bootleg beer in the back of his truck when it fell through. And he was the one who approached me lunch one day to talk to me about video games, after the year of hell.

You’d suppose after fifteen years of knowing someone, they’d be able to pull you out of your flunk without really realising it. And we all know Connie isn’t the sharpest, unless it suits him – but I think that’s what makes it all the more important.

He’s like a charge pack – him and Sasha both, if I’m honest – and there’s something energising about their prattle, about their pushy banter, about their idiotic gimmicks and their teasing and their _friendship_.

I don’t think I’ve been appreciating my _friends_ enough.

I said it before that there’s something about them that fuels a current in my veins; a spark of electricity that is different to the shocks of static I know so well from Marco. It’s an electricity that makes me feel like I can keep up with their barrelling along at one hundred miles an hour, and more fundamentally: that I actually _want_ to. I want to keep up. That’s what this is: it’s not walking in front, it’s not leading one another to places neither of us know, it’s not coaxing someone else to catch up, or dangling a present of a promise on the end of a fishing rod over the path ahead; it’s a side-by-side thing. Just walk beside me and be my friend. We’ll match the pace to the person who walks the slowest, that’s cool.

When all is said and done, no matter how much I make a mess of things, and shatter panes of perfect glass across the floor, they come back. I proved that once. Maybe I shouldn’t go testing it again, says the little voice of doubt inside me head, but I can use the cumulous fog inside me head now to smother it; I can twist the clouds with my own hands, and drown the seeds of speculation out. I don’t need to question my friendship with them. I don’t need to question if maybe one day, they’ll tire of me, or that well move on to pastures new and far away. What matters is that I have this in the present.

Inherent loneliness is only a formation of you, and you alone.

 **Jean Kirschtein:**  
_> > ugh yes it’s a yes  
>> u owe me big time for this springer_

It looks like the rain clouds are moving on, with or without Marco. It doesn’t matter though. What does matter is that the ground will be dry for when he decides to come back from wherever he has had to go.

I take a shower. I wash off the remnants of the day. I grab a Coke from the fridge downstairs, and curl up on my bed with my laptop balanced on my knees and lights off, waiting for it to become dark enough so that the only light in my room is the illumination from my screen.

I notice the silence, and I notice my heart – it’s still beating. Still going. I made it after all, and I keep making it. Another day, and I can make it one more, and one more after that, and endlessly, because this is fine. I am fine. I will be fine.

 

* * *

 

Friday springs up on me with little warning in the end. There’s a relief in my chest to see the bluest of summer skies have returned beyond the slats of my blinds, and a reassurance in the dryness of the earth and the greenness of the replenished grass – but there’s still the weight of an anchor hauled over my shoulder, its chain in my tightly clenched fingers, noticeable as I roll myself out of bed.

It’s a feeling of being very torn, I decide, when I look down at my unpacked holdall and all the clothes I’d hurried thrown out of my wardrobe last night to pack.

There’s anticipation in my gut in the form of fidgeting fearlessness – a want to throw myself into a weekend away with my _friends_. Away from home, away from family, and away from the God-damn swimming pool and everything that it represents. There’s the ale-sweet song of cheap beer and bad camp-fire food, and blaring car stereos at full volume over the stretches of empty sand at night, which fuels me to fling shorts and t-shirts into my bag.

But at the same time, there’s this part of me in great solidarity with all the lonely thoughts, all the _guilty_ thoughts that I ever saw in Marco. I feel _guilt_ for wanting to have fun when there are so many things that have fallen down around us both, and are waiting in piles of rubble to be rebuilt.

The thought of wanting to escape weighs out – but it doesn’t scrape the veneer of black dust and grit from the palms of my hands, and it doesn’t ply me with plasters to tape up the cuts and scrapes of debris and broken glass.

No. _Enough_.

Think about myself. Sort _myself_ out. This is the closest I can get to some God-damn therapy, and I’m fucking taking that opportunity with both hands. This is going to be good for me.

I’ve had enough of all that internalised despair nonsense; the sort of feeling that has a one track mind. Life moves on, the world keeps spinning. All of that.  Nothing stops, however shitty I’m feeling, and it’s about fucking time I remembered that fact.

Sort myself out. That’s what I need to do first.

I debate telling mom that I’m going away for a few days, but the words stick in my throat, and the thought of the contusion in her made-up face makes me blanch; so I scrawl a hasty note and leave it on the counter in the kitchen, but my fingers tremble for every second I spend arranging it there, in fear of her walking in and finding me. (She doesn’t, but the pain in my heart over the fact I fear it haunts me like a promise broken.)

There’s little to pack, ultimately, because I hadn’t been expecting to leave my wallowing in my room any time soon. Clothes, toothbrush, a musty-smelling sleeping bag dredged from the dark depths of the linen closet. I haven’t had time to grab food or booze – but Connie owes me enough that I’ll be forcing him to share – or grab _nerve_. But I don’t think they sell that at the 7/11 for a fistful of dollars. (If they did, my life would be significantly easier.)

My heart thrums like a snare in my chest – a tinny vibration that rattles through my ribs with ease – and my knees twitch with the anticipation of waiting for Connie and Sasha to arrive. When the doorbell goes, I almost piss my pants; I’m so on edge, and I make sure to step on every creaking floorboard as I flap downstairs, juggling too much stuff in my arms at once.

Clumsily, I open the front door, adjusting the strap of my holdall on my shoulder and cooling my expression into something less flustered, and Connie greets me with a canine-like grin on the other side, garish, Hawaiian shirt and all. Simultaneously a sight for sore eyes, and not. _Most definitely not_. _That shirt should be burned_.

“Afternoon, sailor,” he cackles, hands on his hips and feet planted wide on my porch step.  He looks me up and down, taking in my pitiful amount of kit, and distinct lack of alcohol, and his eyebrows pinch upwards. “Those are poor excuses for beach clothes, ya’ know.”

I roll my eyes, but it begs a smile. I thrust my sleeping bag into his arms with a huff and enough force to unbalance him.

“Shut up,” I retort, “I didn’t know I was coming on this dumb trip ‘till like … _two days ago_ , man. Gimme a break.”

“Ouch,” Connie jibes playfully, “But what you _really_ mean is that you don’t have legs good enough to model shorts this short, eh? _Eh_?” He thrusts out a brown leg towards me, trying to trip me up as I take a step out of the front door, striped with decreasing tan lines and Band-Aids on his bruised knees. His shorts are fucking _obscenely_ short.

“Who did you borrow those from – someone’s _five year old sister_ —” My words, and my grin, are cut short in a distinct heartbeat when I look up, and glance towards my car, where I’m vaguely aware of  two figures waiting, propped against the car doors. Well, _not so vague any more_.

Sasha – cute sun dress, large shades, and a beaming wave in our direction – and … _and_ …

I was lying. I was lying when I said the world keeps spinning. There is one person who can make my world stop in the blink of an eye.

And it’s such a _grinding_ halt that my head spins and I have to remind myself that my feet are planted firmly on the ground. Or not so firmly. It feels like someone could push me over with just the flick of their finger.

Two weeks. Fourteen days. It’s not long, but it hasn’t exactly felt short, either. I’ve done a lot of soul searching in that time.

He’s leant against the back door of my car, his arms folded not forcefully, but _tensely_ across his chest, fingers clenched beneath his shoulders. His face is turned away, and his eyes flit between being cast down, and searching the blue sky furthest from my face. My stomach turns faster than my brain can work; faster than my eyes can scan his face and the shades of wear beneath his eyes; faster than my lungs can remember that I’m not breathing, or for my heart to remember how to jump start again.

He isn’t supposed to be here. They said he’d pulled out of coming on this trip. This isn’t how I wanted it to be when we saw each other again.

He isn’t supposed to be here.

I open my mouth – for lack of words, but for want of them, but Sasha beats me to the punch.

“Hey Jean! Marco changed his mind about coming too – how great is that!?”

 _Great_ isn’t the word I’d use, Sasha. Not by a long shot.

Great is the feeling I had – the anticipatory buzz of crude excitement about the time I would’ve spent with him before. Great was the promised possibility of what could’ve happened, of words that might have finally tumbled out over sandy stretches or around camp fires, y’know?

Great was _before_.

This … this is not great. This is me freezing up because I didn’t expect this, and now I don’t know what I do, and I’m thrown. Thrown far, _way far_ , overboard, and no-one’s about to toss me a life ring either.

I barely choke out words before I’m turning back on my heel and grabbing Connie by the sleeve back into the house.

“Connie, I need you to help me with my stuff from inside a second.”

“W-what?”

“Just move your ass!”

I’m almost tempted to _rip_ the sleeve off his dumb, ugly as sin _pineapple sunset_ shirt, or if that doesn’t suffice, I’ll gladly yank his ear off. My heart is thundering, pumping blood around my body at a hundred miles an hour, and it feels like a God-damn helter-skelter in my veins.

I throw down my bags, and push him against the inside of the door; his eyes are wide in surprise as I run my hands frantically through my hair, and will myself to cool down.

“Dude, what’s your jam?” Connie quips, frowning up at me as I take a step back, and another, and another. I press a clenched fist to my lips, and throw a glance out the front door once more, as if to reaffirm what just happened as the definite reality. Yep. Pretty definite.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?” I whisper vehemently, “Why did — a text or something in advance woulda been _nice_ , man.”

Connie’s eyebrows quirk, and he crosses his arms over his chest, unimpressed at me.

“So it _is_ a Marco problem,” he alleges, flatly, “I knew it.”

“I— it’s not a problem, Con, it’s—” I start blunderingly, before faltering just as quickly. “It’s … I can’t go. This is fucking _dumb_. I can’t.”

I rub a hand down my face, fingers stretching at my skin, and I groan. This is not how it was meant to go. Not even _slightly_.

Connie doesn’t take the bait – or at least, _my_ bait. He buffs me on the arm with his fist, before returning to his defensively determined stance, judging every inch of his cowering _disaster_ of a best friend.

“You should see yourself,” he says, with the tremor of amusement as he tries his damnedest to keep his expression sincere. “It’s just Marco … y’know, freckled goober with the countenance of a saint and bod of a … well, saint as well, I’d imagine – you’re the one who _likes_ freckled ass. Why the hell are you freaking out?”

I could explain it all to him – and he probably does deserve to know, because if I were in his place, I’d care. I’d care what was eating him. But … but now is not the right time; not with Marco and Sasha waiting outside for us, and a place to be, and a weekend that supposed to be fun and not shadowed by the thought of what’s happened on more parts than necessary.

“I— I’m not freaking out, jeez,” I stammer, “I just— _you coulda told me_.”

It’s a weak excuse, I know. Connie knows it too, because he frowns, but he knows me well enough to realise he’s not going to get the truth from me today.

“Fine,” he says warily, “But you can’t bail on us. You gotta drive. We don’t all fit in my truck.”

Okay. _Okay_.

 _Grow the fuck up, Jean_. _Like you’re the one hurting_.

I lace my fingers on top of my head and breathe in deeply, calmly, letting my eyes flicker shut for a moment to remind myself that _melodramatic child_ is not a good look on me. Don’t let my hands shake, don’t let my heart tremble, don’t let myself echo with the realisation that I should’ve gotten out of my car and gone back to him, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Connie gathers up my stuff for me, pressing my holdall into my arms, but taking the rest of my kit himself; he hoists it over his shoulders and gives me a little shrug, before nodding towards the door. His placidness is enough to douse me – to cool my expression and its burn, and let me school myself into what I still don’t know how to be.

He leads and I follow, this time. (Yet another one of my apparent insights tossed in the trash; he’s definitely walking ahead of me right now … or at least, I’m deliberately trailing behind.) The glare of the late August sun is filtered with yellows and soft browns; that tinge of an approaching autumn intermingled with lengthening shadows and the sense of a spice in the air.

I don’t care for it. I swallow thickly and focus my gaze on locking the front door behind me; on the stone of the pathway; on the feel of my key in the palm of my sweaty hand. Not on Marco. Not on Marco. Not on—

I can’t resist looking, and I’m so weak for it. Weak for the way my chest aches with two sorts of pain: the intrepid, and the addictive. It’s crazy how you can become addicted to a certain sort of suffering, but when I glance up, and meet the flitting of his eyes, I know I’m all sorts of a dead man. Might as well start digging my grave now.

Oh man, the summer sun is not meant for me; it’s bold and it’s brash and it doesn’t falter with a voice plagued by rickets and a lack of conviction. I need the rain – and ideally, a loud enough rain where whatever might accidentally push itself from between my lips is drowned out by the sound of droplets splattering on the sidewalk.

It’s not raining, of course.

“ … Hey.”

Summer breezes are never as cool as they profess to be, and there’s no relief to the way sweat is clinging to the hairs on the back of my neck, or to the hollows of my palms. My throat feels dry after I spit out that single word, as if it sucks out every bead of moisture from the other side of my now tightly clamped lips.

Marco’s eyes flash wide for a second, maybe. Probably less. The arms he has protectively wrapped around his chest slacken momentarily when he realises that I’m addressing him.

“Hi—”

Sasha throws herself into the space between him and me with enough force to probably flatten a small village, and in the moment that she blocks his gaze from mine, I watch him turn his head away again, and heave a heavy sigh. I try not to think about the distance between us; yearning in how it needs to be both less and more at the same time.

“Jean!” Sasha coos, flinging her arms around my neck and dragging me down to her level with a bone-shattering hug. “What was that a second ago, huh?! You looked like someone had run over your cat!”

“I don’t have a ca— it … it was nothing,” I deign to reply, although my words are wheezing, and my back complains at how she has me stooped awkwardly, still clutching a heavy bag. “I just … didn’t realise I’d be having a full car, ‘s’all.”

She pulls away, but not before pinching my cheeks between her thumb and forefingers like an over excited grandparent. I try to bare it; try to focus on her happily pouting expression instead of anything else that might be waiting for me in the middle distance.

“So that means I can have shotgun, right?” she chirps, patting my cheeks playfully. I gawk, but not before Connie buts in angrily from where he’s piled mine with the rest of their stuff.

“Hey! I said _I_ wanted to ride shotgun, Sash!” he squawks brashly, “Better music taste gets front seat – _duh_. Sorry, but I don’t make the rules—”

“ _Marco_ gets the front seat,” I find myself blurting, moving to flick Sasha on the forehead, but remembering myself – remembering what that means – a little too late. My hand stops mid-air, a stretch of a finger or two between Sasha and I, and she stares at me quizzically, before I let it drop, awkwardly scraping my sneakers on the ground. “I— Marco’s got the longest legs, okay? And— and like _hell_ am I letting either of you two near my stereo.”

Sasha rolls her eyes and her lips twitch upwards into a teasing smirk, which I’m glad Marco can’t see, but which connotations sear me. I turn my head away, and unlock the car with a click of my thumb on the key pad, telling her inside my head to please, _let it die_. Just let it die.

Connie flips the trunk, and carefully levers his crate of beer into the space, taking great care not to knock the two-dozen stack of cans on the edge of the car. (The rest of his kit is not treated so kindly; he bundles it in, using it to pad out his alcohol from any protruding sharp corners.) I help him load as Sasha stands idly by and offers no usual assistance whatsoever. Sleeping bags, roll mats, plastic carriers full of way too much food for ten people, let alone the four of us – it’s a game of Tetris to get it all in the back of the Jag, despite the space I always thought it had.

“Sash – pass me that last bag, yeah?” I say, one hand outstretched – but not reaching – the last thing left to stow, my other hand propping up the wall of crap from pouring down all over us. I wiggle my fingers, but it’s not Sasha who grabs it for me; a pair of freckled hands, and a resentment in my chest at whether my heart is going to twinge like this for the whole weekend. Marco holds out the bag to me, and I hesitate, my eyes moving from him to it, and back again. When my fingers curl around the handle, of course they brush his, and of course both of us pretend it doesn’t happen.

“T-thanks.”

I slam the trunk when he moves away, and I steal the chance to run my hands through my hair, exasperatedly. Connie and Sasha crow about getting a move on to catch up with Ymir and the others, and three car doors shut, and the way your cheeks feel after an hour or two of poking your head out of a moving car window is how my entire body feels right now. Chapped and chafed and knocked around and moving far too quickly towards _red raw_. There’s a coil of tension sprung tight in my gut, and I feel like every time I swallow down or breathe to deep, it threatens to fly loose; I’m on edge. And it’s the _sharpest_ edge, believe me.

 _He wasn’t supposed to be here. What am I meant to say_?

 

* * *

 

There will be bruises on my palms in the shape of the leather grooves of the steering wheel, I know that much. It’s like there’s a fear in my fingers that if I don’t hold on tight enough, I’ll be flung out of orbit, thrown from the car in the midst of the freeway, _something_.

There’s too much traffic on the freeway, and my jaw doesn’t slacken from where I have my teeth clenched together and my eyes steeled on the asphalt as I weave between car and truck and back again, dodging across the lanes of the road. I slip curses out between breaths at trucks that cut me off, or at cars who don’t know how to use their fucking indicators, but it’s mostly drowned out by Connie and Sasha barking in the backseat.

Despite that, it’s quiet. Like, a muffled quiet where I’m aware of them lauding it over behind me, interspersed by odd kick to the back of my chair, but where I’m forcing my ears _not_ to pay attention to whatever they have to say – instead trying to catch every movement of Marco’s without my eyes having to betray me by looking over.

He’s leant against the passenger window, his head thrumming with the vibration of the Jag’s wheels on the freeway, and he has his hands laced in his lap, thumbs absent-mindedly stroking over one another in thought. It’s difficult to describe his expression: there’s less exhaustion in his face, less pallor in his colour – his freckles stand out against his sun-kissed skin like a memory of when we first met. But it’s sombre. Resigned, is probably the word I’m looking for. It’s a submissive quiet that’s not quite a sadness, but not quite anything else either, so you’re left resorting to using synonyms for suffering.

The tempest in his eyes has died, and so has the infinity of a depthless sea; now I would call it a gently lapping shore, meeting the sand in a receding greeting that swells to and fro with the same tide again and again.

My hands twitch on the steering wheel, cramp pooling in my joints with the severity of my grip. The space is not far between us: the distance of the shift stick and the stereo, only. That’s not far. Yet there’s the sense of being in a little boat with him on the lapping water, and when  reach over board to dare trace my fingers, I cannot reach. (That’s if I even dare to reach, I should probably add. All I’m doing is stealing glances in the rear view mirror and making up stories in my head for how he must be feeling, without asking him the wiser.)

I wonder how to approach it. I also wonder how to read minds. Both would be things worth knowing at this moment, sure.

We didn’t fight. That morning – that _dawn_ under the rainclouds lit by shafts of sunlight sprinkled down over the valley; a sunshower that should’ve been far less than what it was, yet far more – was not a fight. There were words of pain that left his lips, but none from mine, and none that had the intent to damage or bruise. There was no anger, yet – if it _had_ been a fight, maybe I would know where to stand. Maybe I would know how approach apologies, because this – I don’t even know if apologies are the answer. I don’t know if anything is the answer to cure us of this forlorn and brooding silence that fills the car despite the singing from over my shoulder.

“Jean! Jean! Turn the volume up – this is a good song!” Sasha squawks, patting me on the shoulder and ramming her knees into the back of my seat like a petulant child. (I swear to God, if we crash because she’s messing with my driving, _she_ can pay my insurance bill.)

My eyes dart momentarily to the stereo which I hadn’t even registered playing – did I turn it on? I must’ve. I would have noticed if Marco’s hand had moved that much closer to my side of the car.

Oh, do I know that guitar solo like the back of my hand. I can’t hold Sasha’s music choices against her this time – not when, as I spin the volume dial on the stereo – Guns ‘n’ Roses’ _Sweet Child o’ Mine_ brings life to the air.

I flex my fingers with the want to tap along to the beat and the rising bridge, especially when Sasha ropes Connie into bellowing out the lyrics in the back seat into a beer can microphone. I know all the words to this song – I’ve played this record alone in my room so many times that the vinyl is scratched at the two minute mark – but they stick in my throat like tar that strings between the walls of my gullet. They do not reach my mouth, and they do not scare away my worries and my woes, and as Sasha reaches a screeching high note, I glance sideways at Marco.

He feigns a smile, twisting back in his seat to chuckle encouragingly at Connie and Sasha’s spectacle, but he doesn’t mean it. Or, maybe he does – because this is Marco, and he actually, _genuinely cares_ about stuff – but maybe he hasn’t found the way out of where he’s been the last few weeks or months, and he can’t remember how to access that unabashed emotion again. I dunno. That all sounds a little complex to me. Maybe he’s just humouring them. It feels forced.

“Come on Jean, you know the words!” Sasha chirps again, over the sound of wonderful guitar. In the rear-view mirror, I watch her bounce up and down on the back bench in earnest, clapping her hands together in her glee, and I resent her for her always candid cheerfulness. She wants me to have fun with her, I know that.

 _I want it too, Sash. I want it too. But I don’t think I know the words anymore_.

“Tryin’ to drive, Sash,” I bite back, making a show of stealing my eyes on the freeway ahead of us, and the finally-thinning traffic as we escape the outer limits of the city, and the signs above our heads read _south_.

“Bullshit,” Connie grins, beside her. “I know you know the words, Jean. You fucking love this song, don’t lie to me. I’ve _seen_ your vinyl collection.”

Balls. (Although, it’s not exactly like I had any cover to blow to begin with.)

The song ends, thankfully, before I have to think of a way to reply or excuse myself without seeming like the most obtuse, grumpy bastard this side of Trost. Connie and Sasha both mumble and moan about me missing my chance, and Marco turns back in his seat to face the front, the remnants of a smile fading slowly from his face. (But it doesn’t twist to melancholy, I note. It remains neutral as he gazes out the front window, leaning back a little into the plush leather of the seat.)

I follow where he looks, but there’s nothing to be found in the way the cars in front of us cross back and forth between lanes. The radio skips to commercials and obnoxious jingles advertising everything I’ll never need, and yet, instead of wishing for music, I wish only for the sound of his voice to fill the not-empty silence.

It’s worth remembering that feeling, I suppose – the one I felt at Ymir’s vernisage when we wondered around arm and arm; the one I felt when we got our asses handed to us by Mina on the soccer field; the one I felt when I connected the freckles on his arms like a dot-to-dot in the light of fireflies and a sleepy city. It’s the feeling of stars lining up in a clear sky between us, and being young, and maybe a little bruised, and definitely making things up as we go along, but knowing that of all the music I have engraved in circular, black vinyl, or of all the tracks the radio DJ could play next, the thought of Marco’s voice is easily my favourite song.

I wonder what courage it will take within me to start a conversation with him again – something that never caused me grief before, not with him. An anxiety I felt with others, _but not with him_. I wonder when I’ll find the balls to ask him what it is that _I don’t know_ – and tell him what I hoped it could’ve been, despite the pain it must’ve caused. I wonder when there will be a chance to say those things.

_I can’t do this. Us, Jean. You._

Maybe there won’t be.

Ahead of us, I catch sight of a familiar looking van – all mangy, maroon paint, and wonky tail lights shoved into the trunk door from a botched repair job. Connie and Sasha see it too, springing up in their seats, and pressing their noses to the window as we approach the van on the inside. (Trust Ymir to be hogging the outside lane, I muse.)

“Hey, it’s Ymir!” Sasha says, tapping her fingers against the glass. “Jean, Marco – look!”

Marco turns his head to watch as I try to slow the Jag to match the trundling pace of Ymir’s 1989 Dodge Turbo. Eren is squished up against the window in the trunk as we approach, pulling faces at passing cars – until he realises that he’s receiving them right back from thing one and thing two in the adjacent lane. His expression lights up and he grins, twisting around to tap the others close to him and make them look.

Reiner is pressed against the closest window on the middle bench, knees practically draw up to his hulking chest, and he turns to face us too when Eren jabs him in the back of the head. He waves, and Connie and Sasha stick out their tongues, just as Annie and Bert’s heads pop out from behind him. Marco raises his hand to wave at them cordially, and I steal a glance or two at the silly faces Reiner pulls at him, and the rabbit ears Annie is giving him from over his head.

Ymir, in the driver’s seat, looks like she’s having a worse time than me – and that’s probably saying something. She looks frazzled, barking things back to the sardine can full of people she’s hurtling at seventy miles an hour down a freeway, in a death trap of a thing that definitely has a dodgy axel, if I remember correctly. Her arms are rigid against the steering wheel, and I’d almost be tempted to knock her a jibing text, if I weren’t driving myself.

The obscene gestures in my back seat are mixed with shouts of: “Hey Jean – slow down!” or “Catch up, catch up, they’re getting away!”, and I can’t help but notice the way the road signs still read two hundred miles to Jinae.

 

* * *

 

How two people have so much energy, I don’t know. How Marco manages to fall asleep despite them, I _definitely_ don’t know. He curls his hands around his stomach as he dozes, head lolled against his shoulder and the window pane, and I focus on steadying my driving so that I won’t wake him with a swerve or a bump.

Sasha and Connie have finally given up their game of window licking, at least. The novelty of that only lasted a hundred or so miles, until Ymir had clearly yelled something back at her van full of hooligans, and they’d all straightened up immediately. (Maybe I should adopt her approach more often.)

Sasha’s cracked out the Flappy Bird though, which I’m not sure is better or worse. At least they’ve got the sound off, and that’s probably only out respect for Marco sleeping. They toss the phone back and forth between each other, across their tangle of legs and half-finished beer cans on the back seat (and I pray we don’t get pulled over for any random searches by the cops, because that will not go down well), trying to out-do each other’s high score.

I focus on the road – mainly. Avoiding Ymir’s obnoxious driving is one thing, and when I signal for her to move her ass out of the outside lane, she flips me the bird, and then pulls back to slip in behind the Jag, too close to my tail for comfort. I remain rigidly upright in my seat the whole way, throwing dishevelled glances back at her in the rear-view mirror, concerned about how often I find her _not watching what’s ahead of her_.

I’m relieved, to say the least, when the countdown reaches zero, and the turning for Jinae appears on the signs on the road side; I flash my indicator, and hope that Ymir is paying attention enough to follow, and we slink down the slip way off the freeway.

The city is a far cry from Trost – if you can even call it a city, and not just a town that has sprawled beyond its borders over the years, because it shares that small-time feeling, nestled in the rolling hills and green cliff sides of the coast. It’s houses are white, and its roads windy and old fashioned; no formulation like the black and grey grids of Trost, and definitely no high-rises to shield the brilliant blue of the sea-reflecting sky from the panorama of my windscreen.

I never thought I’d say I missed the nagging voice of my satnav, but when I realise I’m going to have to wake Marco to ask him for directions through the sunny streets of his home town, I would trade the tremble in my fingers for the TomTom’s demand to make a U-turn any day.

_Okay. No big deal. It’s just Marco._

_Love of your short, pitiful life, Marco_.

 _Person you made_ hurt _more than he deserved, Marco._

I don’t know how many times I reach out my hand and draw it back again, biting the inside of my cheek as I move to touch him, but then chicken out the closer I get. Connie and Sasha fall silent in the back seat, and I don’t want to look back at them, because if I see they’re watching, I definitely won’t be able to wake him, and then we’ll be left driving around Jinae in circles for the rest of all eternity.

Thinking about how he’d flinched and pushed me away the last time I’d tried to press a hand on him doesn’t make it any easier. The weight on my sternum from the memory is not because he didn’t want to be touched – it’s because he needed the space. ( _From me_.)

I slow at some traffic lights, and the Jag purrs as I let her hum in front of the red light; I curl my fingers into a ball, and then uncurl them again, stretching out a hand to gently shake Marco’s shoulder. Even through the fabric of his t-shirt, his skin is warm to the touch.

“H-hey, Marco.” I find my voice – _just_. I can excuse the fact it’s barely a whisper in that I don’t want to scare him when he stirs. (No-one but me has to know that it has nothing to do with that.) “M-Marco, bud, wake up.”

I press my fingers a little firmer into his shoulder and rub the skin through the thin fabric. He mumbles something, and his nose wrinkles, before he twists his head to face me, bleary eyes opening a fraction in the bright sunlight.

Sleepily, dopily, _endearingly_ , he mumbles my name.

“J-Jean … ”

_Ah, s-shit._

“H-hey,” I stammer poorly, drawing my hand quickly back to the wheel. “So, uh – well, we’re here, but – uh, d- _directions_. Directions would be good.”

He blinks groggily a few times, and then it’s like watching his expression visibly fill up with water as reality comes trickling back to him. He remembers himself, and he remembers us, and he retreats away from the way his lips had formed my name just then.

“Oh.” I watch the bob of his throat as he swallows, vaguely aware of the scrutiny of two pairs of eyes from the back seat on us. Gotta ignore them. I try my best to make my expression open – or at least rid it of its permanent scowl. “O-oh, right. Yes. Directions.”

Marco’s voice is soft as he guides me through the weaving maze of the roads he grew up on; skittish and shy, yes, but it’s a compromise I’m willing to accept for now, turning the steering wheel in the direction of each stretch of his pointer finger, and hanging on every pause for thought as he tries to recall the way to the place from his childhood. We wind through the cliffs, and I can tell Ymir’s getting impatient behind us, with every toot of her dying horn that she shoves up our backside when we pause at a junction for Marco to get his bearings. He directs me down the smallest lanes, banked on both sides by houses, sometimes, and sand at others. Glimpses of the sea peak through the undergrowth of trees and shrubbery, dotted with the pink blooms of asters and seaside daisies; Connie and Sasha plaster their faces to the glass once more, cooing over the sight of lapping waves below the cliffs through every nook and cranny of green leaves.

The road crumbles as we sneak out of the outer edges of the town, and I get the feeling that this is not a well-trodden route by any stretches of the imagination. The Jag teeters over the stones and rubble, but continues to purr despite the sand she throws up behind her wheels. The track – because that’s really what it is once we leave the last of the outlier white houses behind – stops dead in lieu of a metal gate that spans tree and tree, and Marco flops back in his seat with a puff.

“Is that … meant to be there?” I dare to ask, as Ymir’s van pulls up beside us.

Marco turns to me and cracks a smile – a tiny, tiny smile, that I don’t think is necessarily mine to take, but at least it’s mine to watch – and he reaches for the handle of the door to let himself out.

I think he holds himself taller here; his shoulders look broader, his back looks straighter, and his head is held higher as he fiddles with the latch on the gate before it swings open, and he walks it wide, gesturing with his hand for us to drive through. I wonder what it must feel like to be seeing his home town after so long – after years of not being able to go back, having been so abruptly pulled from it in the first place due to finding a decent hospital. I see the Jinae spirit in his blood, and I imagine this is the type of sunlight he absorbed so much of when he was a kid, and that’s why I always found him – _find him_ – so much more magnetic than the regular ball of burning gas that hovers over the streets of shitty Trost.

I gently nudge the Jag through the gate, the engine murmuring a bit as the relative stability of the gravel is placed by grass beneath the tires, but she takes to it well enough. Ymir chugs through afterwards, her van spluttering more vulgarly, but more out of age that anything else. Marco shuts the gate behind us, fastening the lock securely in place, before trotting after us and sliding back into the front seat.

He shoots Connie and Sasha a twitch of a smile as he buckles himself back in, before turning back to me – slowly, and eyes diverted away from mine once more. I try to subdue the sting with a steadying breath and a nod, and I ease my foot onto the gas to creep us forward once more.

I follow the edge of the field round, taking care to ease the Jag over every grumble in the soil, until we come to another gate, which this time is flung wide open onto sifts of coarse grass and sand rising in sweeping dunes. Marco tells me to park, and I do as I’m told, dropping the handbrake and signalling out my window for Ymir to do the same.

“Are we here?” Sasha springs up in between our seats, having flung herself from her seatbelt; she wraps one arm around Marco’s headrest, and comes dangerous close to sloshing an opened can of beer over my lap from the other hand.

Marco nods, and purses his lips into a pleasant smile. (I fucking lap it up. I’m not even ashamed to admit it.)

“Yep. This is it. You can’t, uh— you can’t really get the cars any closer, but it’s not a far walk to the actual beach. It’s just over the tops of the dunes, so—”

He doesn’t have time to finish, because Sasha and Connie are tumbling out of the car, and the air fills with semi-drunken laughter as the door to Ymir’s van is flung wide, and the others come pouring out too.

I shake my head, and ready myself, thinking about my breathing and relishing the last sentiments of relative peace and quiet before undoubtable chaos.

“Feels like I’m some sort of travelling babysitter, doesn’t it?” I chuckle lightly, but with little humour – to myself, or to Marco, I’m not quite sure, and neither is he. He doesn’t reply, but makes a murmur of assent as he waits for me to move, fiddling with his hands in his lap awkwardly. I glance outside, and see Connie and Sasha being scooped up by Reiner’s bulky arms, and Ymir complaining loudly as she cricks her neck and stretches her arms from being cooped up behind the wheel for so many hours. Their laughter looks fun. Also tiring.

 _Alright then. Let’s get this over and done with_.

 

* * *

 

After being passed around from person to person – and having the wind knocked out of me from both Ymir and Reiner – I manage to slink away to unload the trunk of the car whilst the commotion hammers on, and Connie and Sasha start doling out cans of beer into any empty hand they see. I taste salt on my lips as I lick them, and the languid breeze is briny, and kinda fishy; I wrinkle my nose as I grab the first bag from the pile that threatens to avalanche down on top of me, and prop it on the sandy grass for someone to collect.

I’m definitely under prepared with the amount of _crap_ I haul out of my car that belongs to Connie and Sasha – they’ve brought stacks of those travel barbeques, and two, enormous freezer boxes full of junk food. Wake boards, wind breaks, that God-damn _bucket and spade_ , snorkel kits, volleyballs of at least three different sizes, the dingy we bought the other day, and … that stupid pool ring that had around mine the other week.

Marco’s packed lightly though. I grab his duffle bag – it’s the same one he’s brought to mine a couple times; kinda old, probably a hand-me-down, and a little weather worn – and it’s surprisingly light as I drop it onto the ground. His hoodie was crammed underneath it in the trunk, so I reach for that too, and with the light waft of camomile detergent, my chest twinges painfully; I fold it in my arms as presentably as possible and fling it down onto the pile of bags with aimed carelessness when I think about pressing my nose into it.

 _No, Jean_.

My eyes trail onto him anyway, weaving through the brashness of Eren pouncing on an unsuspecting Connie, and Sasha repeatedly trying to press the remnants of her beer into a reluctant Armin’s hand, to where he stands in conversation with Reiner and Bert. I’m not blind to their consoling hugs, or Bert’s sad smile, or Marco’s gracious one. I can see how Reiner’s eyebrows furrow, and how he crosses his arms tighter across his broad chest as Bert places a hand on Marco’s shoulder in a caring solidarity—

Huh. I guess they know too. At least he’s had _someone_.

“Hey, misery guts.”

I whip my eyes away from Marco and pretend I was never caught staring, and I land on Ymir as she saunters over to me, hands stuck in the pockets of her paint-smeared, denim shorts.

“You need a hand?” she says, her grin sly, but not quite assuming – as if she’s holding back because she genuinely feels sympathy for the way my face is screwed up in a grimace right now.

“Yeah. Sure,” I grumble, sliding over to make space for her to help me man-handle Connie’s alcohol supply out of trunk. We drop it into the grass with a thump, and Ymir groans as she stands upright, cricking her back and neck.

I’m almost waiting for the snide remark, but it doesn’t come – she reaches into the trunk and grabs two more bags in each hand, so I do the same, mulling over the taste of something bitter in my mouth.

We empty the car in a relative silence, as Historia takes on the duty of handing out everyone’s stuff from Ymir’s van, making sure to pile Reiner, Bert, and Marco high with most of the heavy kit. When I slam the trunk of the Jag, I turn pointedly towards Ymir as she wipes her hands on her thighs.

“So you’re not gonna say anything?” I ask her plainly. She looks surprised, and rocks back on her heels.

“Why? Like what?” she says, trying to fool me with a face of innocence. (Pfft. It doesn’t look right on her, believe me.) “I got nothin’ to say.”

I squint at her, but she doesn’t budge, her eyebrows curing upwards expectantly.

“Like … like, y-you know,” I say – _weakly_. I raise my hand and gesture vaguely in the direction of the others, and in the direction Marco. “You got nothing clever to say about _that_?”

She shrugs, and follows where my gaze lands on Marco’s strong shoulders.

“Ain’t got nothing to say unless you’ve got something to say,” she says brashly. “I can be sympathetic sometimes.”

“You coulda fooled me,” I retort in a low voice, thinking back to being bowed over the rim of her toilet bowl, puking up a soup of beer and pizza and my general misery.

“Oi,” she warns, knocking me in the shin with her dusty Converse-clad foot. “You were being a little bitch. I had to be stern with you, otherwise you would still be cooped up in your room moping, yeah?”

I don’t reply, bending down to grab my holdall and sling it over my shoulder, trying to keep my face as indifferent and nonplussed as possible. She’s right, of course. I would still be cooped up in my room if it weren’t for her, or for Connie’s interventions. But maybe it woulda been better than what this is turning out to be.

She sighs loudly, and rolls her eyes.

“I’m being nice _now_ ,” she laments. “But if you’re gonna stare at him like that all weekend and then grumble without saying anything – ‘cus I’m guessing that you’ve still _not said anything_ – then I’m gonna kick your ass for real. We clear?”

“Yes, _ma’am_ ,” I mutter; she slaps me on the back, and I choke with the rapid expulsion of air, which causes her to bark a laugh.

“That’s the spirit,” she grins evilly, before leaning down to grab some of the clutter in her fists, her sharp voice filling the air. “Hey, Connie, Sasha – come grab your shit, or I’m gonna throw it in the ocean, yeah!”

Ymir and I lock up our respective cars as the others scramble for their stuff. I haul Marco’s duffle, and what I guess is his sleeping bag, over my other shoulder, before I grab mine – I pretend I don’t notice when he looks back over the stack of cool bags that someone has shoved in his arms, along with the parasol beneath them, searching for his stuff; I stare at the sand smitten ground to avoid seeing the expression that he wears. It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.

The others lead the way, with Connie and Sasha barraging ahead, still tugging along an unrelenting Armin, with Eren yapping at their heels as the massive backpack on his back bouncing with every sinking stride into the sand as they race between the sand dunes and towards the sound of rushing water. Reiner, Bert and Marco follow them, their conversation having silenced from what I can see – but probably due to the fact that the three of them are too laboured up with stuff to turn their heads to one another to talk; Bert even trips over a clump of tussock grass, and almost ends up landing flat on his face. Mikasa and Annie hang back behind them, the pair of them definitely involved in a hushed conversation, their heads bowed close together as they walk perfectly in stride.

I hold back with Ymir and Historia, as Ymir tries to persuade her girlfriend to let her carry _all of her stuff too_ , as well as her own. Historia’s having none of it, lightly scolding her pouting girlfriend, even after she gives in, and hands Ymir one of her smaller bags.

I keep pace with them as we walk, listening to their insipid bickering as we climb the crest of a dune, my feet slipping in the sand as it falls away beneath me. I can feel grains inside my sneakers, grating against the soles of my feet, and I clench my teeth, trying to focus instead on dodging the razor-sharp spindles of marram grass the spring out of the white sand.

I could almost give this place some credit when we reach the top of the sand dune.

The beach spreads far, curled around the inlet of cerulean-blue ocean in a winged curve that’s banked by steep cliffs, saved for the little dent of sand dunes where we’ve snuck into the stretch of secluded nowhereness.

The tide sings as it slaves across the warm sand, trails of white foam fizzling and dissolving in the heat, water rushing over fine pebbles and fragments of coracle shells with the sound of wind through reeds. Seagulls squawk in untrained symphonies, high above in the blue air or in the crags of the chalky, limestone cliffs, and _at least some of us enjoy the sight of the ocean_.

It could be nice – in its glassy, sun-comprehending fairness; in the way it reflects the vastness of the sky like a mirror and puffs out little wisps of white clouds over the far, shipless horizon; in the way its waves are barely bumps over hidden shoals of pebbled corals that shade the water like inky spills beneath the surface. It could be nice, save for the tension in my stomach, and the twist of fingers around the terseness of the sea air that becomes staler by the second in my lungs.

I pick my feet up a little higher as we scramble down the other side of the sand bank, slipping a little as the dry sand cascades in rivers through the pathways between the clumps of grass. The others have chosen a good spot – or at least, have abandoned their stuff in the first spot they found where the sand was a little firmer, and Connie, Sasha and the rest are tearing away towards the sea, screeching and screaming and raising their hands to the air as they throw their spirits into the sky. Reiner and Bert are already unfolding the tent instructions by the time we’ve padded over to them, and I’ve decided that I’m just gonna have to get used to the feeling of shingle in my shoes for next few days.

I dump my stuff on the sand besides the rest of the abandoned bags, but take more care in propping Marco’s down on top of mine, and kicking away a clump of gross-looking seaweed from nearby.

“What’s the deal with the tents then?” I ask Reiner gruffly as he twists the instruction sheet around and around in his hands, as if reading the words upside down will make the experience that much more entertaining, before handing them to Marco, who pops up over his shoulder. Marco’s more eager to read them, but Reiner’s straight in to grabbing two, interlocking poles from where Bert’s making neat piles of pegs and canvas, with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

“This one’s meant to take six, but we can cram like … ten, maybe, if people are cool with sleeping in the central bit,” he tells me, “And Ymir – you brought one for you and Historia, right?”

Ymir nods, rummaging through her stuff to find a significantly smaller stuff sack than the one the others are emptying.

“Yup,” she announces, loosening the draw string, and emptying the contents out onto the white sand. “No way am I sharing with you smelly goobers. Private tents are the way forward, if ya’ know what I mean.”

She winks obtusely, and Historia nudges her in the ribs with a shocked expression; I roll my eyes, and palm my face.

 _Just as long as it’s noise cancelling too_ , I think. I really hope I packed headphones.

I help Ymir set up hers – but because both of us aren’t exactly practiced in the art of erecting tents, Reiner, Bert, and Marco manage to pitch the larger one in half the time it takes us to figure out which poles goes where. It’s a huge, blue thing, with a dome higher than Bert’s head, and it makes Ymir’s little beetle of a tent look pitiful in comparison. At least it won’t be too claustrophobic when I’m sleeping, I suppose, but the thought doesn’t stop me from accepting a beer from Historia when she offers it to me, and I throw it down my throat probably too quickly than recommended, especially considering how well alcohol sat on my stomach last time.

The others come haring back across the sand when they see that we’ve done all the work for them; Sasha’s dress is splattered with salt water along the hem, and both Connie and Eren are juggling mountains of drift wood in their arms, and are shouting something about building a fire when they dump it at my feet.

There’s laughter, and bright chaos, and I can feel my feet being tempted to be swept away with it all, but I don’t quite think the tide matches my desire to be caught up in that current. My legs remain firmly planted in the sand as I watch Connie and Sasha begin chucking bags into the foyer of the tent and assigning people sleeping spaces with unbridled enthusiasm.

My stuff disappears into the blue canvas in Connie’s arms, but I pay it little heed, plonking myself down in the sand and finally kicking my shoes off and peeling my socks, glad to see how much debris filters out. My beer is already warming in the glare of the sun, so I nurse it greedily as I watch the others swarm; Eren grabs the plastic shovel and begins to dig a fire pit, which he lines with the stones Armin collects, and the driftwood they’d brought up from the shoreline; Annie and Mikasa help Historia to unload the food and set up a collapsible picnic table upon which they hall the gallon jugs of fresh water, filling their cupped hands to splash upon their faces sparingly; there’s Reiner parading around in his palm tree printed swim trunks, and tugging Marco by the ear, as he barely pulls the waistband of his own trunks up around his hips, as he’s hauled from the privacy of the tent after Connie and Sasha who are already skipping back down the beach with their wakeboards beneath their arms and the boom of summer time beating down on their bony backs.

Ymir comes to join me after she’s found herself a six-pack of beer, slumping down into the sand and lighting up a cigarette almost immediately. She holds it out to me between her slender fingers, but I shake my head.

“Not anymore,” I say, pressing my can to my lips and listening to the slosh of the dredges of cat piss at the bottom.

“You quit?” she says candidly, sliding the cigarette back between her lips and inhaling slowly. Wisps of white, nicotinous fog escape as tendrils through her parted mouth, and rise, like the distant curls of cloud that blanket the line of the horizon. My eyes sweep that straight line of far blue, and then trace the ripples of the current closer to shore, following the boister of Connie and Sasha parading through the waves and tripping over unknown obstacles, and then scan up the sand to where Reiner, Bert, and Marco are heading towards the tide line. My shoulders slump and I set my can down in the hollows of hot sand. Ymir raises an eyebrow. “You quit for him?”

“Yeah,” I murmur, reaching for a tuft of beach grass and pulling at its root; it doesn’t give, and instead sharply slices the pads of my fingertips. I hiss quietly, and recoil away, rolling my fingers into my palm protectively. Ymir’s holds her cigarette loosely in the air, dangling between her own fingers as she puffs out another cloud. I taste it on my tongue, mingled with the salt, and although my body’s been craving the hit, the flavour is rancid to me now. I grimace. “His … his dad … _y’know_. ”

“Oh,” is all Ymir says, and she frowns as her eyes flicker back to the gently glowing embers. She considers it for a moment, before decisively dropping her arm and extinguishing the cigarette in the sand. “Well, shit.”

I would tell her that he wouldn’t mind – or at least, that he wouldn’t judge her for it, but it seems like wasted words. I never asked him how it made him feel to see me smoke around him, or the things that might’ve flown through his head when he saw me reach for my pack the first time. I only ever assumed.

“Beer it is then,” Ymir shrugs, offering me one of hers to replace the can I’ve already finished. “You want?” I shake my head.

“Nah. I’ll sooner drink my _own_ urine, thanks,” I say, stretching my legs out in front of me, before creaking to my feet. “I’ll go nab one of Connie’s.”

Eren’s found a Frisbee, and him and Armin are currently being owned by a tag team of Annie, Mikasa, and Historia – much to Ymir’s delight, I can tell, as she lazes back in the sand to enjoy the view of Eren getting his ass handed to him by her girlfriend. It’s an inebriating carelessness, and I could get drunk on the thought alone of souls so weightless and such a sun-baked warmth ringing in bones that I’d need no use for alcohol or misery to waste away my hours. There’s shrieking and happy-hearted laughter, and the Frisbee spins high over their heads and out-stretched arms as I pause, in the open canopy of the big tent, to watch. Eren makes a dramatic dive into the sand, but ends up with empty hands and a mouthful of grit and seaweed – and Ymir’s booming laughter from over my shoulder as she rolls around on her back in giddy stitches.

There’s a lot to absorb; look down, and I might miss the entrails of aeroplane smoke high above in the stratosphere, slicing the serene blue in half with a thick line of white; look up, and I might miss a starfish coiled up in the sand, or the burrows of the little worm things that live deep beneath the ground. Look straight ahead, and there – beyond the banks of sand and shrapnel pebbles, and beyond the logs the size of my legs resting in beds of crumpled shells, and beyond the sound of the happiness of my friends – that blurry figure in the distance, paddling in the shallows with laughter that seems to be burning brighter than before, but not bright enough yet. Marco. Look straight ahead, and oh yeah, that’s my love for him. Don’t want to miss that.

A beach of snow-white sand, and shells like frail stars, and a sea so wide and neither blue nor green, yet inked with the secrets beneath it and the pure horizon above it, and even then, the thing I want to look at most is _him_.

I miss him. This is not right. _This_ – this feeling of invading, of protruding on something neither of us is keen to approach. I felt that on my driveway, I felt that in the car, I felt that in every measured syllable of his voice that he has given me back so far – and even in the darting touches of his gaze, which seem to show me that he wants to change this, but that he doesn’t know the way in which he does. There’s a space between us that’s held a part by metal slats, and neither of us seem to know how to walk around them to close that gap.

If I could lend him some of the keys to my iron-bar cages, I would, but I don’t know if they’d fit, and I don’t know if the pressure of that brass thing in his hand, along with mine, is too heavy for him yet. I want him to enjoy himself here, and I don’t want him to think of me.

_Don’t you?_

I think the person I’ve told the most lies to is myself.

I turn away, and try to block out the marauding thoughts of the things I want, and the things I refused myself to believe. I try not to remember the way he touched my face at the gas station the day after the football game; or the way he’d held me on the stairs of my house after I’d fallen back into the same pitfall of panic; or the way he’d pinned me against the wall of the pool with just the sincerity of loss in his eyes, and I thought he’d wanted to kiss me.

It can’t be true. It can’t be true, because then everything makes even less sense than before, and if I’m already ripping my hair out over the words spoken on the outlook, what would I do to myself if I gave myself that fantasy once more?

I think about holding him. I can’t help myself. I think about telling him that I’m sorry, not in words, but in actions; I think about making him promise that things can be normal again. I’m sick of what this distance that isn’t a distance really is.

It’s just a fantasy. My _fantasy_. He’s the one having to live the reality.

I dip inside the tent, inhaling a lung full of clinging must, and almost trip over the pile of Eren’s bags left scattered in the doorway. The light filters blue and soporific through the canvas sheets, and I glance around quickly, noting the three sleeping pods joined off the main space. Connie and Sasha have claimed one, I see, from the way their stuff overflows from the half-zipped doorway; Reiner and Bert have another; and Armin’s, Annie’s, Mikasa’s, some of Eren’s stuff that’s not left abandoned is piled high in the centre—

I know what I’m expecting to see when I unzip the flap of the last pod, but it doesn’t stop the way I sink with a deflating breath when I see my stuff scattered there alongside Marco’s stuff aligned neatly against the far wall, his sleeping bag already laid out as close to the outer edges as possible. He’s folded his hoodie as a pillow, and his shoes are neatly placed at the foot of his roll mat.

I don’t sigh. I don’t march straight back out the tent and ask Connie and Sasha what the _hell_ they were thinking. I don’t demand angrily that Eren switch with me. I don’t sit down in the middle of the tent floor and hold my head in my hands – even if that’s what I overwhelmingly would _like_ to do.

Instead, I turn away, and I zip up the door, and I go back to searching for Connie’s beer.

 

* * *

 

When I trudge back out of the tent, with an armful of beer cans cradled against my chest to save me from having to revisit inside again, Ymir takes one look at my face before she lowers her beer away from her lips.

“They put you in a pod with him, huh?” she says blatantly, resting her elbows on her knees, and suspending her can between them.

“Good guess that,” I squint, but not with any degree of anger or frustration – I just sound _tired_ , even to my own ears.

“Woman’s intuition,” she grins, tapping her finger against the label of her beer. I shoot her the dirtiest look I can muster, and she smirks. “What’s that face for? ‘S not like I had anything to do with that.”

“Right. ‘ _Course_ you didn’t.” I’ll be damned if they’re all not in it together to try and make this the most uncomfortable experience of my _life_.

I slump down beside her in the sand and pop the tab on one of my stolen cans, slurping the froth that spills out hence. The thought of sleeping next to him doesn’t pit my stomach like I’d expect it to – and nor does it give me that fluttering of butterflies drowning inside the acid, if you get what I mean. It gives me nothing. Maybe a touch of apprehension, a quease of nervousness, but I think what throws me most if the absence of something more. Something tangible, something that tastes of more than just a weak flavour of emotion. Something that tells me definitively that it’s right or wrong to let this happen this way.

I get through three beers to Ymir’s four, before Historia flounces over, her cheeks prettily red with exertion as she plants a smacker of a kiss on Ymir’s hungry lips, and encourages us both to come play Frisbee with them, and not sit on the side-lines like a pair of grouchy grandparents in their rocking chairs – _Eren’s words_ , apparently.

I join Eren and Armin, and Ymir joins the girls, though she can’t be much more than a hindrance in the way she wraps herself around Historia’s waist and buries her face in her hair, stumbling with her when they both go reaching for the Frisbee. Eren throws it hard – and I don’t know what the pink, plastic did to him, but apparently it was hella serious – but Mikasa and Annie both give as good as they get, and have Armin and I genuinely diving for cover out of fear for our lives.

“You’re meant to catch it, not fucking _hide_ from it!” Eren caws angrily, tossing the Frisbee in my direction. “Catch it!”

I don’t catch it. Or at least, not in the traditional way, with, y’know, _my hands_. But what else exactly are you meant to do when a disk of pink plastic comes hurtling towards you at close to seventy miles an hour, but catch it _with your face_.

 

* * *

 

I’m grateful that it doesn’t break my nose – or at least that’s what Historia tells me as she leans me forward on the sand and clamps a tissue to my face – but it fucking well _looks_ like it _could_ be, with the steady _drip-drip-drip_ of gloopy blood splattering between my feet.

“Breathe through your mouth, okay,” she says calmly, “There. Does it still hurt?”

The ache is dull, but my pride is _definitely_ wounded, especially with how Ymir’s trying to stifle her raucous laughter as she lauds over me, acting as Historia’s assistant as she holds the first aid kit in one hand and her beer in her other.

“’S fine,” I mutter, trying to sniffle back the grogginess that pools in my nasal cavity, but it just stings like a bitch. “Tell Eren to watch his arm next time.”

Eren is perched on the edge of the fold-up bench, picking at his shorts, but looks up with a scowl when I name him.

“Hey, how about next time trying to catch it with yours _hands_ , and not your head, huh?” he frowns, “Not my fault.”

Historia shoots him a silencing glare, and he cowers away a bit, muttering under his breath and going back to toying with the loose threads of his clothes. She grabs one of my hands, and uses it to replace her own on the bridge of my nose – just over my old scar from the last time I got hit in the face – and tells me to pinch, whilst she grabs another tissue to mop up some of the gunk on my face and mouth.

“It’s bleeding quite a lot,” she says, probably more to herself that me, because I’m more than aware of the whiff of blood seeping between my lips and tanging at the back of my throat. “D’you want someone to run and get Marco or Bert?”

“N-no!” I startle, but then collect myself as Historia’s bright blue eyes – as well as Ymir’s and Eren’s – fly up to meet mine. I immediately retrain my gaze on the round splodges of brown-red in the sand, and squeeze a little harder on my nose. “I, uh … _no_. No, it’s fine. If I just pinch it for a couple minutes, it’ll … stop, right?”

“… Yeah,” Historia smiles sympathetically, wiping up the last of the blood from my lower lip. “At least let’s get you some ice.”

 

* * *

 

The others quit the Frisbee not long after I’m sentenced to the side-lines again; Annie manages to smack Eren on the ass with the disc that she launches at him in a death throw, and his yelp is a higher pitch than any of the seagulls circling above us and vulturing for scraps of food.

With me clutching a cold bottle of beer to my nose, and him sprawled next to me on the sand, holding another bottle to his back side (which I really hopes he plans on drinking afterwards, and not putting back in the cool box with the rest), Historia decides to organise the camp fire which stands half built in the centre of our little camp. Annie and Mikasa expertly stuff the branches of driftwood with kindling and coals stripped from one of Connie’s travel barbeques, whilst Armin struggles with the matches, and Ymir laughs as she offers no helpful assistance whatsoever.

The shadows stretch as the sun is coaxed closer to setting behind the outcrops of the high, limestone cliffs, and it paints the sea with purples, yellow, and greens that mix with the blue and the foam that licks the pebbled shore. The clouds dapple in the pink light that morphs across the tender-coloured horizon, and I find a strange serenity in the infatuation that the evening tide seems to hold – or maybe that’s just the beer or blood loss talking. It seems like it might be possible to dream my life away in the luxury of pensiveness, so enamoured with the painter’s palette of the ocean edge, that I find myself drifting away from daring to think about the past, or wishing to contemplate the future.

The shrill cries of bubbling laughter echo up the beach in the absence of a breeze, bringing nostalgic energy to the stillness of the sunset, and I gaze out over the plains of sand once the blood in my nose congeals and I can right myself again.

In our tiny portion of golden-dipped universe, speckled by the light of the happy faces I want to reach out to, I drift with each lap of the tide, and each flounder of my friends falling between the waves: Bert, toppling off one of the wakeboards, whilst Reiner shows them all how it’s done, skidding across the shallow surf, and almost careening into Marco who stands, ankle deep, watching them with his back to the camp, to me.

He is like sea-glass. He is broken too – a fragment, a shard, but instead of me, who tries to swim through it, only to bleed out from every scrape or laceration I receive from being so stupid, he has been buffeted by it, and has waited, a real long time, to be washed up against the sand again. He’s still just a piece of whatever he might once have been, but now his corners have been rubbed out, and his colour has become misted and translucent, soft in the light it spills forwards. He’s the sort of thing you see nestled in the cracks of broken shells, a fleck of brilliant green or amber spotted out of the corner in your eye, and when you fish the small pebble out from between the remnants of cockles and razor clams, the only thing you really want to do is keep that little piece of rounded glass safe in your palm.

(Sea glass starts as bottles or empty jars, carelessly discarded and tumbled by the ocean, but what is left is far more precious than whatever it might have been before.)

The sunlight is golden on his dark skin, refracting in his hair which I imagine is laced with beads of salt water; and in breathless adoration, I find the lapping waves around his legs only tranquil, and worth sinking in.

If the others notice, they don’t mention it. It must be tiring; I’ve long passed the stage of concealing it as stolen glances or denied my open-mouthed stares. If they know, they don’t mention it, and they leave me to wallow in the depths of some distant place between the hardness and the happiness of it all, that really deserves no other name than being a damned purgatory.

The fire begins to simper, yellow and orange flames to rival the sprawling colours of the dawning sunset licking hungrily along the salted driftwood, and it dances flaxenly against the sides of the tents and through the lines upon happy faces that laugh merrily around its warmth. I wonder if it’s worth begging the twists of fire and smoke to cure me of myself, and flush out the sense of waiting in a middle ground, far away from where I’ve been, but far away from where I still have to go.

I draw my legs up to my chest and rest my arms on my knees, fiddling with the label on my drink as the others come marching up the beach from the sea front. Connie and Sasha throw down their wakeboards and make a big fuss of the blazing fire, happily chirping about finally being able to toast marshmallows; Bert disappears into the tent to change, but Reiner and Marco are intercepted by Annie, and fall into lax conversation, and I’m left trailing every flicker that the fire casts over Marco’s bare chest and salt-sprinkled legs.

“Oi, Jean! What happened to your face, man?” Connie crows, prancing through the sand with his voice too loud for my liking, destroying the spell of the flames and the solitude. “Your nose is all red and swelled up!” I wince as he points it out, pressing my beer to my lips to take a sip of the luke-warm liquid.

“Eren hit him in the face with a Frisbee!” Ymir guffaws as she rounds the fire and comes to stand over me, grinning like a mad woman. “It was _majestic_. Totally _Funniest Home Videos_ worthy – you shoulda been here, Springer.”

They puff hot air and teasing words over my head, but I press my lips once more to the rim of the can, and slosh bitter beer back into my mouth. Over the peaks of the flames, Marco’s watching – eyebrows furrowed, and an aching concern in the tight line of his lips – and our eyes meet. I challenge him to hold my gaze, unwavering as I watch his molasses-brown flit wide with surprise, fall away to the ground with disquiet, and then shyly creep back to meet my stare again, unreadable. Conscious breathing is my anchor, and the fire rises, offering a dozen, singing, deep-red roses of flame, before settling, and I need to look away.

Ymir is laughing over Connie’s sun burn now, and Sasha too; Reiner marches over to join them, parading his share of bright red streaks across his back and along the hems of his swim trunks, leaving Marco alone on that side of the camp fire. I watch him duck his head into the tent for a moment, only to return with a beer in his grasp – to my surprise – and he settles down on the sand, far away from me, whilst the others prattle on about who looks the most like a sad lobster.

The sun lingers on the horizon, uneager to descend below the sea and take with it its myriad of light and colour that spills up and over the sand like light passing through high-fairing, stain glass windows. Ymir’s stereo hums with the soft thrum of deep bass, vibrating the earth beneath us and the air around us, that explodes with the crackle of wood, and the lightness in warm voices; warm light; warm feelings.

It’s a punctuating warmth, and I feel it seeping into my pores, and I know my defences are crumbling beneath the boldness of my friends – and I accept it. There’s something to be said about the expanses of white sand and white cliffs, and the graduated, night-pooling sky, and the whisper of the waves that gives me gratitude in the simple things; allows me to push aside the things bound in webs and tangles and unreadable looks, and appreciate the sentiment that standing, _staring_ , steady as the stars in the woods, can be a good enough thing on its own, and some things need not be so hard. This is the crest of the waves that I bob, and I hope they don’t break yet – the plunge threatens, and the music and voices muffle through my disconnection, and I stray on Marco across the circle of my friends.

There’s nothing more to say than I have already said. My longing, my confliction, my fear, my self-loathing, my _want_.

My _love_.

I’ve been over it all countless times; there hasn’t been a moment in these last fourteen days where I haven’t flickered between one or the other, or far too many feelings at once. It’s all been said, and it all amounts to nothing in comparison to the way I envy Reiner sat to one side of him, and Armin to the other, and wish myself to stand, and ask them to scoot along, and take a place in the sand that I so faithlessly covet.

There’s really nothing left to say, only lines that keep getting thinner, and seconds that keep making me older, but never wiser.

It’s like being caught between the riptide of wondering whether I should be standing up and walking over to him, or whether it’s time to embrace the feeling of wanting to give up on all of this, and let the engine of my strife collapse beneath me, to be left on the side of the road I should never have lead myself down. Rip currents are always strongest near the surface. Maybe deep down I know what I’m meant to be doing. I only wish I could see it more clearly, and not as if I’m searching for the answer through a monocle of that frosted sort of sea glass.

Marshmallows simper, bubble, and burn on the twigs resting in the fire, staining the air with the sweet-smelling stench of burning sugar, whilst popcorn crackles in the frying pan Eren is holding above the flames, despite his shaking wrists.

Connie tries his hardest to shove a smore into his mouth, clamping his teeth down on the liquid marshmallow that spills out all over his fingers and his shorts, and Reiner bellows with laughter, rolling back into the sand as he garbles something about him having sticky white stuff on his face, and whether he _wants to tell us something_. Connie hacks up a lung between horrified stares and a cackling grin, and shakes his fingers in the air to try and rid them of the burn of boiling marshmallow as he swallows the thick lump of chocolate, biscuit, and gloop down his throat. He reaches for the twig again, and drips another marshmallow onto awaiting cookies that Sasha has spread in her palms, before sandwiching them together with a _squelch_ , destination, again: his stomach.

He bites down with a crunch, but then recoils, brandishing his bright red tongue, “S-shit! Hot!”

“It just came out the fire, you dunce!” Ymir scolds, “Eyes bigger than your God-damn stomach!”

The others laugh, but Sasha pouts, swiping her finger along the line of sticky marshmallow that threatens to drip from the biscuit in her boyfriend’s hands, and pops it into her mouth with a serious expression.

“Sometimes we must endure suffering in order to achieve happiness, _Ymir_ ,” she says gravely; Connie sniggers, and Ymir crushes her empty beer can in her fist, chucking it brutally at Sasha’s head, whose yelps devolve quickly into skittering giggles as she dances around the fire, avoiding flying projectiles.

I switch to water after a while, to flush _out_ my cotton-wool brain of beer, and to flush _down_ the clog of marshmallows that are shoved my way by excitable hands. The laughter becomes more drunken, and the conversation more animated, the clank of beer bottles more resonant over the rush of water that sweeps the dark-cloaked sand; yet my eyelids fall heavily, and I find myself blinking myself awake more often than once, swayed by the movement of the fire and the mellow, electric synth that Ymir turns right down low, so that it’s barely a hazy whisper in the back of my mind, but still cradles me as well as any shoulder or blow-up air mattress could.

The others don’t make a fuss of it when Marco stands, quietly offering his half-finished beer to Reiner; it seems like a blink, and then he’s walking away from circle and down the beach, my brain too fuzzy and my eyes too heavy to register where he’s gone until I follow the lines of Bert and Armin’s less inebriated gazes. I trail his measured steps as he peels away from the light of the fire, imagining myself following in the footprints he leaves in the sand; he stops, not far from the edge of the sea, somewhere out there in the murmuring dark, and sinks to the ground, the curve of his back something I can just about make out if I squint.

It’s painful to know that he’s in pain, and I wonder if there’s ever going to be a bandage big enough to cover all his wounds and bruises; I wonder if there will ever be a day where someone or something doesn’t pick at his freshly healing scars, even if that thing is the cage of his own subconscious. He’s been forced to cough up his lungs at twenty, and no stretch of my flowery words or the condolences of people who extinguish their cigarettes in the dirt can conceal a life barely lived, and I want only to know what I can offer him now. He’s left us in the light of the fire, because he’s _hurting_.

When I turn back to the circle, there are far too many pairs of eyes scrutinising me in the wake of my stupid purgatory.

“What?” I hiss, as Connie nudges me in the ribs jarringly. I watch Sasha roll her eyes over his shoulder, and on my other side, I hear Ymir and Eren both huff in unison.

“Are you kidding me?” Ymir grouches, pinching the skin between her eyebrows, and then gesturing at me with a flat palm, plainly. “Why aren’t you going after him?”

“Wh – what the hell are you talking about?” I reply gruffly, raising my hand to take a sip of my drink, but forgetting that it’s water now, and not beer, and it doesn’t make me wince in its appropriate bitterness as it cascades down my throat.

“You know _damn well_ what I’m talking about,” she snorts, but her laughter is distinctly humourless and dry. The others are still watching me intently, and I wouldn’t be opposed to the sand opening up and swallowing me whole right now.

Eren gestures at me with a slosh of his beer that splatters in the sand.

“Hey, Jean,” he slurs, although I don’t think he’s as drunk as he’s playing at being, because his eyes are serious and severe. “I put a seashell to my ear and it told me that the ocean says you’re being a _piece of shit_. Thought you should know.”

 _Fuck off, Eren. Now is not the time_.

Ymir doesn’t seem to be having any of his crap either, and she turns back to me with more strictness in her tone.

“Whatever the hell you’re dealing with,” she grits, “D’you really think it’s even half as bad as _that_?” She gestures broadly down the beach, and I feel the plagues of guilt begin to rise like bile from my stomach and gall. “Kid’s dad just fucking _died_ , and you’re – what exactly? More concerned about whether he’s gonna snap at you? Go be a best friend, you idiot.”

My head swims with the shocked expressions that fly across the faces of my other, fire lit friends, and with the words that tumble out of their mouths: “Shit, I didn’t know that.”; “Wait, when did that happen?”; “His dad died? What the hell – how?” The guilt is a metallic taste of pain in my gut, sharp on my palette, murmuring with their vibrations, and the distant shadow of a figure watching the rise and fall of each cresting wave, alone in the dark.

I want to ask Ymir, and the rest: _what can I say that will bring his fucking_ dad _back, huh_?, but that’s not my real grievance here, is it? That’s not a question that has any answer, and in a way, not a question that really needs answering, because it’s not what needs saying.

It’s really just me floundering beneath the rolling surf of grief, and not knowing how to cope. There’s a lot of unhappiness that comes to the world via the roads of bewilderment and misunderstanding and things left unsaid, and Ymir is right. So right. Putting myself – my own _comfort_ – before him again. So fucking selfish.

I’m putting my fear before him – the intrinsic him, and not the part of him that makes up _us_ – and it boils my blood to realise what a slave I still am to the things ingrained in my bones that I thought I could’ve plastered over with paper and glue by now.

I still can’t move though, and that’s the worst of it – it’s watching Bert tap Reiner on the shoulder and whisper something as he rises to his feet, before going after Marco, and it’s most definitely the bile-turned-jealousy that reaches my mouth now and burns my lips, because _that should be me. I’m the one who knows him best._

Bert settles on the sand bank with Marco, and the thoughts that bore into my skull over what he must be saying are just as bad as the way Ymir sighs and leans back into Historia’s lap, pressing her drink to her lips in her exasperation as her girlfriend pets her hair. There are whispers in my ears – Connie and Sasha talking in hushed tones just next to me – and there are looks – scowls from Eren across the circle as he shakes his head at me, and blank, unreadable avoidances from Annie, Mikasa, and Armin, who don’t look me in the face, but wear the regale of sombrerity.

The night wears on; the fire dwindles; the wind shifts and my heart aches with nostalgia –  for summer nights and watching lightning bugs pirouette around our faces and August skies aflame with stars.

The others drift as the alcohol catches up with them, swaying into stupoured states, and dopey with the sounds of crickets and acoustics on the stereo and the way the world feels small enough for a moment to rock us all back and forth to sleep.

Connie and Sasha fall first, snoring lightly on one another’s shoulders before Reiner offers to put them to bed, hoisting both of them up under his truncular arms and tucking them into the tent with the sounds of a zip and the rustling of him hitting his head on the canvas when he stands. Annie drags Mikasa in after that, and Armin scurries in pursuit shortly after, once Eren vehemently – and drunkenly – denies that he wants to stay up and remain part of the non-existent conversation.

Marco and Bert are missing for a couple hours – maybe more. It’s hard to tell, because my phone is in my bag in the tent, and there’s no real way for me to tell the time when there’s nothing above my head but a sky pitted with stars to mark the minutes that seep past.  When they do come back, I make sure to bow my head between my knees, and not make judgement of the expression I only imagine Marco to be wearing – only looking up when Ymir extends a leg to kick me in the ribs and practically _snarl_ at me.

“Fuck off,” I mouth at her, and she sticks her tongue out at me, until Historia swats her on the crown of her ruffled hair.

“Ymir, behave,” she scolds, keeping her voice low, so as not to be overheard by Bert, Marco, and the others, who are moving around inside the tent, amidst the sounds of murmured and sleepy goodnights, and possibly Reiner tripping over a tangled Eren on the floor who has crawled in after him. “How would _you_ like it, huh?”

“’S not my problem, babe,” she retorts, “It’s _his_.”

We sit in the silence drenched in quiet music and in waves, and Historia tries to stir conversation once or twice, but it falls flat every time with my short responses or with Ymir’s brash interludes, and she soon gives up, letting the three of us settle into the dream state wherein the world around us rests, and its planetary slumber makes me burn green with envy, only visible to the plethora of stars that glitter in the far reaches of a nebulous night, as if someone has taken a handful of silver and scattered it across the great expanse of the edge of the world.

Ymir extinguishes the fire with a simmer and a hiss, and its smoke plumes in the air like the purple-green wisps of space-dust that spans the constellations not so obtusely obscured by the dirt and pollution of the shallow city. I listen to the whistle of the cooling wood, and the hush of whispers behind tent doors as Ymir and Historia disappear into their tent wrapped in each other’s arm, and then, I am alone.

There was only one decision to be made, once: what to do with the night, in its quiet splendour and its haunting exhilaration and lonely hours. Now there are many. It takes time for me to stand, to waste minutes kicking the grey ashes of the fire into the pit, not sparing even the tiniest fleck that might dissolve amongst the sand, and to rinse my mouth with water and the toothpaste someone’s left out from earlier. I have to boil the courage needed to enter the tent; to make my blood sterile once more. To pick my way across the sleeping bodies on the floor and not shake; to unzip the curtain across my sleeping pod in nervous silence, and not react like my heart doesn’t lurch out my chest with the sight of _him_ curled up in his sleeping bag, soft breaths filling the must, is hard.

I don’t bother changing, because it feels like I’m dangling myself precariously over something I don’t need to do, and there’s something about my jeans that feels like armour, like a denial against the hot sun and its smarmy temptation to strip to shorts and t-shirts and bathing suits. I wriggle into my sleeping bag, kicking my legs in the small space to find the foot, and I pull it up around my waist.

Marco shifts in his sleep with the smallest hitch of breath; I turn to watch him, to watch the wrinkle in his freckled nose, and the creases that form lightly between his eyebrows, but he drifts back to wherever it is that he dreams. He fingers are knotted tightly in the edges of his own sleeping bag, and his knees are drawn up, keeping his feet far away from the end of his roll mat, and this is not the first time – or probably the last – that I will think that his sleeping scowl doesn’t suit him.

I keep a distance between him and me as I settle down, rolling onto my back until I feel the lumps of pebbles beneath the tent nudge into my spine – and so I twist over, and I face him in the dusky, deep blue light.

There’s no need to count the number of freckles on his face – and not because it’s too dark to see them, but because I know the charted constellation of every which one – but I do watch the flutter of his eyelashes as he dreams, and the gentle parting of his lips as he breathes risingly.

“I told you before that that expression doesn’t look right on you,” I murmur into the temperate darkness, holding my head up on my palm as I search the contours of his face for all the remnants of wear and sorrow. My fingers ache, and I want to touch – to extend my hand across the minimal distance between our steadily beating hearts, and cup his face, caress his cheeks, in the ways he did to me when I was hurting, and yet I never realised what that meant to the flutter in my chest until I was running on the fine lines of time to tell him. I want to run gossamer touches up and down his jaw, and my thumb across his lips, and _soft_ —

I squeeze my eyes shut, and want to press the feeling out of every _inch_ of me – and I smith myself once more from cotton to steel.

And promises. So many promises.

I roll over and brace myself on my other shoulder, drawing my knees up to my chest within my sleeping bag, and wrapping my arms around myself and the cracks in what I thought I had to do – whatever collection of dismantled almosts that might have swayed across the last, innumerable days.

 _If I hurt you, I’m sorry_. _But I’m an idiot with this; you’ve sucked me in and drowned me in everything that should never have existed in one person, and I’m too far gone to know what to do now._

Somewhere along the line, I fall asleep.

 

* * *

 

The light that that filters through the tent walls is blue in exquisite dawn; an ethereal softness that appears like a kiss to the countenance to stir me awake, gently rousing as my eyes flicker open to the sight of my nose pressed up against my bags, doused in the shades of blurry cornflower and the speckled shadows of beads of condensation rolling down the outer film of canvas.

I extract my hand from the depths of my sleeping bag, and press it blearily against my eyes, rubbing lazy circles at the weight that presses down on my forehead and fills my sinuses with stuffy sentiment. My mind stirs as it begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach as I approach the thought of waking up to my reality for another time over amongst punctuated yawns. I roll my shoulders and my joints click amidst a murmur of satisfaction that leaks from my lips and the symphonic squawk of roosting seagulls beyond; but the sense of light pressure against my back causes me to tense up.

My twist my head to peer over my shoulder, to the sight of a mop of dark brown hair squished against my shoulder blades, and I grit my teeth as the ache in my heart beaten off by sleep returns only tenfold. I move my arm a little, but find tautness in my t-shirt, and shortly realise that Marco has his fingers tangled in the folds of my shirt, as well as his nose and forehead pressed up against the nape of my neck in the confines of his wading sleep.

I shift a little, feigning the natural movement of stirring, but it doesn’t nudge him away – if anything, he draws himself closer, and I feel the puff of his warming breath through the thin cotton.

I’ve never paid attention to the syntax of things so acutely until this very moment, when every whisper of air against my back prickles, and their severity and clarity is everything, like each breath is a word in a strung sentence, so beautifully formulated that the way it feels upon my skin _must_ mean something – because how can it not?

Each one of his inwards seems to draw my own breath outwards, absorbing each quantum of air until the rise and fall of my chest is like a trotting hitch to match the marching beat of my heart, and there is surely _not enough oxygen in this tiny compartment of the tent to fuel us both_.

It’s not panic, but its breathlessness is similar, and I need air – real air, and not that which is mingled with the way he smells, or the way he tries so hard in his sleep to curl around my back and hold me tight. (I’m gonna be a surprise he doesn’t need when he wakes – I can spare him from that much.)

I manage to get my arms beneath me so that I can lever myself upright without having to roll, and – thankfully – his fingers fall away as I sit upright, flopping onto the space where our two roll mats have overlapped during the night. I glance back at him, over my shoulder, and am relieved to see he sleeps on, and the creases in his face have smoothed themselves out with the moisture than now perpetuates the early morning air.

I scramble through my bags for my phone and check the time – and gawk to myself in disgust when I see it’s barely past seven, but that’s what you get for sleeping outdoors in the threads of a blinding summer. At least none of the others will have stirred, and I can find some peace to be alone. I kick off my sleeping bag, trying to avoid the sprawl of Marco’s legs that stretch onto my mattress as well, and roll up onto my knees, turning awkwardly in the small space to grab my flip flops out of my holdall, and to roll up my stiff-feeling jeans to my knees.

The zipper is loud, and I wince as I open up the flap to our sleeping pod enough for me to be able to slip out; the others collapsed in the central area are still – for what I can see – graciously unconscious, so I should be good to sneak out.

Good, I say – _does that include when I feel a light tugging return to the hem of my shirt_?

“J- _Jean_ —”

I twist around, and Marco stares up at me in a sleepful earnestness, half-tumbled out of the swathes of his sleeping bag, leant on his arm on his front as he lets his other hand drop away from me. I blink rapidly, and open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out, and my brain replays the noise of a dying whale inside my ears.

His teeth flash across his lower lip as he thinks about biting it, but he swallows it back into a tight line of his mouth, and a tremble simultaneously.

“Where … are you going?” His voice is breathy and uncertain, and scampers me with chills that aren’t cold and rushes of blood that aren’t solid with cement.

“F-for a walk,” I stumble, and my leg jitters where I’ve got one foot still in the pod, and one foot out. Marco raises himself up a little higher on his arms. “Go … go back to sleep, okay?”

He swallows audibly, and I watch reverently the bob in his throat as he finds strength to summon words for me, but they’re not the ones I expect.

“Can I come?”

I can’t find words, but I nod as I bite the inside of my cheek, and he struggles out of his sleeping bag, searching for his hoodie in the orderly line of his bags, before throwing it on in haste over his pyjamas. He returns his eyes to mine, wide-eyed and ardent, so I tilt my head towards the foyer and expect for him to follow, whilst I taste the chewy sinew of my heart as it rattles around inside my mouth.

 _What are you doing, Jean_?

As we clamber over the sleeping slugs of some of our friends, I’m surprised that Marco’s the one stumbling over slippery sleeping bags and skewed backpacks, whispering hushed apologies when one or two of them stir and mumble. I try not to look back at him, and keep my eyes focused on the flat beam of light that slips through beneath the edges of the tent.

Outside holds a predawn kind of clarity, where the momentum of living has not quite captured the banks of sunlight that sweep across the foam and seaweed line of the night’s high tide, or really, the essence of a new day breezing in across the sand. There’s something crisp and clear and cold, even in the breaths of August morning, that is not filled with conversation or thought bubbles or much beyond the side-long glances I hold myself back from offering Marco as I hold up the flap of the tent to let him out.

My arm shakes as I let the door fall back behind us, and Marco hesitates on the sand as he waits for me to do something, burying his hands in the pockets of his hoodie in a manner that seems all too nervous for him, usually so full of sun or rain or something decisive. I glance both ways along the beach, and decide I like the look of the far cliffs still in shadow from the braying sun as good as anything else that spans this deserted stretch of nowhere, and so that’s the direction in which I lead the way.

The sand is smooth. The damp morning fog has hardened its top layer and the stirring heat of the day is beginning to set it, so that with every footstep the surface cracks and crumbles, the crunch almost audible beneath the slap of my flip flops as I walk two paces ahead of him in distilled and musing quiet.

I let my head fall back as we walk, and I gaze into the eternal, blue sky. It’s barely morning. Some of the sky is yellow, some the softest blue. One small cloud scuttles along in the distance, as if left behind by the more expansive night, and doesn’t want to remain straggling in the simplicity of a vacant, charmed, and deserted daytime sky like this. Strange how the sky is peaceful, sweet-blue gentleness, whilst everything below can be summed in the way I can’t seem to swallow the lump that grows tumourously in my throat.

 _Shoulda just told him I was gonna go piss_ , I can’t help but muse. The air might be light and weightless with the turn of morning, but it doesn’t mean I’m breathing it in all too well.

Marco doesn’t say a word, and it unnerves me; there’s not even the slight of a pause for words, as if he might want to say something, but can’t. We weave away from the camp, and I follow the tri-pronged tracks of seagulls or other birds in the sea-damp sand, winding towards the tideline of seaweed and coracle shells washed up overnight. I clip a pebble with my toe, and it goes bouncing away ahead of me, clinking through the shells and stones, and scaring away a pair of white birds parrying around the water’s edge. They cast off into the sky with a great flurry of wings and feathers and squawking, and I stop to watch them, casting my gaze with the shadow of my palm as I conceal myself from the muffled, early light.

The sea and sky look all one fabric, as if majestic ship sails are stuck high up in the sky, or the lingering clouds have dropped down into the cacophonous rumble of swathing tides, and the stitches itself are woven of all sorts of iridescent pastels that stain our skin with their colour. The birds disappear into the brightness, yet Marco bows to grab a flat, grey stone from his feet.

He wades out to the cusp of the ebbing waves, picking his way carefully through the shingles where the salt water sloshes over his toes. He watches the water recede with a sigh – not from his lips, but the sea itself – and he flicks his wrist, skimming the pebble in his palm across the undulating surface in three, even bounces.

A second wave collapses over his feet, lipped with white froth, and he bends to grab another handful of stones, weighing them out in his hand as he discards the roundest and heaviest ones back into the tide.

There’s a déjà vu to be found in admiring him from afar, outlined against the sea in the gold of a blooming sunrise – and I wonder how many times it has been when I thought he looked the _most_ beautiful, and it could never be outdone? Well, this is one of them.

My want to speak rises in my throat like the surge of the frothy surf around his ankles, but the same feeling compresses it, succinct in the simple pleasure of watching him flick stones into the ocean, the flat pebbles skimming along the surface like flitting dragonflies diving for thirst.

It’s my chameleon soul that stops me from joining him in the waves, or offering him a stone of my own, or simply calling out to him against the vacant dawn; my inner indecisiveness as wide and as wavering as the ocean that expands in yellow-lit blue depths before us, here, on the cusp of the edge of our little world.  I might as well be half a world away, floating somewhere in a turquoise sea with no sign of a shoreline where he might stand. I don’t know what I can say to break the silence. Or if I even should.

I keep my mouth closed, and kick another cluster of shells and debris towards the lapping waves, and they scatter into the water with a sprinkle that halts the last pebble in Marco’s hands. He tilts his head back towards me, but doesn’t quite dare to look, curling his fingers around the smooth stone gently.

Then, he speaks, although much of it is mingled with the rush of salt. It turns out that it’s not me who needs to speak, after all.

“I was … thinking I could go back to school – in the autumn. If they’ll have me.”

It’s not what I expect him to say, and I find myself rooted to the spot, hands hanging limply by my sides. He rolls the pebble between his fingers now, but still he doesn’t turn, and I am not granted the expression he wears when he mimes flicking his wrist once, twice, three times – yet without releasing the stone into the waves.

I swallow the gall in my throat, and tread lightly over the bare outlines of the words I want to say, but cannot stomach them in their full integrity. The things that I manage to spit out are barely mine, in a voice that’s barely mine too. Or at least, not the voice I use for Marco.

“We won’t see each other much, then,” I murmur, turning over a razor clam with my toe, only to find its brown and black tiger-stripes shattered with the white lines of stress and rupture. “If you’re quitting pool cleanin’ as well.”

It’s a heavy hearted thought, I know that. I took for granted too often our friendship based upon the regularity of two days a week – but if he wants to go back to school … if he _can_ go back to school, I wouldn’t stop him. I would never stop him. I would stand aside and give up those precious Wednesdays and Saturdays, and be placated with only a wave or a courteous smile in the hallways of the university should we run into one another there. That would be enough, or would _have_ to be enough, because he’d be _happy_.

With his white coat and his stethoscope looped around his neck and his lollipops tucked away in his breast pocket – that’s what is meant to be. I surprise myself with how little thought I need to give it – but at the same time, I think it’s a part of me I understand now. I don’t need to wonder why he feels like telling this to me now, or why those are the first words – the first, _proper_ words – he decides to speak. It’s not of consequence.

Marco turns though, and I almost wish he didn’t, because there’s not the sincerity, or the hope, or the _ambition_ , that I might wish to see upon his face. No, it’s more contorted than that, and he rolls the pebble between his palms as a distraction for himself from the way his nerves nip at his confidence. It’s only me, Marco. It’s only me.

 _Say what you need to say, alright_?

“I don’t want us to be limited to twice a week, Jean,” he says gravely, and his jaw trembles. It’s not the threat of tears, no – but maybe it’s an unspoken pain that I don’t understand, but my heart accepts nonetheless, because that’s what it’s built itself to do when it comes to him. “I don’t … I never wanted that.”

He stops fidgeting with his hands for a second, pressing the small rock firmly – stilly – between his fingers, as if he considers for a moment, _something_ —

But it passes. He goes back to fiddling, and casts his eyes down at the smooth surface.

I feel uncomfortable. Not because of any crippling self-doubt or anxiety, that might otherwise rule me on any other day of the week. But because there are things that threaten to spill from my lips that are far too personal, and I might be an honest man, but _not honest enough_ – not for the things that keep me awake at night, and not for the withered edges of my water-filled soul that is so burdened with promise after God-forsaken promise that I really don’t know how to say such simple things to him, like—

“I don’t want that either, Marco.”

I say it anyway, and he straightens, eyes flying high once more and meeting mine with a surprised intensity. I guess we’re doing this.

“Y-you don’t?” he wobbles. I press my teeth into my lower lip until it hurts. I try not to hope too much.

“I don’t,” I confirm, and he breathes some crazy sigh of relief at that, and presses the stone into one fist, which he brings to his mouth in respite, pressing his lips to his knuckles as he gaze briefly flits away to the sand dunes behind me, and the steep climbs of limestone beyond that.

“I thought …” Marco begins slowly, “I thought that you wouldn’t … wouldn’t want to _see_ me again. After – after what I said to you.”

I shake my head and clench my jaw – and would laugh at him, if there were anything funny about it. But there isn’t, of course, because that’s what he _feared_ , and I know more than most not to make light of that.

I feel like crying, I really do. Not hot, wet, and salty tears, but perhaps the heaving breaths and my entire body trembling, because there’s a raucous building up inside of me like a crescendo of white noise that has no funnel to escape from.

It doesn’t hit me straight away what he’s saying, and not before I choke out a barely there, “Of course I want to see you,” that makes him bite his lip in a secret anguish and turn his eyes so quickly to the ground and the wet sand that now clings to his toes as the tide creeps steadily in.

But then I _do_ realise, and it comes with a sharp intake of air, and a hiss – because he thinks he’s in the wrong for turning me away, and he shouldn’t … he shouldn’t be thinking like that, the God-damn _idiot_. I’m the one who burdened him, I’m the one who plied him _m-mixed signals_ – or whatever it was that he called it – and still he phrases it like he—

Like he—

Like he didn’t want to give _me_ up.

This is not supposed to go this way. _I_ was the one who was selfish. _I_ was the one who must’ve made things so much more complicated for him. _I_ was the one who—

I swallow dryly, and despite the lack of wind or breeze, the salt in the air has still coated the inside of my throat and the roof of my mouth, and I taste the sea as it scores me painfully. I speak again before he has chance to.

“I … I don’t want you to have to deal with me if I—” It’s hard for me to say, even if it’s the only thing that hasn’t left my mind amidst the most turbulent of thoughts this past fortnight of unadulterated greyness. “If I’m a … _burden_ to you.” And then in a whisper, “You don’t deserve that, Marco.”

His lips part, and his eyes are large, glassy, and wide – it’s not that surprising a thing to say, is it? That’s what he meant to tell me, right? How can I think I could possibly blame him for any of the _pain_ and the _suffering_ he’s been going through, ever since I met him? How can he not see that my only wish was that I hadn’t made it harder for him with every problem that I confessed, with every fault in my genes, and yet I was ever too dense to realise, until it took his world crashing down around us both to come to our senses about what _he_ needed?

Isn’t that clear? Isn’t that the only think that can be said with a sparkling, unquestionable clarity?

Marco turns back to face the sea, and he tosses the stone into the ocean; he doesn’t skim it, and it _plops_ into the water with a resolute splash. Maybe it feels freeing to him to think about throwing away _some of all of this_ into the tide, hoping that it might all be washed away and thrown up on some other beach, far, far away from us.

 _He doesn’t deny it_.

This is a lot – _too much_ , probably, and I feel uneasy on my feet. I should’ve just let him rest with his forehead against my back, and let myself suffocate on it all. I shouldn’t have risked stirring him, shouldn’t have tried to break away for air when I’m not the one who needs it the most.

I let myself slump down in the bank of granular sand and crushed shells, feeling the prick – that _glassy_ prick – of sharp edges into my sandpaper skin. I dig my heels into the sand, and let my head rock forward into my waiting palms, and exhale until my lungs are empty. There is silence – for an awful, exhausting moment – and I know I was never built for this sort of thing. It’s messy and it’s ungraceful and I don’t know how to do dances like this – I’m clumsy. I fall on my ass. These heart to hearts … I don’t know how’re they’re meant to go, because I never imagine them beyond the insides of my head. Never imagine how my words stick in my throat and become doused in glue, even the things that are supposed to be the most weightless of all.

It’s a load of shit. None of this crap is ever gonna be weightless – how can things that are so _important_ have no weight? How could they ever dream of ripping you at the seams and causing bruises in your palms from where you try to hold them all up at once, if they’re _weightless_?

The sand and shells crunch, and I say no – _no, please, don’t_ — but my face must appear so _wretched_ , so fucking _pitiful_ , when I look up and see him close in front of me, with his hands tangled in each other and pressed against his stomach, and his shoulders drooped. I look up, _I look up_ – because I don’t know how to do anything else but gaze at him like he’s the most incredible thing that I was ever given the pleasure of standing alongside.

I see upon him the whispers of a smile – and I’m gone. I don’t need the sun to melt me, to burn me up until I am ash and dust, because he can do that for me, and I welcome it. I welcome the thought of being burned up by that lingering fleck of a smile, however small, and however sad, and however wistful a lullaby it might sing to the demons in my ears.

I don’t deserve him. He doesn’t deserve me.

 _And yet_ —

“Jean, I— I want … can I tell you something?” he says, and it’s all I can do to nod dumbly, my hands clasped firmly, now, over the strained denim of my jeans over my knees. He glances away for a second, eyes closed in a wordless prayer for courage, and he takes a deep breath, and something changes in his expression. I don’t know what it is, but if I called myself cotton – so easily rippable and transparently weak – and also steel, in its greyness – then the thing that I see in his eyes and in the way he lifts his chin and fucking _kneels_ in the sand in front of me, rocking back onto his calves, is ivory. It’s harder than his porcelain soul and more beautiful than the marble he steels himself in, and more precious to me than any words can describe the way in which my heart flutters when he _rests his hand over mine_ upon my knee.

It’s just a touch. It’s just a touch. He shouldn’t be treating me like this.

It’s not right – _but it’s so right_.

It’s the scorch of boiling water at the same time that it’s ice being packed into every crevice in my body, and it’s the rush of fear that comes with plunging into depths I’m far too scared of to face alone, and— _and_ with his hand on my knee, like so many times before, suddenly – _suddenly_ , everything is washed away by the tide that is the same amount water as the want to push him away.

Not at all. _Not at all_. The tide must be waterless then, because I don’t fear it. I don’t want to push him away.

“H-here’s … here’s the truth, Jean,” he starts, and his thumb is trembling over where it rests upon my knuckles, and his words are thick and soft and low and padded full of the ringing in my ears. He gulps, and continues.

“I … I did wrong by you,” he says, every syllable a seismic shift in itself as I can’t tear my eyes away from him, every atom of oxygen stalled inside the thinnest alveoli of my lungs, with my blood unwilling to accept it, and unwilling to fuel my heart with it. “I— I should’ve been more plain with you, Jean. _You’re not a burden to me_ – you _have_ a burden, and I have a burden too, but that’s okay. T-that’s okay, because—”

He stammers, and his fingers clench over mine as he searches for strength I can’t give him, only for the simple fact that I’m too caught up in the way my thoughts aren’t aligning, and all I can think about is _my_ truth – the _only_ truth – the truth that I love him, and I love him, and _I love him_ , and he can tell me things it has taken me _nineteen years_ not to believe, only to change my mind in the seconds it takes for one, solitary breath, or blink, or single thump to tell the story of a man who fell deep and _drowned_ in the wake of his pool boy.

The pool boy who appeared when no-one else was there; the pool boy who consoled me in the parking lot when things resurfaced; who held my hand on rooftops and car bonnets; who kept me afloat when I struggled to swim and was my crutch when I fought to walk, but knew when to give me a helping hand to get me moving on my own— Marco. Marco, Marco, _Marco_.

It’s a good story. And a story which we’ve written to ourselves, because we would never have been able to discover it otherwise.

 _You are not a burden to me_.

The old me would never have believed him so quickly, so without grind nor beg nor denial of everything he says, with fingers plugged in ears. But I am not the old me.

“I did wrong by you,” Marco repeats, his voice wavering, “And I— I don’t want to live for the dead, Jean. I don’t. It still hurts, and it probably will for a l-long time, but … I want to move forward.”

He swallows thickly, and searches my blank expression for something he sure as hell isn’t going to find here and now.

 _You are not a burden to me_.

He continues, and he shakes.

“You – I want to be there for you, with whatever it is you need … need help with, with whatever things are too heavy for you alone, and I’ll … I can help you lift them. W-whatever this is, I want it. I do – I do, s-so much. Whatever you’ll have of me. S-so, I—” 

A pause for breath, only.

“ _I need to tell you something, Jean_.”

I don’t move. I can’t. it’s hard enough for me to breathe, let alone control the flush of colour that I can see spreading outwards it great waves and wisps of the unnameable hope that has lain dormant in me for so, so _long_.

I can’t tell you in which way this is going, but I can tell you it’s not north, or east, or south, or west, or _nowhere_. It’s somewhere that my internal compass doesn’t point to, but my feet want to move blindly on and into the unknown, if only because he’s got my hand in his – quite literally – and it feels like he’s pulling me down a path unseen.

“Marco?” I try, when he doesn’t speak, too focussed on the way our hands are clamped over one another on my knee, “H-hey, are you—”

“Just – just give me … a second,” he says, and the fine line of his lips turns upwards into a shy sort of smile that he projects inwards – and it’s not confident, not reassuring, but it’s lifting. It lifts him. Out of blueness, and out of the blackness, and there’s something the hoists him high above the ever-present swirl of everything inside of him – he tastes the dry land. He raises his head, and there’s life to be found in his eyes, and in the fondness of his smile that I never thought I’d be seeing again so soon, and so _here_ , and there is us – only us, forever, and ever, and for God-damn _ever_ —

And then, he speaks, and my madly spinning world stops for good.

“Jean, I— I fell in _love_ with you like droplets in the ocean. Every facet of you was just a drip, but— but the ripples they caused were _massive_. I … all those times I should’ve been more plain with you; I’m in _love with you_.”

 _W-what_?

My heart seizes in my chest, and the battlefield that has been raging inside my rib cage for months now is won in a single instance. Marco’s hand doesn’t leave mine. He stretches up on his knees, squeezes my fingers, and presses his lips to the very corner of my mouth, soft, and lingering, and _everything_.

A kiss.

 _His kiss_.

It lasts maybe a second, maybe a few more – but it feels like lifetimes. Lifetimes both endless and far too short, because when he parts from me, there’s a fond sorrow in his expression, much like a cloud-capped sun shower, where both sun and rain exist simultaneously, and everything inside of me hitches.

 _D-did he just_ —?

“I had to do that,” he says softly, and he pulls back – I lose the warmth of his breath, and the caress of his finger tips on the back of my hand, and no— no, don’t stop, _another_ — “At least once.”

His whole body shivers as he exhales one, shaking, _shuddering_ breath, and I’m left grappling at space and open-mouthed in shock.

“A-and, I’m – I’m sorry if I just made it awkward,” he trembles, pressing the hand that was on mine against the base of his neck, patting himself on the sternum gently. “It was— I’ve been keeping it in here too long. B-but … it should be yours as much as mine. I had to tell you.”

I find my voice, somewhere in the whirlwind that scatters every fragment of bone and sacred thought to the far corners of the compass.

“M-Marco, I—” But I can’t scramble enough pieces of coherence together quick enough. My ears burn, my heart _burns_.

 _I’m in love with you_.

He continues to stumble, regardless, and he clutches now at the fabric in his pyjamas – red and white and checkered, and I can’t believe he just kissed me in his God-damn _pyjamas_ in the m-middle of a beach at dawn – and _I’m_ wearing fucking _flip flops_ —and he _kissed_ me, he kissed … _me_?

“I … I understand if we can’t back to the way it was before. That’s … well, it’s not _okay_ , but if we can’t … if we can’t, I understand why – I do. B-but I … I’m not looking back now, Jean, I can’t—”

I realise quickly that’s he’s trying to back away – not physically, because he sure as hell is rooted, _petrified_ , to the spot in front of me – but in the excuses he’s tripping over and the apologies he’s professing, but I won’t let my chest fall. Not now. His expression swims in torment, in anguish, in relief, and in _peace_.

That was a kiss.

That was an _I love you_.

(That was my _soul_ probably ascending to a higher plane of existence, but let’s not go into that.)

Who needs air? Not me. I never needed it.

“Marco, h-hey— listen a sec—”

I almost reach for him, but he shakes his head vehemently, and he’s such an _idiot_. Listen. Listen to me.

“I had to say those things— I had to, I had to— just please don’t hate me for it, _I had to_ —”

He had to. I _have_ to. I’m not going to let him get away with fumbling, or with falling, or with _drowning_ , and I know that I’m no good with words, and there are probably no sentences that I can string together that will comfort him like poetry or promise, but I can _show_ him.

How can he _possibly_ think that I don’t love him back?

I can _show_ him that I do.

I don’t give him time to find an ending to that sentence – I _launch_ myself at him, and I tackle him into the sand with the wind escaping our collective lungs in a flush. His stuttering disbelief disintegrates into nothing, only to bloom again in a fragile instant of a wide-eyed stare, mused hair, and heavy breaths that reverberate through all the weight I have him pinned down with; legs either side of his waist, and the heels of my hands pressed into the curves of his collar bones, and a blazing, ferocious, _fearless_ warmth spreading up from the depths of my warzone chest, and filling all the bullet holes in my arms, neck, tips of my shaking fingers, with the stain of deep, blushing crimson.

I shake my head, and I can’t fathom my words enough to show him the lengths of my desperation, and how it has been coiling up inside of me with the threat of a bite, and how all that venom pours out of me now and into his eyes that never waver, because _this_ – this is it— and this is _us_ , and this is me pressing him into the sand as I sit on top of him, and my fingers sweeping up the curve of his neck, and cupping his jaw, and tracing his cheeks with my thumbs in the myriad of ways that were only ever dreamt of.

 _This_ is his flustered gasp and whimper, and _this_ is my truth, in not so many eloquent words:

“I like you too, you _idiot_.”

 _More than that. I am unfathomably and irrevocably in love with you_.

I kiss Marco Bodt breathlessly, pouring every fear of mine and love for him into his soft lips, knowing that this … _this_ time I am doing the right thing. This _feels_ right. This _is_ right.

I kiss him with every ounce of strength in my body, and taste the sweetness in his mouth, and feel hurricanes be born and die behind my eyelids as I don’t know who is breathing for whom. A murmuring gasp and a hurry of lips and I hold his jaw steady in my hands as I throw myself into the way kisses are supposed to be when they’re not in books or movies; the bump of noses and the clumsy click of teeth on teeth and the messy, _desperate_ hum that comes spilling out of my mouth and into his as our lips meld and move urgently against one another.

I pin to memory the song of the tide, and beat of the blood of what feels like _hundreds_ in my temples, and the softness of his salt-clung hair as I twine my fingers in it, and the sweep of his hands as they _finally_ react – passing up and over my thighs, hips, ribs – smoothing burning skin as he pulls me closer to him, flush against his chest, binding our hearts with the red string of fate that has been trailing from our pinkies until now – _but no longer_.

Our lips part with the tiniest sound and the barest distance, and he wraps his arms around my neck, pressing our foreheads together amidst shuddering exhales and the lingering taste of tenderness. His eyes – so big and brown and _searching_ – and I am _gone_.

“You’re a God-damn idiot,” I breathe, repeating myself, holding his face between my hands as our noses brush together. He cards his fingers into my hair, swirling in small, concentric circles, and keeps me close with the heaving rise and fall of his chest, gazing up at me like I’m worth _universes_ more than I really am. He should see _himself_.  He should see the way the sleeves of sadness in his eyes become plumed with something _more_ , something incandescent. The redness in his cheeks, and the redness in his _lips_ are just one colour of _so fucking many_. “You’re— you’re an idiot— _idiot_. And I just—”

I can’t stop myself from chasing his lips, and it becomes a kiss that ricochets through my veins, and through his – fingers tugging at my hair, and my hands trying to grab hold of every inch of him that I can find, and tortured breaths that burn and incinerate, and then collapse, and I just hold him, _I hold him_ , I—

I hold him, and he holds me, and I bury my face in the crook of his neck, and he does the same into my shoulder; his hands slide up and down my back as he rocks us both, shaking, quivering, _trembling_ , and I let myself be suffocated in a long, _tight_ hug in the sand that’s the accumulation of coming in from a cold that no-one else felt, to find a haven only mine. Only ours.

It’s been coming for _so fucking long_ , and I just want to hold him. Marco – stupid, idiotic, perfect, perfect, so perfectly _not_ perfect – _Marco_.

I don’t want to let go. Not with the way his hands smooth a rhythm like a languid tide up and down my spine, not with the way he finally tilts his head so that he can nuzzle into my neck, not with the way he delicates a light kiss there, and then another, and then another, peppered against my skin like a promise or a whisper or a _plea_ —

I whimper, not out of a melting pleasure, or anything like that – well, I mean, it _does_ feel good, don’t get me wrong – but because I need there to be a way where I can hold him _closer_ ; because our chests might be pressed flush, and my knees might be tight against his hips, and my jaw might be trembling as I threaten to make myself cry, but it needs to be _more_. I need him to be an intrinsically _real_ part of me. I need him to be more. More, more, _more_ —

The tide is coming in. That, I notice, because the rush in my ears suddenly isn’t blood anymore, and that’s what pulls me away from him, heaving myself up on my hands so that I can look beyond him, down the beach. He tries to tilt his head backwards too, a glimpse of the waves from where he’s pinned upside down in the bank of sea shells and sand, and his hands trace from my back to my ribs as he moves to sit up, holding me securely on his lap, purpling my skin with just the thought of him touching me so gently and so _intimately_.

It’s clumsy, because we’re all a tangle of limbs, and his hair is covered in sand that sprinkles out onto his shoulders as he sits upright, and I’ve lost one of my flip flops in tackling him to the ground; but as he circles one arm around my waist, and lifts the other so that he can cup my cheek in his palm and rub his thumb beneath my eyelashes, he finally smiles, a smile that _illuminates_ his face. I let my eyes fall closed for just a second – I don’t want to miss any facet of what might cross his countenance – and allow myself to just _feel_ it; the wonder in his slow and sweeping touch, the feathers of his breath upon my face, the unbridled amazement and disbelief that pools in his expression when I open my eyes once more.

I spread my fingers up his chest, marvelling at every swell of muscle and stuttering breath, and twist them in the jersey-fabric of his t-shirt; I try to fight back the smile of my own that blooms on my mirroring face, but it spreads outwards, uncontrollably, to the corners of my lips to become a goofy grin. Marco hums happily, and that hum dissolves into an airy chuckle which I feel through every plane of my skin that touches his.

“The tide’s coming in,” he breathes softly, fingers roaming tentatively up and down my sides. I’m too interested in pinning every facet of his face – of the glimmer in his eyes, and of the dimples that circumnavigate his lips, and of the rosiness in his freckled cheeks – to memory, to notice how my legs begin to cramp either side of his, or how the tide dallies a little closer to us.

“Uh-huh,” I nod, and he scoffs, with a huff of breath that paints my jaw, barely whiskers away from his curved lips, and— _and_ —

“I think we should move.”

“Uh-huh.”

He laughs again lightly, and his cheeks blaze red when he sweeps the thumb he has resting on my face down, across my lips. I part them slightly for him, but he doesn’t want to do anything but touch. That’s okay. I’ve gotta admit, I’m already pretty fond of the feeling of him tracing the shape of my smile that only seems to grow bigger the longer he strays.

The chuckles keep bubbling up in his throat, just breathy, _perfect_ little things that seem like reflexes he can’t quite control, and he drops his fingers on my face to rest them, flat, against my sternum.

“ _Jean_.” He presses my name a little firmer this time, but it still tastes giddy as I absorb the roll of his lips over the vowels in my name.

My face is _blazing_ warm, and my ears are tingling with all the blood that’s rushing to my head, and I could _very easily_ just bury myself in his shoulder once more – but I swallow it down, and duck my gaze for a moment, and curl my fists tighter in his shirt, marvelling, quite literally, at the feeling of my knuckles brushing against his chest through the fabric.

He shifts me a little on his thighs, holding me steady with flustered fingers, and I glance back up, meeting his eyes.

“You’re … you’re gonna have t’ throw me in the ocean to make me leave this time,” I say, my voice low. I tug a little tighter on his shirt, and lean into the space between us, where his forehead meets my forehead once more. There’s a breath in unison, and Marco’s eyes flutter closed. “You’re gonna have to _throw_ me in the God-damn ocean,” I repeat again. “’S the only way. I’m not leaving this time. Not making the same mistake twice.”

 _This is real. This is happening. I’m not gonna fuck it up this time_.

I rise up onto my knees, and even though it still only gives me an inch or two over him, I graze my fingers beneath his chin and tilt his face upwards, so that I might brush my lips over his again. My heart wallops the inside of my rib cage with enough force to send me hurtling, but maybe it’s that motion I’m using to make myself so brave, and in that plummet there’s something to be found that doesn’t care how much I’m blushing, or how much my palms are sweating, or how he allows his nose to trace the contours of my neck and the outline of my jaw _first_ , and allows me to push it all aside. His hands press against the small of my back now, and he looks up at me once more from beneath his lashes, focussing on my lips with a blush that spreads _fiercely_ across his face as he cranes himself to steal the remainder of the distance between us. My heart hammers, and my breathing falters, and my hands tremble where they sweep down the sides of his neck to cling anchorly to his broad shoulders.

 _This is real_.

Whispers from a kiss, and a boisterous shout bellows out across the sand; Marco and both pull away in an instant.

“Oi, Jeaaaan! Jean, hey! You’re on breakfast duty – get your ass back here!”

Well, if it isn’t Connie _Captain Cockblock_ Springer.

We’ve moved far enough away from the tent that he won’t be able to see us as more than a couple blobs far away down the sand – he won’t be able to see the fact that I’m squashed in Marco’s lap with my hands all over him, and him with his nose now squashed against the base of my neck with a lightly complaining huff.

 _Unless he’s got binoculars. He might have binoculars. That’s the sort of thing he’d do, Jean_.

“Jeeeean, the bacon isn’t gonna cook itself, _Jean_!”

I struggle out of Marco’s embrace with a grumble, and a whole truck load of unsavoury things muttered in Connie’s direction as his figure disappears back inside the tent.

 _We’re supposed to be on vacation. Why the hell is he up so fucking early, huh_?

I scramble in the sand, untangling my legs from Marco’s clumsily, as he falls back on his palms, watching me with a gentle, slightly _amused_ smile.

“I’m gonna kick his ass when  get over there,” I seethe, reaching for my lost flip flop and shoving it on my foot aggressively, and then trying to brush the best of the sand from the creases in my jeans. “Whose stupid idea was it to make a cooking rota – they can make their own stupid breakfast—”

“Jean.”

I turn to face him so quickly that he can’t help but laugh.

“W-what?”

He chuckles, rubbing the end of his nose as he casts his eyes away from me; I roll back onto my knees, and shuffle across the sand towards him. When I’m within touching distance, he reaches out and buffs me playfully, _shyly_ on the shoulder.

“You’re being a grump, _that’s_ what.”

I scoff, and pull a face at him.

“Ouch, man,” I snort, “That’s harsh.”

“S-says you who called me an _idiot_ a second after kissing me,” Marco retorts without missing a beat; my face combusts, and I’m left spluttering with how casually he says that. Yep. Kissing. That’s … _that’s_ a thing. C-could do with another one, I’m not gonna lie.

“T-that’s different,” I mumble, and he laughs brightly, climbing to his feet. The smile he wears is _alive_ , and the dawning sun – now not so much dawning, but steadily creeping up into the great, big blueness – makes him glow. _He glows_. He offers me out a hand, and I take it, readily being tugged to my feet and steadied by his fingers resting on my arms.

I swallow thickly, a tingle beneath my skin as he rubs his hands gently up my arms and across my shoulders and back again, and I try to distract myself with picking out the freckles faint against the pretty pink blush in his cheeks. Doesn’t really work. I feel _electric_.

“I missed you,” he then says quietly, and his smile falters for a moment. I wrap my arms around myself, curling my fingers in my own shirt as I try to stem the manic _tingling_ , and I look up at him with my best, sincere expression that is not spoiled by the redness in my face, or the tremble in my legs, or the little twinge that thought gives my heart. His hands don’t still, and his words become whispers. “I _missed_ you.”

I offer him a little quirk of a reassuring smile, probably the best I can do in the circumstances – if I cupped his face like I really want to do, he’d laugh at how much my hand would shake. _Total_ mood ruiner.

I wrinkle my nose, and try to act a little coy as I take a casual glance back towards the tent, but I’m sure he can see right through it. I peek back at him with a stiff gulp, and I wonder how much more blood there can be left in my face to burn.

“Yeah. I missed you too.”

His hand slides down my arm and peel it away from where I have it wrapped securely around my stomach, and then interlinks my fingers with a squeeze. He says enough when he brings our combined hands to his lips, and kisses my knuckles with a hum.

Ugh. I’m going to have an aneurism. Or maybe a heart attack. Possibly both. I’ve got heart palpitations to boot – this can’t be good for me.

“I’m gonna make you the best God-damn breakfast you’ve ever tasted,” I gruff, as he lets our hands fall between us. “And then I’m gonna fucking _burn_ Connie’s.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

We don’t walk back to the tent hand in hand, and I don’t have the chance to flounder for another kiss, but we dawdle across the beach with shoulders brushing and my fingers twitching – at least after I’ve wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans vigorously. Marco stops and stoops for a few shells that catch his eye, telling me that he wants to take them back for Anita, because it’s been too long since she was able to see the sea; he juggles them in his palm, tossing a small limpet shell between his fingers, and rolling his thumb over the ribs in its surface. Every time he sees me stealing glances at him, I combust – _but I don’t have to look away_. I just offer him a quirk of a smile, and he becomes bashful under my loving gaze.

Connie pokes his head out of the tent door when we trudge back into camp, and is eager to shove a packet of bacon rashers and some burger buns into my hands – but if he saw anything, he doesn’t fuss about it. In fact, he barely gives Marco a second glance, save when he’s thrusting food into his arms too.

I decide not to risk possible death, or certain third degree burns from cooking over the camp fire; Connie’s already dumped two little gas burners out in the sand, so we light them after a few attempts that nearly cost me my fingers.

The second I lay down a slab of bacon into the simmering pan, Sasha comes rolling out of the big tent like a blood hound, practically drooling as she plops herself next to Marco, snuggling up to his side, still wrapped up in her sleeping bag, but putting a stake in our privacy.

It doesn’t take long for the others to start to stir too, attracted by the smell of sizzling food; they bustle around the fire and in and out of the tent in various states of half dress, toothbrushes sticking out of mouths, and hair pushed up in fields of cowlicks that would give my bed hair a run for its money any day.

I can see that getting alone time with Marco is going to be tough – and sneaking away together is going to attract some eyebrow wiggles. Not that I care, but – but it’s probably not something worth dealing with right now. Plus, we still face the year-long car journey back to Trost in two days’ time, and if I have to listen to an ear full of Connie and Sasha’s teasing for two hundred miles, I’m just gonna have to stab someone.

The simmering feel of the way his eyes linger on me as I poke the bacon around in the pan is enough, and I don’t dare to look up at him and meet it, out of shyness, and out of giddiness, knowing full well that we’ll both dissolve into spluttering messes.

Reiner bulldozes out of the tent and heads straight for the fresh water supply, filling the bowl someone’s left nearby, and pouring it over his head, shaking himself like a wet dog. The splatters don’t reach me, but I feel the intensity of Marco’s look _changes_ , nonetheless, and I try super hard to control my heart lurch. Reiner joins us and Sasha crowded around the stoves, thudding down next to Marco and jostling him in the shoulder before they fall into inconsequential conversation about whoever was snoring last night.

There’s a weight off his shoulders as he talks – I can see that. He laughs, he smiles, he pokes awkwardly at the sand when Reiner makes a corny joke, he can’t control the way he lets himself flitter back to watching me from the corner of his eye with every other word. My chest feels like a fucking vice, but never have I been more addicted to the feeling of my organs being malleable.

Tides have turned for less than just his simple smile. And this is a tide turning now – water and waves sweeping back out over sand bogged down with everything he’s faced, and everything he’s overcome, and _yes_ , he’s going to have to face those things again on the way back out. He’s still grieving, I’m sure. There are still things worth fixing. I can testify to that account, and I know there are a lot of things we still need to talk about.

But the water knows where it’s going now, and we’re on the way back out to sea, yet I’m not so scared about it this time. Who knew that it was the water coming right up to the shoreline that would scare me most and rock the boat more than the wide expanse that the future promises.

He said he loved me. I didn’t imagine that. Like droplets – he said – causing ripples that might have started small, but have ended up big, far-reaching across entire oceans. He’d said that.

He _loves_ me.

He _kissed_ me.

I _kissed_ him.

 _S-shit_. _Holy shit_.

Amidst giving myself a mental pat on the back for that – ‘cus hey, that was _me_ making a move, and that doesn’t just happen every day, I mean, _c’mon_ – I’m pretty sure my brain short circuits as the dawning realisation _finally_ catches up with me in a resounding _symphony_ of clashes like symbols, and drums, to match the loud thud of my heart as I lick my lips, remembering the softness of his.

Kissing him is good. Like, really good. Like, something I really shouldn’t have waiting this long to do. All the missed opportunities to make out at the side of the pool, with him half in the water between my legs, and me sitting on the side, leaning down to—

Oh, _man_.

Kissing him is something I’d really like to do again.

I’m too caught up in the thought of burying my face in the crown of his hair to smell acrid smoke. Reiner pipes up.

“ _Jean, is that bacon meant to be on fire_?”

 

* * *

 

The bacon’s not on fire, thank you very much, Reiner. But it is charred to a blackened crisp, and I don’t even want to feed it to Connie, it’s so far gone. Sasha pokes it around in the frying pan, trying to scrape its sooty remains from the shoddy Teflon, whilst Marco offers to take up cooking the rest of the breakfast. I hand him the fork I’d been flipping stuff with – or not flipping stuff with, as was the problem – and try not to blush thinking about what had distracted me so much as to _cremate_ our breakfast.

Ymir has some jibing comments to make about the stench of bitter smoke when she and Historia finally emerge from their little tent, last of the bunch, and I growl to myself as I sit in the corner with a scrubbing brush, trying my hardest to clean the pans with as minimal water as possible, whilst everyone else chows down on bacon sandwiches.

When he’s safely free of Reiner, Marco edges around the circle to join me, kneeling in the sand a little closer than normal as I try to angrily scrub the burn marks from the bottom of the pan. He has a plate in his hands with his half eaten breakfast – and a spare portion for me – which he carefully picks up and holds out to me.

“You’re going to bust a hole in the bottom of that thing,” he chuckles quietly as the smell of bacon makes my mouth water. “Remind me never to let you cook breakfast ever again.”

My fingers are flecked with black specks of soot and the spray of soap suds, and so – taking a quick peak around the cluster of our friends, who are all thankfully _not_ looking in our direction – I lean forward to take a bite out of the sandwich Marco’s holding out to me. He startles, flushes red, but luckily doesn’t drop it straight into the sand.

“Shu’rrup,” I garble around a mouthful of bread and bacon, not chewing it enough as I attempt to swallow it all too hurriedly. “’S not my fault.” I’m not exactly inclined to tell him that it’s _his_ fault, but he rolls his eyes and snorts, readjusting himself so that he sits cross-legged next to me. He holds out the sandwich for me to take another bite, and chuckles bashfully around his words.

“Right. _Sure_ it isn’t.”

 

* * *

 

I take what I can get – and if that’s Marco feeding me bacon, then it’ll have to do. That’s not saying that it doesn’t irk me when the others start shouting about burying Reiner and demanding that everybody help, because when I’m sifting sand into a bucket to pack around his feet, all I go can do is watch (read: _be distracted by_ ) Marco as he laughs freely, sprinkling sand down Sasha’s back to make her squirm.

I tell myself that I have time. I dunno, but it feels like that’s something we haven’t had before, or at least, not in a good while. There’s time. I don’t know what this is, and I don’t know where it might go, but there’s time to figure that out ahead of us, and time to get better and recover. A few hours ago, I was a different person. I tell myself I can wait a little longer to get him alone again – and at least now I can figure out what to do _when_ I do.

It’s almost very dreamlike, I guess you could say. Something doesn’t seem real – maybe I’m just sleep deprived, or maybe all that blood rushing to my head didn’t do me so much good, or maybe it’s just the spike of elation that floods my system every time his eyes stray back to me, and his smile becomes a little more knowing, and a little more fond, and a little less ruled by that cloud that permeates permanently behind his eyes.

It all makes me blush. Like, a lot. Reiner tells me I’ve got sunburn on my face from where he’s half packed into the sand, and Historia fetches me a tube of sunscreen to slather on my bare skin – but I doubt it’s gonna make much difference to how red I get every time I feel the shiver of a stolen gaze ripple down my spine. ( _You’re a God-damn blushing_ virgin _, Jean_.) It’s a volley of nervous glances and furious flushes that we parry between one another; him having to hide the tell-tale twist of his lips behind a cough into his hand, and me almost choking on my own saliva every time I try to swallow when he looks at me for a long time, and then turns away with a nibble of his lip.

The thought of kissing him again is like a crackle of nervous energy in my stomach; an anxious excitement that has me sweating over what I will do when we finally have the chance to sneak away. _If_ he wants to sneak away, that is. Maybe he wants to take it slowly. That’s cool with me. Probably best for me too, because the thought of finding the courage again to just reach out and hold his hands makes my head swim. I don’t know what sort of crazy wave I was riding this morning, but – well, it was _something_. Blundering around clandestine looks and shy, _knowing_ smiles is rattling me around pretty fucking _well_ , let me tell you; I focus really hard on not combusting, slapping my cheeks to calm myself down every time I think I can steal away from the prying – and slightly wary – eyes of everyone else.

 _Okay Jean, calm down. Stop thinking. Or_ start _thinking, and stop being such a mushy puddle of gloop._

I think it’s wrong to say that I lose the weight off my shoulders all at once – far from it. But that’s not a bad thing, because I can definitely feel the chiselling of scraps of iron from the anchor I’ve grown used to holding me in place, and I find myself _forgetting_. Being able to let the pieces fall and scatter around me, and not wait to stop and stare at them, and think about what they mean; it’s only taken _months_ , but I think I finally feel that spirit of summer, with the breeze that plays acoustically the song of nostalgia, and the temperance of laughter that forms the bass line, and the words and thoughts that float and gather in the air like fluttering ship masts are _exuberant_ , and nothing more.

It’s easy to pretend, to forget, _to not be_ nineteen years old when there’s the taste of salt on your tongue, and your friends are building sandcastles and flinging seaweed at each other or chasing volleyballs down the sand and into the crashing waves, and the boy you love can’t take his eyes off of you. You can be neither young nor old, not straddling that fine line that has you on edge at every other moment about what the future might hold, and what you should’ve done with yourself by now – _you just exist_. And that is a nice feeling.

Even the flecks of shadow in Marco’s eyes don’t make him old; they pass like whisks of cloud do across the bold, yellow sun. They’re present, but they’re also caught up in some high-flying gust, and they’re moving – moving on to pastures new and places that are not here, and not within him anymore.

His grief will stay – I know that. I know it won’t just pass so quickly and disappear into whispered _never agains_ just because of me; that’s not fair on him, and that’s not truthful to the things he needs to feel. Clouds come and ago, and sometimes they’re unpredictable, and sometimes they stay floating in the highest reaches of the stratosphere for a long time, and sometimes they exist as fog on the ground for many mornings in a row, but—

 _But we will learn to live with it_ – he told that to me once. You find a place where it doesn’t bother you anymore, and it just becomes another facet to your multitude of edges. And when I see him laugh so freely, rolling around in the sand when he dives for a ball that Eren tosses his way, only for Sasha and Historia to pile on top of him trying to steal it back, I burn _so fucking brightly_.

 

* * *

 

“Jean! Jean – catch it!”

I make a dive for the sand-smothered ball flying my way, and just manage to tap it with the knuckles of my clenched hands, sending it arching back through the air, before I go rocketing into the shingle on my stomach. I roll over quickly to make sure Connie manages to get to it in time, just to see him completely fall short of hitting the ball, tripping over his own feet, and him, too, face-planting into the lines of the court we’ve drawn out on the wetter sand.

The guys groan, and the girls laugh, exchanging victorious high-fives and woops of celebration, as they hand our asses to us for the fifth game in a row.

“Wanna make it six-nil, Springer?” Ymir cackles, stopping the ball with her foot as it rolls towards her, hands triumphantly on his hips. “Maybe we could let you have a point or two in this round, yeah?”

Connie lifts his head up from a mouthful of sand and seaweed, but actually looks willing to challenge Ymir on that, until Eren scrambles on top of him and squashes him back down into the dirt with a muffled squawk and a violent noogie.

It’s probably for the best, I think – Annie and Mikasa are so fast that I can barely even _see_ the ball until it’s coming flying towards my face at a hundred miles an hour, and it turns out Sasha is some sort of volleyball _champ_ , with the way she manages to reach any ball with an effortless spike and a flip of her ponytail over her shoulder, that never fails to have all of us flailing in different directions to receive it.

You’d think Reiner and Bert would be powerhouses at it, but Bert is like a baby elephant on his feet in the crumbling sand, and whenever Reiner gets near the ball, he whacks it miles out of the court, which has Historia or Armin trailing after it for hundreds of yards down the beach.

They said having the seven of us verses the five girls was unfair at the beginning but … well, they’re not the ones currently pulling themselves out of the sand after suffering unquestionable defeat. I push myself upright, dusting myself down of grit and crushed shells, as Marco jogs over to me, beaming brilliantly with a light sheen of sweat across his forehead, clinging to his t-shirt, and outlining the shape of his chest and stomach beneath the thin fabric.

Okay, so there are _some_ perks to getting our asses whipped.

“Glad someone’s enjoying being _slaughtered_ ,” I remark crassly, but unable to hide the way the corners of my mouth lift in reflex. He slows as he reaches me, hand automatically reaching up behind his head to rub awkwardly at the back of his neck as he smiles bashfully.

“I’ve never played before,” he admits, “But it’s actually really fun.” I snort, but decide not to tell him that whatever we were just playing was most definitely a poor man’s version of _barely_ volleyball.

Instead, as he extends his other hand to help pull me to my feet, a spark of electricity jumping between our palms when I do, and a fleeting brush fuelling the look of exertion in both our faces, I snicker, “ _First time playing_. Trust you to be a God-damn natural at it. Only one not tripping over his own feet before he even reached the ball.”

Marco rolls his tongue over his lips and bites down on it as he tries to hold back a laugh; it looks disgustingly _pretty_ on him. Our hands stay connected for a lingering second before we drop them; yet I take an automated step into him.

“Eren wasn’t that bad,” he says, slyly, “And once Armin got into the swing of it …”

“Are you implying that I _sucked_?” I interject, watching the flash of teeth that appear between his lips and the way he rocks on the balls of his feet, arms folded behind his back playfully now. He shrugs meekly, and I shoot him my best, unimpressed expression.

“I don’t want to bruise your ego, Jean,” he ribs, and wow – _wow_. Too late for that, my ego is _totally_ hurt. Totally, super-duper hurt. How could he imply that _me_ , champion couch surfer, could be useless at a sport I’ve only ever watched on _ESPN_.

Marco laughs, so I swat him on the arm – which only makes him laugh louder, as it were. Butterflies tickle my stomach, and it’s a feeling that I can’t help but be swiftly addicted to. There’s intensity in his eyes as he looks down at me, and I up at him, big, dumb, _goofy_ grin spread across my features, which only gets wider however much I shake my head and tell him that he’s wrong, and I was just _pretending_ to be shit at volleyball.

I’m surprised there’s no chorus of _get a room_ to drown out the way I feel like melting with the way he’s looking at me now – a serene sort of fondness that you either make up in your head, or you see in shitty romance movies starring Colin Firth – and _definitely_ not in real life. But hey, here I am, and if this is some sort of crazy extended dream sequence straight out of _Inception_ or _the Matrix_ , or whatever, I’m really hoping my kick doesn’t come any time soon. I’m kinda enjoying this.

Okay so, not _necessarily_ enjoying the fact I can’t stretch up onto my toes and kiss him – out of the fact we have an audience, and that my knee hasn’t totally started _jittering_. That’s more than a bit irritating, but—

 _But I think I can deal_.

 

* * *

 

We light another bonfire that night, and if last night I was able to feel its warmth, tonight I am able to feel its colour: a hit to my veins of reds, and oranges, and yellows, and even the tips of the flames that sing blue and ethereal amidst the wood smoke.

Connie manages to steal Ymir’s speakers – only after he’s sneakily spent the last hour plying her with beer after beer, just to get her drunk enough to do exactly that without fatal consequence – and he plugs in his iPod so that we’re all victim to his atrocious taste in what amounts to a _good song_ in his books.

The others don’t really care so much; not after they’re hazy with the buzz of alcohol, and Reiner’s swaying against Bert out of time to the beat, and Sasha’s tugging Connie to his feet to dance around the fire, and Ymir’s nestling herself in Historia’s lap like a cat. My grump is only surface deep, after all, and I think I can stomach any amount of Nicki Minaj or Taylor Swift that gets thrown at me, especially with my shoulder sandwiched up against Marco’s, a purr in my chest, and a beer can in my hand.

I press the edge of the can to my lips and slurp back a mouthful, shuffling myself closer to him at the same time – not that there’s anywhere really to go from here, already pressed in all possible ways against each other. I scoot the arm I have supporting me in the sand further around his back, my fingers creeping until they find his; he bites his bottom lip to conceal a smile and turns his head away when I try to interlace his fingers and mine behind us, and he gives me a gentle, bashful nudge in the shoulder, just as Sasha comes prancing over, having spun out of Connie’s hold.

“Marco, Marco – come and dance!” she chirps excitedly, holding out both her hands to him as she rocks on her feet to the synth of guitar and auto tune blaring from the stereo. I hope that if I slurp aggressively enough at my beer and squeeze his fingers tight enough in mine, that she might move on and try and pester someone else to dance – but that’s putting too much faith in Marco not wanting to make her happy, the God-damn _saint_. Barely moments after managing to find his hand do his fingers wriggle away from mine, and Sasha’s hauling him to his feet with an ecstatic laugh.

She twirls him around in circles, and he ducks his head as he laughs, the pair of them blundering care-free through the sand. It’s barely dancing, and it’s got no rhythm, no coordination in how Sasha leads him in a pirouette, giggling loudly as he surprises her with a dip when he spins back into her. They trip over outstretched legs left, right, and centre, and Eren blows a wolf whistle when Connie tries to steal his girlfriend back, but Sasha blatantly ignores him, pulling Marco to a stop in front of me again once they’ve danced one revolution of the fire.

She extends a hand to me, the other one still holding tightly onto Marco’s, and I squint at it like she’s presenting me some alien object.

“C’mon, Jean,” she smiles, her dark eyes sparkling and her happiness confineless, “Come daaaaance!”

I shake my head and lower my eyes, despite Marco’s gentle stare, and press my beer can back to my lips, feeling a heat rise in my cheeks.

“No thanks. ‘S alright,” I say, and Sasha pouts, “Got two left feet.”

“No excuse!” she squawks, dropping Marco’s hand and leaning down to scrabble for both of mine, tugging at the sleeves of my shirt. “C’mon, c’mon!”

My beer sloshes around in the can as she pulls at my arms, and I let myself be dragged to my feet, if only to save myself from losing any beer into the sand. Sasha’s quick to steal my can away though, and thrust it into Marco’s open hands, linking both _her_ hands with mine just as a new song starts.

It’s an undeniable truth that I can’t dance – and I’d need way more beer than what I’ve had to be able to _think_ that I _could_ – but I let her spin me around, and the world around us blurs for a moment into a paint smear of orange and yellow against the shadows and shapes of dark blue. I look ridiculous, but I imagine I probably looked ridiculous to her sitting on the side-lines nursing a beer with a heavy set frown, so I go with it. Connie joins us, and then a drunken Ymir wheeling around a happily giggling Historia, and it’s all a mess, but of memories that I know will be the best thing I ever had.

Marco laughs from his spot in the sand, and then devolves to clapping along to the beat, and then to watching with a fond and distant smile, lost, somewhere, to chorus laughter and wood smoke in our lungs and the red string of fate that keeps me looking back at him every time Sasha spins me away from her.

There’s a spell that slips over all of us, doused in fire light and star light and the sound of the rushing sea, and it tells me that it was okay to laugh like I was never lonely; like none of us were ever lonely. Because we _were_ – all of us – not just Marco and me. Maybe just for a year; maybe for a lifetime.

But it feels alright now. I stood, and I stumbled, and waded distances through all my thoughts and my heart, and here I am now, feeling like I’m standing on the precipice of a cliff overlooking a sea full of stars, and I am more than willing to go plunging forward into the depths of constellations pitted purple and blue and opalescent.

My head spins with incandescent galaxies, but amongst the swirl of fire and the black blanket of night, I will always gravitate towards Marco and his inescapable orbit. I watch him stand slowly, almost unwillingly as his eyes linger longingly on our laughter, and he leaves my beer propped up in the sand; Reiner passes him words I cannot hear, and a pat on the back, and Bert, a sympathetic smile, as Marco remains for a moment, before wandering away from the halo of flickering light cast on the fire around our moving feet. It’s the same as last night, and whilst I taste that same twinge of pain in my stomach, I know _I_ am different this time.

I crane my head to watch him leave over Sasha’s shoulder, squinting into the hazy darkness, until Sasha catches my chin between her fingers, and turns me back to face her with a smile unexpectedly unreadable for her. She doesn’t say anything, and really, at the end of the day, she doesn’t need to. We’ve known each other long enough. She shifts her hand to my face, and cups my jaw for a fleeting moment, before releasing me to follow the invisible thread that’s pulling me away –

– and after him.

I slip away amidst their laughter and their brash happiness, following the footprints in the sand, even though Marco’s not far ahead of me, and I can make out his silhouette in the echoes of the fire and pale moonlight. I imagine that same, silver light refracting on the fine spindles that connect our pinkies – our _hearts_ , didn’t I say? – and that tugs me forward and that strings me up to make a web in which to cradle him when the blueness returns in drips and drabs.

I catch up with him when he stops a little distance from the shoreline, staring out at the reflection of the moon on the water, like a long, white path that stretches from him to the horizon. My footsteps aren’t exactly quiet, with shells crunching beneath the soles of my flip flops as they slap on the sand, but he doesn’t turn until I’m right by his side, all the voices that surround us in the deep distance fading out when he takes a breath.

“Hey,” he says simply, offering up a small smile, and I try best to return it.

“Hi,” I reply, just as courtly, wriggling my toes into the cooling sand. When he doesn’t speak immediately, I continue, carefully, “You … you doing alright?”

He sighs heavily, and he lifts his face to the sky just a little bit, and I watch the bob of his throat as he swallows it down. “Yeah … ” he says slowly, “Yeah, I’m okay.”

He’s not – or at least, he’s partially not, and he’s struggling with that part of him. I want to remind him that it’s okay. To tell him that his happiness and his sadness aren’t mutually exclusive, and it’s okay to be able to feel them both at the same time.

I don’t want to stop him thinking about his dad, because there’s still a space that has to be made to mourn, and however lost we might get in this little corner of the world won’t change those facts we have to face.

It’s the least I can do to be his crutch as he goes through the motions of it all; as he bobs and ebbs on this shifting tide as it turns away from the shore.

“Do you … wanna go for a walk?” I suggest softly, which brings his eyes back down from the starscape, and onto mine once more, even though I still see the reflection of luminous constellations within them. He quietly nods, so I lead the way, measuring my steps to fall beside him, and we walk forward together.

He’s quiet for a while, but it’s a shifting quiet; he dawdles from the straight line we’re following, weaving towards the sea edge to meander through waves that lick his bare feet, whilst I make sinking footprints in the soft sand just above the line of washed up seaweed a few feet away from him, appreciating the gentle splash of each of his steps, and not wincing away from it.

He seems to catch me watching him so protectively, because he pauses mid-step and twists to face me, letting water rushes through the space between his ankles.

“I’m sorry,” he says suddenly, as if something has just flooded back into him; it takes me a moment to understand what he means, until he looks down at the water submerging his feet.

“’S alright,” I say, because the honest truth of it is that the thought of the water as _water_ hasn’t even crossed my mind, and it’s just habit keeping me away from the water’s edge. “I’m not so bothered by it.”

He doesn’t linger in the water as it is, stomping in the deep sand and then rejoining me upon the natural bank of shells and stones that only this morning we had— well, _you know_.

Just the thought of being pressed into the sand makes me quake, and the breath in my lungs swirl in shivering circles at the memory of roaming hands and roaming lips and dream-like words that I never quite thought I’d hear beyond the throes of sleep. It was _real_ , right? It wasn’t just a fluke of my imagination?

“What are you thinking about?” comes Marco’s voice, and the brush of his shoulder against mine as our pace slows to a fraction.

I blush, and I’m thankful that the dark hides it; I chew the inside of my cheek, and decide not to tell him that I’m thinking about kissing him again.

“I dunno. Just stuff,” I reply quietly; he hums in response, but nothing more. He looks so beautiful in the pale light – I’ll say it time and time again, and I’ll flush every time I do, but I’ll _sear_ the words into my soul if I have to – even in the way his silhouette casts partially over my skin.

We walk a little bit further through the reprise of the waves and the tremor of wind through the marram grass in the dunes, and the music in the distance grows faint with every step we wander towards the deep shade of the cliffs. I’m happy enough just being with him like this, I think. That’s all I ever needed, and all I would have settled for, if it came down to it.

Marco surprises me when he stops, taking a half step in front of me to catch my hand in his. (And my face all but _explodes_ with the rush of static electricity that pulses through my veins in the same moment.) I look up at him, in his three inches of height above me, in earnest and in wide-eyed expectation.

“Do you want to dance, Jean?”

I gulp loudly, and my jaw clenches.

“I can’t dance.”

 _Not that I won’t dance_.

Marco’s lips crack into the ghost of an amused smile, and he links my other hand with his now, too, twining our fingers together with a tentative squeeze.

“That’s okay.”

I don’t think he wants to dance explicitly, but I think he wants to hold me, and that’s perfectly okay with me. More than okay, actually. One hundred percent, definitely _okay_.

 _Everything_ is okay.

He ducks his head bashfully, and he pulls me flush against his chest, moulding my arms around his waist for me. I find finger holds in his shirt as I press my nose against his shoulder, revelling in the warmth that comes with being encircled by _his_ arms, tight around my shoulders. I breathe him in – and out again, and he buries his nose in the crown of my hair with a gentle nuzzle.

“This is embarrassing,” I grouse into the neckline of his shirt. I feel the murmur of his lips against the top of my head.

“I know it is.”

“ _You bastard_.”

He chuckles, and I feel every vibration of it enter my chest as _ripples_ ; starting small, but growing large, spreading from the warm confines of my chest to the far-tingling reaches of my fingers and toes as we rock from side to side in a soft sway to no music but our own.

I’m gonna stumble as I figure this out – I think that’s a given. But a lot of things are a given: he smells even better when I have my face pressed against the base of his neck, his hands are warm where they massage across the vanishing tension in my should blades, and I didn’t think I could fall in love with someone again and again with every passing day, but here we are.

Here we _are_. Just a touch of his hand would do it, and I’ve been given far more than that.

I think I’m more than willing to give this a shot. Him. Us. _Me_.

“Hey, Marco?”

“Yeah?”

I wrinkle my nose, and nuzzle a little bit closer into the crook of his neck.

“’S this what you need? To help … help you fix yourself?”

He stops us swaying, and pulls back just enough that he can run his hands over my shoulders and look me in the eyes.

“It’s not what I _need_ ,” he tells me gently, fingers ghosting to cup my neck, thumbs stroking at the underside of my jaw. “It’s what I _want_. I don’t _need_ to use you like that, but I— I _want_ happiness with you. I want _you_.”

My heart flutters and trembles and threatens to stop; I swallow it down thickly, and he continues, eyes searching my face.

“And it’s going to take a while for … for _everything_ to go away. It might never. I— I don’t know how it works. I might be sad for a long time. Is that okay?”

There are no words that I could fathom – that _anyone_ could fathom – to answer a question like that beyond a simple nod. So I nod, and he whispers again, like he’s reminding himself of a promise made.

“ _I want you_.”

My hearts keeps missing beats, and the air between us permeates like its nothingness, like it’s an inconsequential vacuum that really need not exist much longer.

Someone could’ve told me that loving a person could feel like this – but I don’t think I would’ve believed them. I will get lost in this. But I’m so willing. _So willing_.

I’m gonna flounder and I’m gonna fall, and there will still be days where I hate myself and the greyness just won’t go away. There will still be days when I won’t feel like I can find the strength to get out of bed, or believe that I was lucky enough to have a person like him in my life. There will be days when I won’t believe this is real, and it’s just a figment of my fucked up imagination.

But there will be more days when I know that there is nothing I can’t do with the fuel that loving him pumps into my lonely veins.

Here, right now, I am _undefeatable_.

This is how the story goes now: I untie my arms from his waist and I drag my fingers up and over his chest, and the pounding of his heart, and the mess of ribbons that tie us together in knots that my clumsy fingers will never undo. I dance tremulously over the slope of his neck, over the prickle of his jaw, over the apples of his cheeks; I tilt his head down to mine with my hands furled in his hair, and our foreheads rest against one another with one last, exultant breath.

And then, under the light of thousands and thousands of stars, I kiss him.

That’s all there is to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hallelujah, am I right?
> 
> Hope you enjoyed what the last 320,000 words have been building up to LMAO. I wasn't joking when I tagged this fic as slow build. This chapter is 42,000 words long though ... how the diddly frick did that happen? Yeah, I don't know either, but I couldn't find a good place to cut it, so here we are, warts and all. Apologies for literally 20k of Jean moping but ... both him and I have lost control of our lives. I tried to keep it fresh with imagery, so I hope it's not boring?
> 
> I really hope I did a good job with all the physicality as well, and that I included enough detail so that their kisses were tangible, but not clumsy to read, ya' feel? Let me know how it was!
> 
> Also, big shout out to the line that the title stems from! Now you know why the fic is called Droplets, heh.
> 
> The next chapter will deal with some more of the consequences of what's happened; this chapter was more just about it /happening/. Neither Marco's grief nor Jean's insecurities are light things to carry, and will not be going away easily. They will tackle more of the stuff said at the outlook in the next chapter as well, and understand more about what each other is feeling, so do not fret. There's an awful lot of fluff on the horizon.
> 
> Songs recs for this chapter include: Say You Love Me (Jessie Ware), Oceans (Coasts), Old Pine (Ben Howard), These Waters (Ben Howard), Aerials (Lights & Motion), Tenerife Sea (Ed Sheeran), aaaand Thinking Out Loud (Ed Sheeran). Wow, that's quite a lot! But that's what I was listening to whilst writing this monster. 
> 
> Big thanks to everyone for the largest amount of feedback /ever/ on the previous chapter ... it's been a month, and I still haven't emptied my inbox, and that's after only being able to choose 10% of asks to reply to LMAO Reminder that I do read everything though, and I really appreciate comments left on here (AO3), as well as on Tumblr. Super thank you to everyone who drew for the last chapter, or quoted it, or left me feedback, or encouraged me, or put up with me shrieking on Twitter. I was very excited to finally write this.
> 
> Lemme know how it goes! Until next time!


	20. Sweet Child O' Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're afraid of the water, aren't you?

When I was fifteen, I kissed a girl called Hitch.

I don’t know if you could call it my first _proper_ kiss – because I don’t know if playground smooches from Sasha when I was six counted, or if anything could be said about the blur of teenage parties amidst girl’s soft lips – but it was the first one that ever amounted to anything.

She didn’t kiss like other girls, like weepy, soft, or delicate girls – her kisses bit and her laughter was always brash, but it was that _sting_ that made it exciting. I was fuelled the boastfulness in my veins. You know how teenage boys are.

It was the feeling of being pressed up against the bike shed, and the rough grain of wood scraping down my back as her busy hands scattered across what skin she could find beneath my shirt. It was the frenzied breaths and the heaving chests and her slight frame pressed up against mine, and it was _hurried_. It was always hurried, but I liked it that way, when I had it.

When you’re fifteen, there are fewer kisses to set your sun against. I know that now.

And I’m glad of it. I’m glad to not have had a kiss as good as this until this moment where my toes are submerged deep in the sand and the tide laps the sleepy shore. Hell, I wouldn’t even mind if I _had_ had good kisses, because they wouldn’t be able compare any more.

Marco’s fingers twist tightly in the small of my back in a desperate drumming to keep me pressed flush against him. His lips move slowly at first – and mine too – because it’s still new, and we’re still tentative around the fireworks that light up between us with every swapped caress of breath and with every curl of my hands in his hair – but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s the sort of kiss that would make fifteen year old me weak at the knees.

Not saying that I’m not weak at the knees _now_ – because fuck me, I am. I really am, and it’s my fingers in his hair and his arms around my waist that are keeping me upright against the tremble in my legs and the vivacious, pink heat flooding through my cheeks.

It’s the sort of kiss that starts with a prickle of heat when he hums breathily into my mouth and tugs on my lower lip with his teeth, but that soon surges into the feeling of every ocean inside of me being set ablaze. Marco’s swollen lips are soft, and his kisses don’t bite – even if he nibbles at my lower lip against a smile and I feel all the blood in my body shooting to make my head spin in an ecstatic second – and the gentle movement of his mouth on mine is that sort of thing that encourages the rising chorus of an epic ballad in a movie soundtrack or whatever, but there’s still something _electric_ here.

A different sort of electricity to what I had with Hitch, or with any girl I might’ve kissed at some drunken party – it’s a quiver that tickles my heart, and makes it feel like my lungs might be squishing it, in a way that makes me gasp into his open mouth. I wonder if he can taste all the words that sit on the back of my tongue – all the words that don’t really _have_ a taste, because they’re _barely_ words at all, and how can there be language that can do justice to the feeling in my chest and the tingle in my hands as I let them sweep down the back of his neck to pull him deeper into the kiss.

I can’t place the feeling, but I know it’s found in the brush of his nose up against mine, and the little pants of humid breath, and the thought of the dimples of his smile up so close. He smiles as he kisses me, and his breath rattles as if the smell of cheap aftershave and sea salt makes something inside in his chest erupt.

It feels good to be wanted. It feels good _not_ to feel wood up against my back, and it feels good _not_ to feel glances pass over my head, and it feels good to be away from the empty, white walls of home. It feels uncomplicated, and it feels right, and it feels _warm_.

His arms are warm, his chest is warm, his lips are warm when he peppers them across the corner of my mouth and the line of my jaw, and buries them in the crook of my neck with a fleeting peck between each breath. I let my fingers run through his shallow undercut, exploring the prickle of hair and the swell of heat from his skin and the contours of his shoulder blades as I let my touch spread wider, and I hold him tight.

The whisper of his mouth across my collarbones is like wellspring water, some trickle of crystalline clarity that bubbles with each butterfly kiss up and down my throat, some bright transparency that I would baptise myself in for the way it clears the fog from the closer recesses of my mind and leaves the moment as just us, _just ours_. The moment stretches out like sunlight, and I could fool myself into not believing that it’s dark, with quick bloodstreams and an ache in my chest and in my hips like the imprint of hoofbeats on the sea-packed sand.

He stops the kisses after a while, nuzzling the base of my neck with his nose with a content murmur, and then rests his chin on my shoulder, hands still fisted in the hem of my shirt. I smooth my palms across his back, and try to match my breathing with his, drawing us out of the cloud of hasty breaths to a slower rise and fall as we sway from side to side.

As the rushing sound of the sea comes back to me through the quiet, I keep my lips pressed in a taught line, trying to keep his kisses inside of me as I let myself be held – and _I_ hold _him_. Being awash with the feeling is enough. It feels more important – _more vital_ – than anything else in this moment. Our parallel heartbeats are magnetic.

God, I wish I could write back to myself at six, to myself at fifteen, to myself of last year, or last month, or last week – and tell him: _y’know, it’s gonna be okay. For a moment. Maybe longer. It’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna feel okay again for one perfect, beautiful moment, and it’ll be enough to make you feel indestructible._

_This part of your life is gonna work out._

I draw circles across his shoulders, and over the neckline of his shirt, and up into his hairline with gentle hums against his ear, and it feels like he deflates where the ocean whorls of my fingertips ghost across his smattering sand grain of freckles. His own fingers steal beneath the hem of my shirt and push the fabric gently up against my spine as he dances against the hollow of the small of my back, each trepid touch like a drugged-up shot to my humid whispers and the bundle of nerves and bones that hitch beneath his tentative will. I tug gently at the roots of his thick hair, and am granted the bare bones of a fragile _whimper_ , swallowed up by the salted skin of my neck where he presses his mouth.

More details merge back into focus: the grit of sand between my toes, and the darker shadow of the limestone cliffs against the nebulous dark, and the moonlight on the water that lights up the surf and white sand with whiter light.

I let my hands stroke through his hair a few times more, still soft despite the frosting of sea salt, before letting my fingers sift across the prickle of his jaw if only to find how well his chin fits in the palm of my hand as I draw him upright to face me again. He blinks heavily a few times, clearing the gloss of pink intensity from his face.

“You good?” I ask him gently as his lips flower into the fondest sort of smile, his dark eyes pricked with moonlight roaming over my face. He nods, and unties one fist from my shirt to press his fingers shyly against the side of my face. I try not to lean into it too much, but I’m weak, and _boy_ , it feels good. (And what’s a little bit of self-indulgence, right?)

“I’m good,” he replies softly, and I’ll tell you now that I could both easily and _never_ get used to being looked at like … like _this_. There’s an openness in his face that I’ve missed – or perhaps never seen. It’s all mushy and tender, and filled with sentiment that I’d normally be too proud to admit to liking, but I _like_ the way it looks on his face. I like the way it draws his eyebrows up and I like the way it makes his smile so fucking _pretty_ and I like the way it makes our hands drop from one another’s faces to find each other’s fingers in the small space between our beating bodies.

It’s fucking sappy. And I love it.

I fight back the shyness that tickles me and that trembulates in my fingers laced with his, but I doubt I’m as successful in beating back the blush that soars in my cheeks – but it’s dark, and I’m hoping it’s hidden by that much.

 _Not that it matters_. Not that it matters any more.

“You wanna go back?” Marco says, leaning his forehead against mine; his eyes flicker closed, and I gulp loudly, the pound of my heart a rhythmic pump within my chest. Warmth radiates from his skin to mine.

The sound of Connie’s music has died out against the acoustic whir of wind in the marram grass across the sand dunes, and the sound of lapping waves upon the shore. Our sweeping breaths make a better song – one that feels drunken and woozy, save for the fact my senses are _alive_ and every twitch in my nerves acute one hundred-fold.

“Mm, n-not really,” I mumble, twisting my fingers bashfully in his, before pulling away from him and taking a step back to fill my lungs with air a different sort of clearness. I swing our combined fingers stretched between us, and try to focus on their pendulum movement instead of on the way his eyes are focussed deeply on my face. I feel a pre-emptive rush of heat wash over me, clogging up my veins stickily sweet. “Kinda … I dunno. Kinda want to _make out in the sand_.”

Marco snorts loudly and draws me back in, a breathy, despairing chuckle rising in his throat as I huff pointedly.

“Do you even like the sand?” he smirks, nudging me with his foot when he doesn’t want to unclasp our hands. “It’s wet and it’ll stick to your jeans.”

I puff out my cheeks, and skitter my gaze away to stare intently out at the sea through a forced scowl.

“I like _you_ , though,” I say gruffly – Marco laughs again, but more _brightly_. Everything about him glows with a gentle, hazy gleam – but it’s God-damn _ethereal_. He’s happy. He’s really fucking _happy_.

“You’re pouting,” he says, unable to stifle his grin as he tries to reintercept my line of sight, shifting us around until his back is to the sea and his silhouette is illuminated by the faint moonlight, despite my stubborn avoidance of his face.

“Am _not_.”

“You _definitely_ are.” He laughs again, and this time I turn peek back up at him, finding his expression brimming with an all-encompassing smile. “Let’s head back to the tent, Jean.”

I roll my eyes, but it’s too much trouble to try to conceal the smile that quirks at the corners of my mouth, however hard I try to screw my lips up into a pucker, and however hard Marco laughs at me as he twists me around and we fall into step together, our feet sinking into the sand as we walk.

The bonfire simmers in the sandpit, pluming grey-purple smoke and hissing with ashen wood and faint flecks of orange-yellow embers; the others have dispersed and left the sand strewn with empty beer bottles and abandoned shoes, but we take our time to wander back none the less. I could spends eons staring into the far-reaching space of a city-clear sky, in its magnificent dark blueness sprinkled with the fine plights of silver and more, but I could spend _longer_ in the confines of his chartered freckles, and he catches me, more than once, staring at him as we walk, plotting paths across the cosmos of little dots that speckle his neck and his jaw and across the bridge of his nose. He smiles, you know, and it’s just as good as any endless, rotating galaxy of stars and pristine planets, and it’s filled with the light of campfire stories and the boundless energy of the sea and a love that maybe I can deserve now.

My chest tightens just thinking about it, and for every one of his reassuring, quiet smiles, I have to duck my head and swallow the lump in my throat thickly and remind myself that this is one _hell_ of a incognizant universe to be throwing myself into, with or without enough oxygen to measure my breaths when he squeezes my hand or when I spot him nibbling on his lip from the corner of my eye or when he offers me another, fucking _magical_ curve of his perfect lips. 

Doesn’t matter. There’s no oxygen in space. Breathing is overrated.

The fire embers smoulder and punctuate the dark with specks of orange, even as Marco nudges a wave of dry sand over the last remnants of burning wood. Soft snores resonate from Ymir’s little tent, and from the big tent: lower and throatier and definitely Reiner. Marco doesn’t drop my hand, even when he struggles to undo the front flap of the tent with just one set of fingers, and even when we have to pick our way across a Tetris set of sprawled bodies on the floor. Annie is coiled around Mikasa amidst a pile of sleeping bags – one of which clearly Eren’s judging by the way _he’s_ starfished nakedly across the ground mat, hand resting on the slither of bare stomach beneath his shirt and mouth wide open as he grumbles in his sleep, causing Armin, folded up beside him, to stir slightly, before nuzzling back into his tangle of pillows and blankets.

I’m surprised neither of us falls on our faces or trips over any protruding limbs, but we manage to stumble into our pod in one piece; I flop down on my roll matt and the pile of our abandoned sleeping bags with a _thud_ as Marco zips up the door behind us.  

Tent walls are thin – I know that, and I’ve warned _Ymir_ about that enough times to know better – so I shuffle to make space for him without saying a word, pushing our stuff to the side so that he can kneel in front of me.

He rests his hands on his thighs and his eyes dip between my face and the floor, before straying back to my lips – or at least I think they do, because the little light inside the tent is grey and fuzzy, and that’s only after my own eyes have grown used to it.

“You … you can kiss me if you want,” I breathe baitedly, the air in my lungs and the rustle of my clothes as I edge forward _ridiculously_ loud.

Marco chews his lower lip meekly. “That would be … _cool_.”

He leans forward with barely a peck that gets lost on the way to my lips, hitting the corner of my mouth clumsily, as if he’s suddenly so much shier within close confines. Or, well, I suppose I was the one initiating the kissing before. I don’t know how much courage it took for him to extend himself and do it the first time. (Hell, a lot more than any courage _I_ ever had, clearly.)

“Hey,” I murmur, catching his chin in my fingers as he draws away, and rocking up onto my knees to chase him for another, humid touch. “Hold up there, sport.”

I keep it chaste, but let my lips linger until I feel him relax, and his hand begins to drift up the side of my arm, curling fingers around my bicep. I mumble incoherently against his mouth and then pull away, dropping one last graze for good, _selfish_ measure onto his parted lips and allowing myself a second or two to appreciate his myopic blinks in the blue darkness.

I roll away from him then, and start scrambling through our sleeping bags to separate them and find the ends of the zips, which is more than a little difficult in the dark and with fingers that tremble with an elastic sort of energy. Marco watches me for a while, his head titled onto his shoulder until he realises that I’m trying – _badly_ – to zip our two sleeping bags together, and scoots over to help my fumbling hands, although his motor skills appear just as bad and his fuzzy brain just as badly wired.

Still though, we manage, and we change with our backs to each other in the small space – and never have I been so quick to throw off my t-shirt and jeans and change into my pyjamas, eagerly diving under the makeshift blanket when I’m done. Marco is a little more hesitant, slipping on his bed shirt with a roll of his shoulders – and a flex of his back muscles which I wish I had a clearer view of – before turning back to face me, cautiously hesitant on the edge of his roll mat. I wriggle further down beneath the covers, until it’s just my nose poking out over the edge, and watch him silently as he crawls over and slides beneath his side of the sleeping bag composite.

He warms the space beneath pretty quickly, but lies on his back with his arms folded over his stomach, staring at the ceiling, mimicking my posture like we’re a pair of sardines in a can. I could probably reach out and find his hand somewhere in the darkness, and twine our fingers together beneath the cover of the sleeping bags, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. It feels like that elastic energy needs pinging like a rubber band.

I huff loudly, and turn to look at him – he does the same upon hearing my disgruntled noise.

“C’mere,” I say firmly, worming my way out from under the blankets, and laying my arms open. “’S not good enough. C’mere.”

Marco pauses for a moment – just long enough for me to start feeling like an idiot and begin questioning if I’m pushing for too much too quickly – but then he rolls over, finding immediate handholds in the fabric of my shirt as he draws himself against me and rests his head on my chest. My heart skips a little beat, and I wonder, with his ear pressed so close to my sternum, if he can hear it.

Carefully, I manoeuver one arm around his shoulder to pull him closer, and let my other one fall upon my stomach after tugging the sleeping bags up a little further around us, even though there’s no chill to ward off in the slightest.

“… This is nice,” Marco murmurs, and I feel the vibrations of his words through the thin fabric of my shirt, raising pimples along my skin.

“Y-yeah,” I find myself whispering back, daring to twine my nervous fingers in his mop of hair, only to be rewarded with a content hum trickling from his lips. There’s cold sand at the bottom of our sleeping bags and still stuck between my toes, and I guess Marco feels it too, because he draws his long legs up and tangles one of them with both of mine.

When I remind myself to breathe, I find the escapes me with a telling tremble.

I try to settle, letting my head flump back into my makeshift hoodie-pillow and the rise and fall of my chest find a more melodic rhythm, _but it’s hard_ – what with the wakeful dexterity in my fingers as they revel in the feeling of carding through his thick hair, and the way he slowly dips his head into the crook of my neck and dampens the layer of warm air that clings to my skin, _intoxicatingly_.

Okay. Okay. Let’s not have an aneurism here.

Sleep’s not gonna come any time soon – I’m too alive with that tingling energy, and I feel every pin-prick of it: from the balls of my feet to the pads of my fingertips, and I wonder if it flows into him too through where I touch him. I don’t know how I stay still, because everything’s veering on the verge of _entropic_ , and what begs at the frayed edges of my self is that feeling of wanting to squirm away from something, whilst revelling in its chaotic giddiness at the same time. Almost like the frenzied feeling of being tickled – because you want to kick and flail and get away from crass fingers, but at the same time, laughter bubbles from your chest and makes you _whole_.

Both overbearing and not enough. _Simultaneously_. I think that’s it.

I feel one of his hands relax its grasp on my shirt, and his fingers splay gently over my chest, as if he’s curiously and quietly exploring the way air gradually fills my lungs and then expels again. He absorbs my breath – once, twice, three times – and then begins to walk his fingers in a meander towards my navel where my own hand lays flat. He pokes softly at my own fingers until I give in and let him twine our grips together once more.

My palm is gross and sweaty. I hope he doesn’t notice. I don’t think he’s thinking about it.

“’M sorry,” I hear him murmur – but my senses are too _bustling_ to fool myself into thinking his voice is part of a dream or a riff from the distant shoreline.

“What for?” I ask gently, stilling my hand in his hair but not removing it. He doesn’t look up at me, making sure to keep his nose buried safely in my shoulder. He feels a lot smaller than he actually is.

“For taking so long,” he says, “I was never sure if you … _y’know_. I should’ve taken the risk sooner.”

“’S alright,” I reply, “I, uh … well, me and my _mixed signals_ , r-right?” My breathy chuckle is probably drier than I‘d like it to be, but it doesn’t really matter, because Marco gets what I’m hinting at immediately.

“I’m sorry about that too.”

“It’s okay. Don’t blame you.”

I don’t say that _it doesn’t matter_ , because it did. It _does_. The things he said at the outlook – however polluted by wear or grief or whatever was going through his head – still happened. They’re part of the story now, so I don’t want to forget them or dismiss them, y’know?

It would be a lie to say the memory doesn’t interpose the feeling in my chest with something darker and something bluer – but it’s not necessarily a bad feeling. Not anymore.

I feel Marco swallow thickly, and his fingers squeeze mine a little tighter. I wait for him to speak again.

“That time … in the pool,” he says slowly. “I was going to kiss you.”

“I know,” I find myself breathing back.

“But you pulled away.”

“I know.”

There’s a cruel sense of irony, isn’t there – the way I’d ducked out of his reach for want of space that time, and then the way he’d pushed me away with his hand at the outlook. It’s a parallel, it’s an echo, it’s the tightly woven threads of where our stories come together.

We were both lonely then.

“I – I wanted to … to kiss you,” I say, with forwardness surprising myself, but that’s always coaxed out from the recesses of your chest by the beckoning of night-time honesty. Marco shifts against me and finally raises his head, propping his chin on my chest so that he can look up at my face through his thick eyelashes and through the blue-grey dark. My words catch and trip over themselves, but I force them out. “I really wanted to. But I didn’t want _you_ to kiss _me_.”

Marco’s face furrows, but it doesn’t fall into a frown – and I wonder if he gets what I mean. I wonder if he knows how much I was torn that day, and every day, about wanting to say something, but being held back by my own fear, and more intrinsically, by the fact it wasn’t the right time for _him_.

(If I was ever allowed to make that judgement.) (I don’t know how to ask about that yet.)

Marco wriggles his free hand out from where it’s trapped between me and him, and in the dark, blindly searches my chest for the outlines of my piercings beneath my shirt. He skitters over the contours of my collar bones, but when his thumb rubs over the little silver ball strung through my clavicle, my breath hitches.

Marco goes very still, for a moment, but then tests the waters again with another tentative swipe across the metal.

I manage to catch myself before I fucking _whimper_ , but the noise that still escapes me is a breathy sort of whine.

There’s the same feeling as before – the same as the last time he touched me like this: the bottle rocket that lights up one thousand shades of red in my face – but the _intensity_ is different. In his eyes, I mean. It’s not misplaced, like before. It’s not far away, like before.

I’d say it’s more sated, and calmer too – but not without a flash of _curiosity_ as he traces my piercings for a third time, this time with a lighter feather-touch.

I try to squirm myself upright a little, propping myself up on one elbow just enough to give me a better look down at his face. I squint in the darkness, which creases the skin between my eyebrows with frown lines.

Marco’s quick to react, unlacing our fingers resting on my stomach, and pressing his thumb against the grooves in my scowl, trying to smooth them out with a few, soft strokes between my thin eyebrows.

I would snort – because it’s so _cheesy_ , and if I was watching it happen to any other person, I’d have more than one snide remark to make – but it’s different when it’s _you_. It’s different when it’s a gossamer touch that trails off when my gaze softens, and he pops a warm smile.

I’m never gonna get over this. Never ever. _Never fucking ever_.

“H-how long?” I blurt out, probably too loudly for both our likings, and I wince as I expect to hear the sounds of stirring in the tent, or the shout of something crude from Connie and Sasha’s pod next door. Thankfully, there’s nothing, save for the way Marco tilts his head questioningly. I steel myself, and continue more quietly. “H-how long have you … _y’know_.”

Liked me. Loved me. _That_ thing.

“Since my birthday,” he replies soundlessly, barely pausing to think. “D’you remember? It was a week after, and you were sitting on your roof smoking. And you told me “ _if bad ideas were an Olympic event, I woulda just taken the Gold_ ” when I climbed up to join you. _Since then_.”

“Oh. That’s … a long time.”

Marco sighs, but it’s not a weary sort of sigh. It breathes memory of how it felt to hold his hand for the first time on that rooftop that day.

 _Just be you, Jean._ I remember the sound of his words clearly.

“What about you?” he asks, stilled fingers returning to toying with my piercing through my shirt. The pad of his thumb flicks against the silver ball. Does he want me to give him a coherent answer or—

“F-fireflies,” I choke out, “I-I mean … the night on the outlook, with the fireflies, and— _y-yeah_.” If I had a free hand to run down my face in embarrassment over my stumbling, I would. But fortunately, he’s got them both occupied: one in his hair, and the other caught by his traversing fingers again somewhere on the plains of my chest.

“You drew on my arm.”

“Y-yep.”

“I … I liked that.”

“… I-I did too.”

I think he smiles from what I can make out, and it makes the cavities in my chest, down to the very last pocket of air in my lungs, vibrate and flutter. I let my fingers begin to massage through the cowlicks of his dark hair again, and it’s nice, _so nice_ , it’s—

“You have like, _five chins_ from this angle, you know.”

I splutter loudly, somewhere between a snort of brash laughter, and an offended squawk. Marco chuckles to himself, briefly pressing his face down into my chest to conceal his amusement, before lifting it to meet my eyes again.

“O-ouch, man,” I stutter, craning my neck a little to try and minimise the number of double chins I have going on. “I thought you _liked_ me.”

He laughs again, the musical lilt subdued by the pressed quiet, but I feel the reverberations of it wrangle through him and I, _deeply_.

“You’re still handsome with five chins,” he teases lightly, and I scoff – if only to hide my stuttering blush.

“N-nice. _Nice_. You’re _so_ kind to me.”

He chuckles lightly, but stills his roaming hands and he wriggles closer – as if there’s any _closer_ to be had – as he settles down. I watch his eyes close and his breathing begins to even out – becoming a steady ebb that rises with mine and flitters out across the base of my throat.

He falls asleep quickly – or feigns it well enough – and I surrender myself to the sound of quiet, sleepy sighs and the murmur of the beach beyond the tent.

There’s a whisper of relief felt against my skin too – a pent up expulsion of _hoping_ for so long. I wouldn’t call it waiting, because I was never _expecting_ anything, and that would be a far different sort of feeling: a flush of respite less satisfactory and less filling, I think.

Being wanted feels good. Really good.

And it feels so much _better_ than being needed.

Knowing I am Marco’s _choice_ is something only indescribable.

I let my cheek drop onto the crown of his head, inhaling the faint smell of sea salt and day’s old shampoo clinging to the dark strands, and I squeeze my eyes tightly shut.

The silence is like a small corner of space; vast and existential but crammed with so many sparks of light that I can imagine infinite arrays of silver stars on the roof of the tent above me, and behind my eyelids also. It’s the feeling that every slow stroke of my fingers across his back lights the fiery trails of comets in my fingertips and maybe in his dreams. There’s the exciting promise of possibility that comes with staring at the dark sky, and picking out patterns in star signs or the rising and setting of planets; I wonder if there is astrology to be found in the freckles that patter his skin. It’s the way the weight of his hand spread on my chest, fingers slightly curled in languid sleep, makes me think of things that implode and things that collapse, and most importantly, things that draw me into an ineffable orbit that is unescapable but brilliant. It’s a force I’ve always felt the pull of – longer ago than any damn _fireflies_ – but now, with his head resting on my shoulder, I know its definition.

There’s something unchartered and bewildering about this planet, this cosmos, this galaxy of _what ifs_ that transform like supernovaing stars into _when wills_ – but I want to know  what it is. I want to learn about it. I want to discover the things that make his breath hitch or his toes curl, or the things that make him smile when he doesn’t want to, or the things that make him drift off into spacial sleep faster.

There’s something alive and breathing and very, very real, but at the same time – _untouchable_.

The thought of space is so often lonely, so often perpetuated by the idea that once you block out planet earth with your thumb, you are small, and you are nothing, and you are _lost_. Just a pebble in the sky.

But I’m not. I feel like a giant.

Nervous, _maybe_. Acutely aware of not moving too much, _yeah_. Counting the breaths that begin to pull me under, _sure_.

But still, a giant.

 

* * *

 

I sleep through the dawn of the next morning, burying my head in soft comfort when the blue-filtered sunlight threatens to make my eyelids flicker.

The sun is already hot, its light fuzzy as it streams through the canvas when I finally feel like stirring; the murmur of bright voices beyond the cover of my sleeping bag makes me grumble groggily.

My arm is numb – I don’t realise it until I try to run a bleary hand across my face and through my hair. It’s not just numb either – it’s distinctly trapped under Marco’s weight. He’s rolled over in the night, but my arms are still thrown over him, and my calves are still tangled in his, and I’m sort of mimicking the posture of a _koala_ in clinging to his back, my nose just a hair’s width from being pressed into the shallow, dark hair on his neck.

I use my free hand to rub the sleep dust from out of my eyes, and I blink slowly, focus pooling on the back of his head, and the neckline of his shirt, and the freckles that peak out from beneath. Drowsiness spins in my forehead and clings to my eyelids, and I find myself dopily tracing lines between his sun-born speckles with a lazy gaze.

The blur of voices around us seems to dip in and out of consciousness, existing mainly on my hazy peripheral as my blear begins to dissolve with the memory of tender touches and sandy kisses.

I grumble again to myself, and pull myself a little closer to him, suctioning against his back and wrapping me free arm around his chest, clinging to the fabric of his shirt.  I nuzzle into the base of his neck, and I hear him murmur incoherently, but not wake. I tease a gentle press of my lips against his clammy skin, and feel lightheaded with the forwardness.

 _Fuck, this is nice_.

Also, kinda _scary_.

Scary, because _look at this_. Look at me. Look at _us_. And think about how this was yesterday morning, and how his nose against my back had been the chill of ice that had made me jump, and the sear of a burn that had made me sweat. And how, now – _now,_ this is the most natural thing in the world.

It feels so _normal_. So easy. Like my mornings were made to wake up this way, with lazy kisses whilst he still sleeps. Maybe that’s the scary part. Maybe it’s like we were _already_ together in every other way but the physical stuff – and the kisses just sealed the deal.

(Not that I’m complaining about the kissing. That was also _nice_.)

I’m curled around him like some slinking plant; I’m running my foot gently up and down his leg; I’m twisting my fingers in the fabric of his shirt and easing him back against my chest; I’m—

 _I better not have morning wood_.

I fucking _leap_ back from him as best I can when I’m lying on my side – fist releasing his shirt, and legs unwinding from his in an instant, to lift up the sleeping bag and check the situation downstairs.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, I— _thank God_.

It’s clear. We’re clear. I haven’t been pressing a boner into the small of his back. That’s a fucking relief. I wheeze loudly, and let the covers drop back across my chest.

“J … Jean,” comes a sleepy mumble – endearing enough to make my heart swell, but mainly only adding fuel to the fire burning suddenly in my cheeks. I try to muffle the inflaming feeling by pressing my nose into the sleeping bag, but it doesn’t exactly cool me down.

“H-hey,” I squeak, and _wow_ – my voice wobbles all over the place. Cool it. No boner. It’s fine. Be normal. “Uh, d-did I … did I wake you?”

“Y’were fidgeting,” he rumbles, his hand blindly searching for the one I have wrapped around him; when he finds my fingers, he laces ours together, and presses our clasped hands back against his warm chest.

I take a deep breath, and experimentally – _and cautiously_ – press myself back up against him, lifting my chin enough to prop it on his shoulder, my nose bumping the side of his jaw. He seems to like that, mumbling a low, happy noise as he wiggles his hips back against mine.

I don’t know if he means to do it, or if he just wants to get closer, but— _oh man_.

_Oh man, think of something else. Oh man, think about your seventh grade teacher in her bathing suit. Oh man, think about what Connie and Sasha would say if they walked in right now. Oh man, please don’t let that be what I think that is—_

_Something else, something else—_

I swallow thickly just as Marco decides to turn over to face me, and save himself from a _really_ surprising wake-up call. _Thank fuck_.

He doesn’t comment on how red my face must be – maybe it’s not that bad, or maybe he overlooks it, because there’s a pretty blush in his cheeks too, although it’s _way_ more innocent than mine. I shuffle awkwardly, squeezing my legs together under the safety of the covers.

“Morning,” he murmurs gently, lifting his shoulder enough for me to retrieve my dead arm out from beneath him. When he flops back down, his nose brushes mine, and I know I blanch.

“M-morning,” I parrot weakly, and it makes him smile. “D-did … d’ya sleep … well?”

 _Smooth, Jean. So smooth. You’re a regular Casanova_.

Marco readjusts the sleeping bag, tugging our makeshift blanket up higher onto our shoulders. He can’t be cold, but he uses the cover to get his hands tangled in my shirt again. It’s quickly becoming a habit.

(And not one I’m going to reprimand him of any time soon. Just saying.) (Just _please_ don’t drop your hands any lower. Fuck, I never thought I’d say _that_.)

“Yeah,” he breathes softly, eyes ducking low to follow his hands across my chest, burning trails across my skin in their wake. “ _Yeah_ … but I think—” He pauses to glance meekly back up at me, meeting my eyes. “W-waking up this way is, _uhm_ … good too.”

I practically choke, and, unable to flail my hands defensively, or shrink back into myself much, I end up stumbling over my words clumsily.

“ _Shi_ — d-don’t just say things like that,” I garble, “I— you – you gotta give me some _warning_ , jeez.”

My ears prick with red heat and I shy away from the amusement in his eyes, rolling onto my back and pressing the heel of one of my palms into my eye with a groan.

I’m not gonna be able to survive all this sappy stuff. It doesn’t do good things to my heart, _Christ_.

Marco chuckles lightly, so I shoot him a glare that falls pretty flat. But I suppose it is successful in bringing him closer, as he rolls onto his stomach and folds his arms beneath his chin, turning his face enough to watch me contently. I reluctantly peel my hand away from my face, and twist my head to look at him again.

“You’re … you’re such a _dork_ ,” I sigh exasperatedly, only making his smile bloom bigger. “Jesus Christ—” I reach out to graciously flick him on the forehead, and his eyebrows furrow playfully. “Stop making that face.”

“What face?” Marco chimes; he pulls himself up onto his forearms, and then wriggles over to me, throwing way too much weight onto my chest as he flops down on top of me, _smug-fucking-grin_ in place. I wheeze violently, and swat him weakly. “This face?”

I try to sit up, but he’s too heavy, and keeps me pinned down as he folds his arms on my chest and rests his chin on them. I flump back onto my pillow with a disgruntled huff.

“Am I heavy?” he grins; I quirk an unamused eyebrow in his direction.

“ _Very_ ,” I retort plainly. He laughs, but it’s interrupted by a voice I definitely _don’t_ want to hear vibrate through the thin, tent walls.

 _Captain Cockblock_ strikes again.

“ _Woah_! Guys! Save it for when we’re _not_ three millimetres of canvas away from you!” Connie hollers through the wall, the outline of his hand smacking against the blue material. “I totally _don’t_ want to know what’s goin’ on in there!”

Marco’s eyes fly wide and his entire face bursts red with embarrassment.

“I—we’re— we’re not doing _anything_!” I squawk; Marco rolls off of me, and sits up, head ducked as he rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. I scramble upright, blazing pink. “Fuck you, Connie!”

Connie – and Sasha too – both devolve into peals of laughter, and I can’t help but _glower_. My cheeks burn and there’s a hitch in my chest that’s either irritated or flustered, _but probably both_. I grumpily chew the inside of my cheek as I listen to their giggling, kicking the sleeping bag from my legs and clambering over to my strewn pile of bags where I dig for my flip flops, angrily pulling them onto my feet. Marco sits behind me, legs crossed and head still bowed, still blushing violently when I glance over my shoulder, back at him.

I open my mouth to say something, but the giggling next door escalates a notch again, and we both cringe. I reach for the zip on our pod – to escape for some fresh air to calm the way my heart _thunders_ around inside my rib cage, or maybe to go beat up the pair of _numbskulls_ – but Marco stops me timorously.

“J-Jean.”

I turn fully back to face him, in time enough to see him breathe deeply and try to placate the way his own heart is clearly squeezing all the blood in his body up into his face. Bashfully, he glances up at me, and f-fuck— _too cute_. Fuck me.

I shuffle back over to him on my knees, making sure not to say anything, but with a tilt of my head that’s questioning. He tugs gently on my t-shirt when I’m close enough, biting his lip out of habit.

“Yeah?” I whisper, just as he leans up and presses a sweet and hesitant kiss to my lips, to my surprise.

 _Welp_. It’s safe to say that I short-circuit pretty fucking succinctly. Marco’s blush flares when he pulls away, releasing my shirt and chewing his lip through a shyly triumphant smile; white noise buzzes inside my head for a moment, and I don’t move, staring dumbly down at him as a single, breathy rasp bubbles from his chest.

His blush is infectious like a yawn, and it spreads across my face in seconds; I rub a hand firmly across my cheek and drop my gaze to the tent floor, and if there was anything worth saying inside my head, I know I would be babbling incoherently like a brook.

“G – gonna check if … if anyone, uh— n-needs help with breakfast,” I end up stammering, when nothing else comes to mind.

Marco uncrosses his legs, and draws his knees up to his chest, resting his chin upon them; his smile is bright and brilliant.

“Okay,” he says simply – yet stupidly _blindingly_.

 _Well, just fuck me gently with a pool net_.

 

* * *

 

The others don’t need any help with cooking – not after how I proved myself yesterday with the bacon – but Eren seems to be making a pig’s ear of it as it is. Mikasa watches him with a plaintive sigh, and I can feel Eren bristling. With the others occupied, a steal away a little distance from the campsite – six or seven paces, maybe – and turn to face the sea, clasping my hands behind my head for a second until my joints crack satisfyingly, before letting my arms swing to my sides.

I steal the quiet moment to shake out some of the coil of energy tugging at my tendons; I wriggle my fingers and roll my shoulders and let my breaths steady against the sea breeze. The sand is already baked with the yellow glare of a sweltering noon, and I feel the heat radiating through the flimsy soles of my flip flops.

The tide is low, and the expanse of white sand banks is decorated with the sea’s flotsam, painted with brushstrokes of straggling seaweed and shell mosaics and the odd, ice-translucent glimmer of a beached jellyfish. The seagulls caw jovially in the clear skies above – cloudless and sail-less, sea-comprehending in their vastness – dipping down onto the shoreline in sweeping arcs to nip at crabs or little fish coming in with the waves.

It would be something to marvel at, if the picture didn’t immediately melt away in comparison with the way the morning light had looked in in Marco’s messy hair, or reflected in his dark eyes beneath half-open eyelids. I can imagine myself with a brush in my hands, and the envision of a paint pallet when I try to pick out what colours would make the sand and what would make the sky, but I know there’s no ounce of my talent that could ever quite capture that moment of waking from a dream to find the same person still tangled in my arms, and that any pen strokes that could be made to capture the smell of camomile detergent and sea salt, or the warmth of the sun that just about touched his cheeks, or the melody of a dawning afternoon curled up beneath the same sleeping bag as him, would be _poetry incarnate_ , and not a painting at all.

I rock back and forth on the balls of my feet, but the God-damn _butterflies_ in my stomach aren’t just somersaulting – they’re punching me in the gut and making sure I feel every single one of their pounding feet against the walls of my insides.

Behind me, I hear the zip of a tent door, accompanied by the slap of shoes against the sand as someone waddles over towards me. I decide not to turn around, pent up on the prickle of red-hot heat that spreads like a web through the traversing network of veins within my body.

“What are you starin’ at?” comes the rasp of Ymir’s voice – _and at least it’s not Connie_. I catch her from the corner of my eye as she comes to stand next to me with the waft of stale smoke clinging to her clothes and grey bags beneath her eyes. Looks like she’s suffering her self-imposed _no cigarettes_ rule, but I don’t really dwell on it, noticing she’s nursing a can of Coke already in her cupped palm. “What’cha grinning for?”

I didn’t realise I was grinning, but when she says it, I feel the broad stretch of the muscles in my face – which only struggles to become wider when I try and bite it back to save façade. Doesn’t work so well.

“I’m not,” I reply; she folds her arms across her chest, coaxingly.

“Right. _Sure_ you’re not, you giddy fuck,” she deadpans, her eyes scanning the shoreline, trailing a seagull as it dives down into the crest of shallow waves. “You get lucky last night or somethin’?”

“Jesus – no, I—! _Ymir_!”

She cackles then, and I thump her angrily in the arm, muttering a string of curses in her direction, which only makes the skin around her eyes crease up further. We’re interrupted by Connie appearing at her other side, dropping his hand onto her shoulder, and leering into the conversation with a _disgustingly_ smug smirk. Both of us turn to stare at him, but I instantly _regret it_.

“Well, whatever it was,” he says brazenly, “It sure sounded _kinky_ in there.”

 

* * *

 

When Marco finally emerges from the big tent, changed out of his pyjamas and having run a comb through his bed hair, he finds me – with the help of Ymir and an overly enthusiastic Sasha – pinning Connie into the sand, and shovelling handfuls of seaweed down the back of his shirt, over the sound of him wailing loudly.

 _Serves you fucking right_ , is all I say.

 

* * *

 

The day rolls by slowly; there’s the grumble of hangovers suspended over breakfast, and a lot of lounging around in the sand trying to absorb unpolluted sunshine, and definitely _not enough_ stolen touches that creep along my knuckles or linger in the small of my back when no-one’s looking.

I lie half-asleep in the shade of the blue-and-white parasol, sprawled out on my towel with my face shielded from the sun, but my legs crisping under its unyielding rays. Eren is sprawled out next to me like a starfish, and snoring like a bulldozer, with one hand flopped across his eyes in place of sunglasses; his tan is putting Connie and Reiner’s lobster burn to shame.

I’m aware of Sasha’s chorus of, “Ocean, ocean, ocean!” somewhere in my peripheral, accompanied by her chimes of, “C’mon! Let’s go for a swim!” as she bounds around in the sand, tugging at the arms of our friends and hauling them to their feet.

Marco shifts next to me, and I lose the sense of his fingers being close to mine across the small slither of space between our spread towels; blinking open one eye, I see him sat up, splattering sunscreen into a cupped hand.

He can’t see me watching him behind the shield of my Raybans, so I keep still, letting my eyes follow the smear of his hand as he slathers himself, and I’m enticed by the dip of his fingers right down to the waistband of his swim trunks – the blue ones, that match the red ones I’ve been bullied into wearing too – and the smudges of white left on his dark skin.

There’s raucousness in the background, and I spot Connie tear past us with his inflatable dingy held high above his head, followed in hot pursuit by Sasha with a wakeboard and Reiner with that damn pool ring slung over his shoulder, towards the sea. Bert and Annie follow more slowly behind, accompanied by Armin and Mikasa, the latter of whom stops to peer underneath our parasol.

“Hey,” she says simply, eyes drifting from the dozing Eren, across me, to Marco, who she assumes in the only one awake. “Are you guys coming?”

“We’ll catch up,” Marco smiles sweetly, rubbing down his shoulders now, before nodding over at Eren. “I think he’s still sleeping off last night.”

Mikasa cracks a smirk – which says a lot, for her – and then bows out of the shade, catching up quickly with Annie and the others. Marco’s smile is fond as he watches them head down the beach, and then he turns back to lathering himself in sunblock.

Quietly, I nudge my sunglasses up my nose and into my hairline, and roll over onto my side to face him.

“You want me to help you with that?” I ask, nodding at the sunscreen bottle between his knees. Marco glances down at me, smiles, and dabs my nose with a white spot from his finger. I play at scowling at him as I pull myself upright.

“I’m alright,” he says, “I think I got everywhere.” I reach up to wipe my thumb along a patch of residue still on his arm. “Okay, _almost_ everywhere. Do … do you want me to do you?”

I raise an eyebrow and can’t help but smirk lecherously.

“Wow, _Marco_ – moving fast, aren’tcha?”

Marco blanches for a second, but then rolls his eyes and snorts as he elbows me in the ribs.

“N-not what I meant,” he hushes, but there is a tremor in his voice which makes heat prickle the back of my neck. “Do you want sunscreen? Y-you should … _we should_ go in the sea.”

 _Ah_.

I glance down at the remnants of sunscreen in his palm, and then at the retreating shoreline where the others are splashing around in the shallows, trying to steady Connie’s dingy as he stands upright in it against the waves. (Idiot.)

Marco presses gently into my side, and I’m aware of his chin dropping against my shoulder, and the prickle of his unshaven jaw grazing up against my own. My breath hitches, but Eren still sleeps on beside us, none the wiser.

“I … I, uh— I think I’ll, uhm, _pass_ this time,” I say, feeling Marco’s lips press against the sensitive skin where my jaw and ear lobe meet. _Breathe, Jean_. “You, uh … you go enjoy it, yeah?”

“You sure?” he murmurs. I try to focus on the grainy feel of sand plastered against the soles of my feet, and not how his breath feels against the underside of my neck.

“S-sure.”

This is the first time I’ve thought about the ocean – _really thought about it_ – since arriving. And I know that was down to my mind being entirely _elsewhere_ for the last two days, but it’s still just as an unpleasant feeling to be scuttling up my spine as ever, made even more twitchy when Marco’s warmth pulls away and he wipes his suncreamed hands on his bare legs.

It’s really dumb how something can look so good but so _bad_ at the same time – because the sea itself is a blue-green glass rippled with swell and foam in a marbled pattern, but still it swirls with all the thoughts that plagued me last week about bottomless waves and no edges to cling to.

The sprawl of sand between us and the sea edge is far though, so there’s no etchings of familiar _panic_ , no – _nothing like that_. I walked with Marco on the shore line just yesterday, and I was fine.

But I guess _reality_ doesn’t like to take such long vacations as I do.

The feeling of my fluttering heart against the inside of my chest is joined by the rattle of invisible hands playing my ribcage like a xylophone, rapping knuckles across my bones to make unsettling tunes strung in low vibrations that only I can hear.

Or maybe Marco can hear them too, because my skin tingles where he grazes his fingers up and down the length of my spine, in a few, heedingly slow strokes.

“I can stay here, if you want,” he says calmly, and I gulp – but shake my head.

“No, it’s fine. _I’m_ fine. Go have fun.”

 

* * *

 

I linger on Marco as he sprints down the beach, even after he stops in the shallows to be clapped on the back by Reiner, whose bellowing laugh echoes far up the sand. They’re still trying to successfully launch Connie’s dingy, now with both Connie _and_ Sasha sitting inside of it, and Mikasa, Annie, and Bert holding it steady on the cresting waves. There’s a spring in Marco’s step as he goes to join them – and I’m glad enough for that fact, and the way his countenance seems to _spark_ beneath the sun – but I cringe when I watch the inflatable boat capsize almost immediately after they all release it into the tide.

I don’t realise I’m holding my breath until Connie and Sasha both resurface; Sasha with her chestnut bangs plastered across her face, and Connie laughing splutteringly as he tries to right the boat again.

I let myself fall back onto my towel with a thump, and sigh heavily as I study the spindles of the open parasol over my head. The rush of water mixes with excited shouts, and _closer giggles_.

 _H-huh_?

I tilt my head back, trying to trace the source of the sound – light giggles and throaty laughter and distinct _rustling_. My eyes fall quickly on Ymir’s little yellow tent, and its shifting canvas. Oh.

 _Oh_.

 _Ymir, you son of a_ —

“Couldn’t keep it to the bedroom, could they?” comes Eren’s gruff voice from beside me, startling me. I twist over to look at him, finding him awake and scowling angrily at the sky.

“Didn’t know you were awake,” I retort, feeling myself bristle nervously. Eren doesn’t particularly react, however.

“Kinda hard to sleep with that goin’ on,” he says, thumbing behind us in the direction of _things I’d rather not think about_. “Wanting the _whole damn world_ to know what they’re up to.”

“R-right,” I say sternly, letting an awkward silence descend momentarily – or at least, an awkward silence _for me_ as I stumble over realising that Eren _wasn’t asleep_ , rather than weighing on Ymir’s bedroom – uh, _tent_ – activities. Eren watches me with a questioning squint, shielding his green eyes from the sun with his hand. I grit my teeth. “You, uh— how much did you, uh— _y’know_.”

Involuntarily, my eyes flicker down the beach and back again.

Eren blinks at me a few times, before he settles back down, laying his arm across his eyes again, and his lips twist into a feline grin.

“Nothin’ you didn’t want me to hear.”

 _Fucking_ —

I groan loudly and roll onto my back, pressing the heels of my palms into my eye sockets and rubbing them intently.

_It’s fine. It could’ve been Connie. It could’ve been Connie, think about that._

“… You _were_ being really gooey though.”

_Fuck it, Eren is just as bad._

I waste no time in reaching over and kicking him fucking _hard_ in the leg. He yelps loudly.

“Shut up – you fucking _suck_ ,” I seethe, rolling out of the way as Eren tries to kick me back in revenge.

“Fuck you! That hurt!” he snaps back, but I can see his aggression subsiding into callous laughter. I kick him again for good measure and he snorts loudly through his nose, hacking back his obnoxious tittering.

“Thought you were messing with me that time you told me you liked a dude,” he sniggers, and I swear to God, if he dares bring up the colour of my face, I’m gonna _deck_ him one. It’s sun burn, alright? _Sun burn_. “Didn’t realise you were thirsting after your pool boy though. That’s gotta be soap opera worthy, right? Didn’t they do that on an episode of _Glee_ once?”

“Piss off.”

Eren levers himself up on his forearms, dumb grin still cemented across his face.

“You made a move yet?” he teases, “How’s it goin’?”

“It’s going great, _thanks_ ,” I deadpan.

He thinks I’m joking for a second – I see him begin to snigger, enjoying winding me up like this, but then realisation crosses his face when I don’t try and scold him for it. His green eyes go wide.

“Wait – wait, _what_? Are – are you _serious_?”

I scrunch up my nose, and my mouth into a taught, down-turned line.

“Fuck you.”

Eren jolts upright then, snapping into a sitting positions and twizzling on the spot to face me.

“No, no— I’m _serious_!” he barks, kicking me in the ribs with his foot – I hiss briskly. “You and pool boy are a thing? A real life thing—”

“Yes, it’s a _thing_ , Eren,” I retort curtly. Eren sucks in a sharp, excited breath.

“No way!”

“ _Yes, way_.”

He runs a hand through the thick tufts of his hair, and exhales a broad puff of air. I count down to the inevitable bout of shit I’m about to get for being so blasé with him.

But … it doesn’t come. _Is he feeling okay_?

(I realise swiftly that Eren and I are different people to the expectations we once held of each other.)

(That, or maybe Eren just has sun stroke.)

“That’s … that’s pretty cool,” he breathes appraisingly, causing me to quirk an eyebrow, unsure about where this unexplored territory is about to go. “ _Shiiiit_ , that’s crazy. I’m, uh … I’m _happy_ for you, man. You deserve some good stuff.”

“Yeah, well,” I mutter gruffly, rolling flatly onto my back. “Marco deserves more good stuff.”

Eren draws his knees up to his chin and wraps his arms around his legs, looking down at me as his grin departs swiftly.

“How’s he doing? I had no clue about his dad and all that.”

“’S alright,” I shrug, as best I can when lying on my back. My fingers twist in my towel for something to keep them busy. “He didn’t tell many people about it, but … yeah. He’s getting by, I think.”

“That’s good,” Eren murmurs, shooting a glance down the beach towards everyone else. “He looks happy. Which is also good.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I just make of noise in agreement. Eren turns himself to sit cross-legged, facing the sea, green eyes searching the shoreline and listening to the laughter of our friends playing there.

Eren doesn’t know the grisly details, and I doubt he ever will – but it doesn’t matter. His simple observation is quenching.

He doesn’t know about how Marco has broken _twice_ with me – one time I was allowed to hold him, and the second time, I wasn’t. He doesn’t know about all the grey days or how it feels to have shards of glass that aren’t really there, scraping across your skin. He doesn’t know how laughter hasn’t ever come easily for either of us, but that’s okay, because he also doesn’t know that it’s partially because my heart flutters too much around Marco for me to trust myself to laugh without embarrassing myself. He doesn’t know about how it feels to have Marco’s had resting on my knee, or Marco’s voice as a safety net coaxing me into water I never thought I’d step foot into again, or how his kisses remind me that I’m little more than a cluster of electrical wiring waiting to be sparked by a touch.

Eren doesn’t know all that, so him saying that Marco looks _happy_ means a lot.

Eren’s not a bad guy. Never was.

An obscene _moan_ from Ymir’s tent breaks the silence, and we both wince – before dissolving into peals of free and stupid laughter. Eren rocks back too far, and tips over, flailing onto his back, which only makes both of us clutch our stomachs more.

“ _Almost_ makes you want to go in the sea, doesn’t it?” Eren cripes, flicking tears from his eyes, “To get away from _that_. I’m never gonna be able to look Ymir in the eye again – and Historia, _oh my God_ —”

It takes me by surprise – him mentioning _the thing_ so casually amidst guffawing laughter about our friends’ sex lives. By his expression is honest and open, and so casual that I don’t think he realises that it _could_ be a big deal.

(It’s just _water_ , after all.)

(Why shouldn’t he be able to bring it up freely?)

“I need to wash my ears out with bleach,” I concede quietly, flicking my Raybans back down onto my nose to conceal my _own_ expression from prying eyes. There’s a weird weight on my chest, and I don’t know exactly what it is – save that it comes from the way Eren’s eyes are like stingrays, and his laughter is wild, and we fucked up a lot of time where we should’ve been realising that we’re actually kinda similar. I see that now.

We both shudder again with the sound of a coy whine and a whimper, and Eren mimes taking handfuls of sand from around him, in order to plug up his ears.

We come down from the childish laughter when someone inside that tent clearly _comes down_ from _something_ _else_ , and lapse into a comfortable, if slightly giggly, silence after that. I settle back onto my towel, stretching my slowly-baking toes, and clasping my hands behind my head, absorbing a lung full of sea air as Eren tries to pack sand together in a castle-shape that crumbles despite his best intentions.

Ymir and Historia emerge from their tent after a little while; Historia blushing furiously when she sees Eren and I holding back sniggers as we pretend to be oblivious, and Ymir grinning like a cat who’s had the cream – which is, I guess, _pretty fucking literal_. She kisses her girlfriend sloppily, smacking her playfully on the ass as they pass us, following the deep footprints in the sand that wind down the beach.

I’m glad for my sunglasses, because if Ymir could see the expression I’m shooting at her, she’d probably skin my ass and use my carcass to build a boat.

Eren snorts loudly when they’re out of ear shot and we’re decidedly safe from Ymir’s wrath; he turns to me with a sly grin.

“She’s going to _kill_ us in our sleep,” he snickers, surprisingly happy for someone assuming their own death sentence. “But oh my God, am I glad that’s over, I— hey, _check it out_.”

He nods his head down the sand with a low whistle, and so I crane my neck to have a look at what he’s pointing at.

“Here comes _Baywatch_.”

Marco is jogging up the beach. It’s not slow motion, and _I’m_ the one wearing the red swim trunks, but y’know what? It’s _just_ as good. Probably better. David Hasselhoff has _nothing_ on him.

The sand falls away beneath every heavy footfall of his, and each pump of his arms makes his chest puff, cheeks dusted red in warmth.

His wet shorts cling to his thighs, sculpted against every flex of muscle. His skin glistens with sea water in the bright sunlight, but the smile that blossoms on his face as he gets closer is brighter still.

_I am so— so—_

“Please don’t get a boner, Jean,” Eren snides, “Do me a solid, yeah?”

“Sh-shut up!” I manage to hiss, jerking my foot into his leg once more, hoping it’ll fucking _bruise_. Eren cackles loudly as Marco slows himself to a stop in front of us, breaths a little winded.

(Well, that makes _two_ of us.)

“Hey man,” Eren greets him, and I can see the fucking _wicked_ glint in his eyes. “The water good?”

“Yeah,” Marco grins, his words airy, and _o-oh man, Jean, control yourself, you pathetic lump of_ — “Are you sure you guys are okay sitting it out?”

I can practically hear Eren rolling on the floor, laughing, inside his head – but he stifles it to some bitten back chuckles, no doubt thanks to the intensity of my _I’m gonna rip you a new one_ glare that I’m shooting him from over the rims of my sunglasses.

“I’m alright,” Eren smirks – and I can see that Marco’s clearly thrown off by his weird amusement, “But Jean wants to join in. _Don’tcha_?”

“Fuck off, Eren,” I grouse, scooping my hand into the sand and flinging a handful at his face. It only makes him crack more. “I’m _fine_.”

Marco pipes up enthusiastically as Eren splutters, trying to wipe his sandy tongue on sandier hands. “There’s no current, Jean. A-and it gets deep really slowly, so i-if you wanted to, we could—”

Ugh. His face is so damn _open_. He means so well. Here, let me just claw out my heart and give it to him, it’ll be easier for—

“Preffy sure Th-aawn wants a loth oth things with _you_ , Mar-th-co, ith ya’ know whath I mean,” Eren garbles, mouthful of sand, as he winks at the pair of us. Marco’s eyes go wide and his face bright red, and yep, that’s it, _I’m going to tear him a new asshole when I get back_ —

“Go fuck yourself, Eren,” I announce plainly, whipping off my sunglasses and throwing them at Eren’s face as he rolls over onto his side, choking over sandy laughter. “C’mon, Marco.” I scramble to my feet, and grab hold of Marco’s arm, pulling him away from the parasol and towards the sea.

My heart crackles with fluster, and I tug Marco harder to keep up with me, my face blazing as I stomp in the sand.

“What was that?” Marco asks innocently, although I know he got _all_ the implications of what Eren just said, and man, I totally take back anything good I ever said about _Eren fucking Jaeger_ , tryin’ to land me in it with—

“Nothing,” I quip, angrily throwing a glare back over my shoulder, to where Eren’s still rolling around. “C’mon. Ocean, or whatever.”

Marco’s expression practically _lights up_ , and he flounders beside me like an excited puppy, throwing any bashful embarrassment to the wind. I slow my steps when his hand brushes my shoulder and static jumps from port to port between us.

“Yeah?” he enthuses breathlessly, “You sure? It … it really isn’t too bad! A-and I— _I promise I won’t let anything bad happen_.”

The sun kisses him for me because it knows I can’t exactly tackle him into the sand here and now. Not to say I don’t glance down at my feet and consider it. I consider it _a lot_.

Our pace has slowed considerably, no longer a storm away from an obnoxious Eren, but now vacillating steps framed with the rose-coloured reasons of why he means so much to me.

Marco mistakes my dawdling for reluctance.

“B-but, we can sit it out if you like. No pressure,” he says gently, buffeting my shoulder with his. We don’t stop walking though, and the sand beneath our feet doesn’t crumble so much anymore, held together by the damp of salt water and the flecks of crushed seashells like an alloy.

The others are dispersed along the shoreline now, Connie’s dingy usurped by Armin and Annie, who are being towed over the gentle waves by Mikasa. Reiner spins Bert around and around inside the inflatable pool ring, whilst Ymir and Historia are tangled in each other’s legs, making out in the shallows. Connie and Sasha are the closest to us, cartwheeling through the water with mishandled handstands that result only in flails of legs and tidal splashes.

I swallow thickly, but shake my head.

“N-no,” I say, “It’s alright. Let’s … let’s give it a shot, yeah?”

Marco smiles, but the one I shoot back at him is wobbly, and barely a fraction of what I want to say. And I don’t know – maybe it’s me wanting to tell him that when he’s around, it feels like stepping stones line up in front of me; or wanting to ask him what his mom fed him as a kid to make him so kind; or wondering how would be the best way to tell him that even when I feel the familiar prickle of panic gnawing at my edges, I am still worth more than heaving breaths and skinned knees, because of him. Or maybe I want to tell him nothing at all, because he already knows, and neither of us really needs to say it anymore.

The way he sees how to plant little flowers of reassurance in me makes me know that it’s okay to feel vulnerable when our feet come to a stop at the edge of the sea. Lips of foam lick over my bare feet, shrouding them in water, and then sand, and I tell myself to breathe. My fingers itch for Marco’s hand, but I keep them pressed firmly to my sides.

“We don’t have to go far,” he says, wriggling his toes as they sink into the flooded sand, “Just as far as you feel comfortable. No-one’s gonna notice.”

I try to imagine that the sprawl of ocean laid out before me is just a big swimming pool – that it’s blue depths match the mosaic tiles of home, and somewhere in the midst, my friends are playing on inflatable dolphins, and Marco’s sister is doing flips off the side, and mom has her deckchair out on the bank to watch us, and _Marco_ – I pinch my eyes closed for a second, and try to imagine how it looked every time when he stood at the bottom of the pool steps, and held a hand out to me in encouragement.

He’s never once told me to calm down. He’s never once told me to relax. Reminding me to breathe – telling me I’m _okay_ – that’s different. That’s: I _have_ a burden, not: I _am_ a burden.

“You said there’s no current, right?” I ask, my eyes following the suction of the tide back out across the sun-warmed sand.

“No,” he says.

“And it’s not very deep.”

“No.”

“What about, like … seaweed and stuff?”

“You’ll be able to see it. The water’s very clear.”

I suck in a breath and will my foot to take a step forward, but it doesn’t happen. I remain glued to the stodgy sand.

 _C’mon. It’s easy. Just do it_.

Tell that to the meaty succubus that births the sense of dread that threatens to ringlet up inside my throat.

 _No_.

No. Don’t let it get a handhold. Can’t be defined without a shadow. It’s okay to feel like this.

The waves lap between my toes, and the water is not cold – _not at all_. It’s hard to decide whether Marco is more the embodiment of the sunlight on the water, or the reefs beneath it, or both – and whether any comment I can make about marine life will give me the strength to say _fuck you_ to the ocean and move forward.

(Y’know, if he’s an ocean reef – filled with rare creatures and a thriving sort of beauty – then I guess you should call me an ocean trench. I don’t think I need to explain why.)

( _No, Jean. Stop thinking like that_.)

Marco rocks back and forth on his feet a few times, and then he splashes out into the water – one step, two steps – kicking up salt spray around his calves in sandy dew drops. I watch him with a lump in my throat as he wades out a few feet, rises onto his tiptoes with the push of a wave, and then settles back down again, returning to the bare shallows. He comes to stand in front of me, his back to the call of the ocean yellow and blue, and holds out his hand with a tilt of his head and a smile, his palm turned upright, facing the sun.

Tch. If those hands of his were bridges, I’d gladly be the current that flows through their arches.

I glance around, letting his hand hang in the space between us – but no-one else is watching, too caught up in the boom of summertime sun to care how _really_ impossible it can be to walk on water.

Well, maybe it’s not _impossible_.

Marco stretches his fingers out again, and nods towards my hand hanging limply at my side.

“As long as you need it,” he says simply. _I will be there to do this for you_.

There’s no longer any hesitation in reaching out and taking his hand, because he is seraphim and he is the only sort of open water that doesn’t terrify me, because he reflects the sun more grandly than anything I’ve ever seen before. His fingers curl between mine and he squeezes, his thumb running from the veins in my wrist, over my knuckles, and back again, in velvet motions.

He pulls me gently forward, and I succumb to his transcendental gravity, even if the sort of spacetime that he is would have no pull, and only spew forth light – they call them white holes, don’t they? If we’re still talking in space metaphors, then that’s him – everything escapes from him, if only to cushions the stars and fragments of rock that fall so fast and so in love with his inescapable tug.

I guess that makes me space dust – but that’s not so bad a thing to be.

The sea submerges my ankles, and licks its way up my calves in a warm, wet kiss, and we wade out deeper. The first wave that flushes up against my knees makes my skin crawl, but it disbands just as quickly, shimmying through my legs on its roll towards the shore – it doesn’t care for me or how I shiver despite the heat.

The sand is soft beneath the waves, and what pebbles or seashell fragments there might be are buried beneath the crested ripples of shapes on the seabed, that dissolve into murky clouds where my feet disturb them.

The second wave comes, and rises higher up my legs with its saddle, sloshing against the inside of my thighs and staining my swim trunks dark with water. My breaths are stiff, and the memories of beach trips when I was a toddler and of the neighbour’s dog dragging me into the river and of Eren pushing me off the roof are ripe with it, but more potent is the way Marco tugs me closer to him, sandwiching out clasped hands between his hip and mine, and stealing a kiss pressed daintily against my shoulder.

“You’re doing good,” he murmurs, and my heart hammers, but still no-one’s looking at us. I keep my embarrassed gaze ducked none the less, even if I can imagine clearly how he’d ask me why I was so ashamed of the others seeing me like this. They’ve seen worse, after all.

“I think you’ve caught the sun,” Marco then remarks, and I figure I’d probably just nod along to anything he says, my eyes so focussed on making sure I can see where I place each foot on the sand. A coil of seaweed drifts past, black and shadowy, and I step around it with a wary shudder as it disappears with the tide behind us.

Marco nudges me with his elbow to attract my attention.

“I’ve got aloe back in the tent,” he continues.

I nod again, but catch him rolling his eyes with a smile in my peripheral. He lets his arm brush more purposefully against mine this time.

“You want me to put it on you when we go back?”

Well, _that_ begs a whimsical snort.

“Y-you’d like that, huh?” I say, feeling the tug of a riptide behind my eyes, daring me to look up at him and not at the sea floor.

“Uh-huh,” Marco chimes, and then makes a point of leaning back to check out my shoulders. “Yep, your back looks _especially_ red. I’ll have to do something about that.”

“Will you now?” It comes out as shaky laughter, but it’s laughter none the less.  “What if I say no?”

“Will you say no?”

“… Probably not.”

Marco chuckles heartily, guiding me to the side of another clump of seaweed suspended beneath the surface, all without breaking careful stride. The salt water is almost above the waistband of my swim trunks now – and _when was the last time I went this deep_? Don’t think about it. Or think about it as a good thing. Just don’t think about how thick the water feels.

“Do you remember when I told you that I wanted to help?” he says, diverting my attention again, lifting our hands a little higher above the surface. “To get you confident again? Well, you’re _amazing_.”

“T-that’s cheesy.”

“But it’s true.”

I finally manage to drag my eyes away from the surface of the water and up to his face _properly_ ; his eyes crease up with a broad smile, and the tingle in my fingers is not from fear, but from the pump of anticipatory blood.

Just, _God_.

Remember when I told him that it was a dumb promise to be making. (Remember when he told me that it wasn’t.)

Remember the brittle laughter in my throat with that first step he’d guided me into taking, and the reassuring squeeze he’d given my hands and my heart.

Remember when I thought it was _sun burn_ that had made his cheeks so red the first time he got me sitting down in the pool.

Remember when I tried to pretend that I didn’t _love him_ as much as I do.

There are things that rise in my throat that are far too tender and far too sappy to be saying when half my blood is built on adrenaline, but they threaten like solar flares despite all this water. For a moment, I forget about the sea – and I forget about a lot of stuff – but I don’t forget about how sunny curiosity and gentle adoration look on his freckled face.

“H-hey, Marco, I—” I trail off, and he leans closer, keeping out entwined hands just above the level of the water that swims around our waists. Our feet have stopped moving, and so I clench my toes in the soft sand. The waves become merely ebbs and flows that rise and die against my belly button, and I stretch onto my tiptoes with every roll.

I let my eyes flit over his lips, parted slightly with the flash of teeth that chew down upon his lower one, and then up to his eyes, brightly lit by the soul beneath unmatched.

Y’know, I thought once that he had the strength of an ocean wave, and I was little more than the tired eye of a cigarette crumbling into dirt, but I see it different now – because _God_ , we match too well to be something born of water and something dissolving in fire. Kindling and match, maybe. Ocean and turbulent current, maybe. Creeping ivy and bricks with cracks that let the sunlight in, _maybe_.

There’s no riptide sort of love about this; we hold each other up.

(And maybe he does it more literally, but that doesn’t matter. Details, details.)

“Yeah?” he prompts gently, and we’re face to face now, a hand span of free space between my chest and his, and some water or something languidly rolling through that twenty centimetre gap.

He is warm rain on an upturned face; he is an unexpected, honest compliment; he is a _goodness_ that surprises, even if it’s a goodness ingrained into his bones and coded into the spindles of DNA within every cell; he is—

My eyes move briefly away from his, and over his shoulder. The moment crumbles quickly, and I feel the weight of the water. My stomach turns.

“ _Connie and Sasha are looking_.”

Marco twists around to look back towards the shallower waters, and yes – it’s not even _subtle_. There are no more handstands, only the pair of them submerged up to their noses in the water like little jellyfish, watching us with mischievous, God-damn _beady_ eyes.

“It’s okay,” Marco says with a sigh as he turns back to face me, gently releasing my hand, only to move his fingers to cup both my elbows and ground me firmly in front of him. “Try and ignore them.”

I can’t. I can’t, because I can see it in the crinkle around Sasha’s eyes and the teasing glint in Connie’s; because if it isn’t my closeness to Marco they’re laughing at, it’s me, _it’s gotta be me_ , and they _still don’t even know_. Maybe it’s both. It’s probably both.

Good natured laughter can still _sting_ , and it’s not because of teasing snickers or jibing words which can be taken with a pinch of salt – it stings because _do they know what it feels like to be like me_?

Because even when I throw their crass remarks over my shoulders and laugh it off or make excuses about _why I can’t go in the pool this time_ , I’m reminded that you can only ever really walk variations of the lines people have already drawn for you.

They’ve drawn one of these lines for me, even if they never meant to.

“They’re laughing,” I seethe, but it escapes my lips more broken, more _fragile_ than I would like. I watch Marco’s façade slip for a second, but he closes his eyes, composes himself, and when he looks at me again, he’s anchoring once more.

“Ignore them, Jean. This isn’t about them – it’s about _you_.”

Little steps, _little steps_. It’s been a whole fucking lot of little steps, and still the thought of them watching me – laughing at me – is the same as a nation of voices murmuring inside my head and growing louder with every extended, painful moment I feel water seeping into the follicles of my skin like I’m one giant sieve.

_Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out. If you freak out, they’ll definitely know something’s wrong. They’ll have even more reason to laugh about it later._

_Don’t … don’t freak out_.

Marco’s hands slide down from my elbows to my wrists, and then wrap around my fingers once again, holding both of my hands firmly in his grip. It manages to distract me from staring dumbly over his shoulder.

“I want you to sit down in the water,” he says; and then, watching my shaky paranoia turn to wide-eyed disbelief, he adds hastily, “You’ll float. It’s just like sitting on an invisible arm chair. You can do it.”

I know he feels the way my fingers vibrate, because he squeezes them tight. I duck my chin against my chest and shake my head with a fucking _pathetic_ whimper.

“ _I can’t._ ”

Marco frowns, and the crease that forms momentarily between his eyebrows is not any sort of frustrated – just _sad_. Or not sad, but sympathetic, in an _ugly_ way that’s not because of his face – which is always beautiful – but because of the way my stomach churns violently.

He glances back over his shoulder, and I follow – Sasha has turned to Connie now, and is whispering something behind a cupped hand into his ear. I don’t want to look, but cruel irony holds my chin painfully between its sharp fingers and doesn’t let me turn my head away.

“Jean.” Marco again. I’m allowed to flicker back to his sunlit face. “Jean, it’s okay. You can do it. We’ll just take it slowly.”

He lifts our hands a little higher above the water’s surface and gives me a nod, telling me that it’s okay to lean backwards. For a moment, I think my knees might let me.

_Let it pass over. Let it pass through.  Just me.  Just him. Nothing else has to matter._

But it’s just a moment. My control lapses, and my legs seize up with lead pockets in my joints. I shake my head forcefully.

“It’s … it’s too much, Marco. I … I don’t know how to— _I can’t_.”

He screws his mouth up, and his shoulders fall a little.

In a quiet voice, I add, “ _I’m sorry_.”

His dark eyes fly up, and his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. His grip is tighter, and it makes my palms sweat even more with nervous palpitations.

“For what?” he asks, plainly.

“F… for this,” I reply. _For me_. It doesn’t need explaining, does it? The feeling of having to keep my palms constantly cupped, in fear of dropping all the tangle of unravelled nerves that I can never put down – and how it makes picking anything else up so much more _difficult_.

I don’t want to be having to think about it. I want to be wearing the thought of Marco’s bed head, and the tickle of his fingers, and the taste of his lips, as _armour_.

 _Not_ as a prayer that needs repeating inside my head to keep the worst of the bile thoughts and feelings away from stripping the walls of my throat of cracked paint. It’s an acidic sort of cruelty that has me reminded of the bad things, the _minute_ a good thing finally comes along.

Marco is the good thing. Everything else is the bad thing. Myself, included.

Marco doesn’t say anything immediately, but he shuffles closer in the water, and I start when I feel his toes press against mine in the sand. I gaze up him, feeling trembles willowing through my tensing jaw, and it’s _all he can fucking do_ but respond with that soft glint of fondness that would fool less stubborn people into believing the impossible.

_But you’re not stubborn when it comes to him, Jean._

My breaths are deep and my heartbeat ragged as the lump of pumping muscle tries to worm its way up my throat and into my mouth. Marco lifts both my hands, and – against a knowing smile – loops them behind his neck, drawing me against his chest. He wets his fingers in the salt water as he dips his hands below the waves, and then I feel his touch against my hips, curling around the hewed lines of my pelvis through the waistband of my trunks.

The ripples that roll up my spin should not be a mix of so many things, but they are – and they should be _wrong_ , because I’m waist-deep in the ocean, and I feel sick to my bones,  and there’s a whole hoard of hatred that mines caves in my ability to stand –  but maybe they’re not just that. Maybe I shiver for a different reason.

Honeymoon eyes, and things found in those caves that are _gold_ , like laughter and light and abandon, and a little promise knocking at the glass-pane windows that I surround myself in.

 _Different reasons_.

Marco’s breath dances warm and wheeling across my jaw as he whispers.

“ _You don’t have to be sorry for anything_.”

His hands creep higher and stray out of the water, his sun-tanned fingers wrapping around the shallows beneath my ribs and holding me steady against the oscillating waves and the stickiness of salt residue that lathes our skin.

Slowly, _steadily_ , I feel him sink down, and I hold tight against the back of his neck as his hands sooth up and down my sides, and he eases me into the water with him. He guides me into sliding into his lap, my legs pressed firmly either side of his thighs, as the water holds us both weightlessly, bobbing with each soft undulation of the tide.

The waves lap against my chest now, rising to the base of my sternum, and back again, like each heavy wheeze of mine, but Marco doesn’t relinquish his scaling hands and he rocks me upwards on his hips to meet each swell, making sure the water doesn’t stray any higher than the tideline it draws just below my shoulders.

My feet don’t touch to bottom like this, but with every lax, my toes dust the sand for one, reassuring moment and I remember how to drown out the feeling of choking.

“Jean? Jean, look at me.”

My eyes flit up with a shaky exhale as I realise I’ve been staring at the channel of water between our chests in idolised consideration – but there are equally important things to be in awe of, and how can I not melt like wax in worship of the small, relieved smile that burns bright on his lips and the wick of pride that he wields like a candle.

“Better,” he grins, and I _ache_. I fucking _ache_ , because his touches are reverent, and his heart flutters, and his cheeks blaze, and he is _perfect_ for me and my addiction to his shifting light that roams around but never fails to fall back, warm and wonderful, upon my face, as if there’s something he can see that’s worth adoring – _and I believe him_. I believe that he _adores_ me, and I hold tight to him with shaking arms and shaking legs, and wavering rasps that meet the rise of his lungs awkwardly, but reassuringly.

“T-there we go,” he breathes, and I fist my desperate fingers in the short hairs on the back of his head, listening to the way his chest hitches and heaves with a swallowed back mantra, that tastes of the sweet liquor of a faltering tenor. His hands still over the protrusions of my ribs, and we float, the water cradling him around his shoulders, and trusting his feet light against the sea bed as he keeps me hoisted above nineteen years of cold blood and raw edges and apologies I no longer have to make. “You should see yourself, Jean,” he whispers, reverentially, the rhythmic rise of his hips faltering for a second, nudging me higher above the water in the valley of a wave. “G-God, you don’t even know how good you—”

He doesn’t have time to finish that sentence, because the feeling that bubbles in my chest is too much, and too _at once_ , and it drives me to careen forward and bury my face in his shoulder, screwing my eyes up as tight as I can muster with a shuddering whimper than comes out _too loud_ for my patchwork dignity to really catch.

Marco tenses up, but only for a second – his hands are right back on my back, waking circles on my salt-wet skin, with a murmur hushed against my ear.

“You’re okay. _You’re okay_.”  He repeats the words again – and again, and again, and _again_ , and I understand what it means to be _okay_ with having pliant skin sometimes. It isn’t all about being crystalline in order to be water proof. “You’re okay.”

 _Okay_.

This is okay.

The gentle movement of his body rocks me against his slick chest, and there’s weird _heat_ pooling lower than where it might normally give me heart burn; I pull tighter at the roots of his hair, and he can’t help but rasp softly – and there are things I shouldn’t be feeling when I’m up to my neck in fucking water, _oh my God_.

“You’re okay,” he pants again, and it has me wondering if he’s telling that to _himself_ now too, because he’s losing all sense of rhythm, and it’s almost _funny_. I don’t quite smile, but the feeling wipes away some of the sheen of shivering nerves that coat my skin, and I turn my attention back to his shoulder, and the rippling water beyond.

I lift my head enough to find Connie and Sasha once more, keeping my chin firmly pressed against Marco’s skin, but letting my tangled fingers in his hair slacken, daring to let my hands dabble in the lazy swell of waves, the luke-warmness making my fingertips tingle.

Sasha is standing now, her arms folded tightly across her bare midriff; her usually cheerful expression is not sullen, but _concerned_ , in the dawning moment of a realisation that has Connie, still crouched in the water, whipping his head back and forth between me and her.

She raises one hand to her mouth and chews on her knuckle as she turns her head to gaze up the beach towards Eren, still sprawled on his back beneath the shade of the parasol. Her thin eyebrows furrow, and her back tenses, and that’s when Connie finally stands, his hands immediately flying up to steady his girlfriend’s elbows as quiet words are exchanged between them, and eyes drift over to Marco and me, and then still.

Sasha’s lips move in a hurry, hushed and scampering over words that flood out – I can’t hear them, but I see the way each one flicks Connie squarely between his eyes, and he almost flinches when Sasha drops the hand that hovers around her mouth.

And I wonder, y’know. _I wonder_.

I wonder what she’s realising.

Sasha’s eyes reflect the sea, and Connie’s shoulders slump as his mouth forms a round o-shape, and I wonder.

Marco murmurs into my ear when he feels stiffness return to the skin beneath his lauding fingertips, and my willing trembles beneath his attention are distracted.

“Are they still looking?” he hushes.

“N-no. They’ve stopped. They’re talkin’ now.”

“I guess they’re just jealous.”

I snort unattractively through my nose. “Doubt that.”

“I dunno,” Marco hums, brave fingers curling around my back and dipping low into the small well at the base of my spine, only to flit away again in a graceful caress that makes my heart skip an expected beat. “I … I think _I_ would be.”

I let my head tip against his, my cheek squishing up against his prickled jaw as I watch Connie gesture with his thumb up the beach and suggest for Sasha to follow him; they wade into the shallows to talk more, heads pressed together as they walk. Sasha looks back once, and I can’t place the emotion that she wears. “H-hey. D’ya think we can … call it quits on this now?”

Marco pulls back, his hands shimmying up my arms to hold me away from his chest and search my face for signs of panic or whatever he expects to see there. I hope he sees other things, alongside all of that now; his features soften, and he beckons a smile.

“Sure.”

He squishes his hands beneath my arms and hoists me up; when my feet meet the sand again, whatever that was suspended in a zero gravity inside of me gently falls back to earth. Marco leans back in the water, ducking his head under a coming wave, only to pop back up to the surface with his thick hair plastered to his forehead, grinning like an idiot.

“You look like a wet dog,” I scoff, as he runs his fingers through his bangs and flattens them against his head, strong arms glistening with salt water and blazing sunlight that makes me even more off-balance than I already am. I decide not to tell him how _hot_ he looks, because apparently I’m still clinging to some stubborn _pride-that’s-not-pride_ , and his smile is broad enough as it is without me describing to him how fucking _thirsty_ I am.

He’s not keen to get out of the water, and so he rolls onto his front and starts paddling, nose skimming the surface, and I find myself walking beside him, rising on my toes with every wave, and arms wrapped protectively around my chest, but with an alien-feeling _placidness_ to be found in my boiled-out blood.

He’s gracious enough to not swim out any deeper, as we made slow headway towards Reiner and Bert, who have joined the mission of pushing the rubber dingy out into the darker water; Armin and Annie are in the boat, and Mikasa is hanging onto the back, being dragged along, her white legs piercing the waves.  We make it to about ten feet from them before Marco stops, settling his feet down on the sea bed, and calls out.

“Reiner! Can we borrow the pool ring?”

Reiner looks up when he shouts, muscles rippling as he wraps his arms around the sea-monster head of the inflatable dingy in a headlock, and ecstatic grin stretched across his face.

“Only if you’re willing to help push the boat, Bodt!” he shouts back. Marco makes an exaggerated shrug with his shoulders as he stands, droplets of water rolling down his back, and Reiner bellows a laugh, grabbing the pool ring that he’s tugging alongside the dingy, and flinging it, bouncing across the water, towards us. Marco manages to catch it by falling on it gracelessly as the pink plastic collides with him, but it flips him off almost immediately, all legs and arms and wild splashes.

He surfaces again spluttering, and I can’t help but laugh – shaky and tentative, but it’s a laugh none the less as he smacks the ring into submission.

“C’mere,” he chortles, something mischievous and playful in the way his eyes sparkle and he holds the inflatable steady with both hands in front of him. He nods down at it, and then back at me, with a God-damn _beam_.

 _If I wasn’t so weak to that, I’d_ —

“Nu-uh,” I say, pressing my lips together firmly, and shaking my head, although it’s a poor concealment of a sardonic chuckle. “I’m not getting in that. I’ve _seen_ how many times it’s thrown Connie off.”

“Ah, but do you think that’s Connie’s fault, or the tube’s fault?” Marco retorts quickly, biting his lip teasingly. “Will you try it?”

I take a step or two towards the pink inflatable, and pet it sceptically with my hand, the plastic squeaking under my wet touch.

“I get the feeling you’re gonna end up bullying me into trying a lot of things,” I gripe, raising an eyebrow at him. Marco’s tongue peaks out between his lips, and he shrugs cheekily.

“ _Maybe_.”

I roll my eyes, and back myself up against the pool ring, the seam of the plastic grating against my butt, and the weight of one of Marco’s hands on my shoulders ready to ease me backwards. The truth is, there’s no graceful way of getting into a pool ring, but hey – _at least I don’t fall straight off the other side_.

“Comfy?” Marco chirps as I settle back, wrapping my fingers tightly around the white, plastic handles, and wriggling around as much as I dare to find the best balance of my weight. My feet dip into the water, but it doesn’t reach higher than my ankles. I feel contusion in my chest, but I swallow it down with liquid ease.

“As much as you can be when you’ve got sea water up your ass crack,” I retort airily, and Marco barks with disgusted laughter. “I mean— _y-yeah_ , ‘s not too bad, I guess.”

“Good,” he snorts, as he wraps one hand around my calf and gives me an experimental tug, to make sure he can drag me around. When I don’t capsize immediately, he continues, “Shall we go and join the others?”

I tilt my head back and cast a glance in the direction of the dingy, making headway parallel to the shoreline, but away from us. Ymir and Historia are paddling out to it, dragging one of the wakeboards along, and I hear Ymir’s wild laughter join the fray.

Yeah, okay.

 _Why not_?

 

* * *

 

Marco ends up looping an arm over the side of the ring, and swimming awkwardly on his side as we near the dingy and the converge of our friends, but it works fine for me between the smiles he throws back in my direction, and the way his knuckles brush my thigh with every stroke that kicks us forward. My fingers stay tightly wrapped around the handles, but I begin to forget the feeling of my butt trailing in the water and I settle into the rhythmic movement of how the tube bobs with each passing wave. My heart still hammers loudly in my ears, and the come down of each wave shifts the settled pool of nausea inside my stomach, but the acidic worry never rises higher than my diaphragm. I keep it down. If my friends see the slight twist in my face, they don’t mention it – but they’re all too absorbed in manic laughter and ducking each other under the water.

Marco doesn’t let go, silently making sure that no-one tries to flip me and steal the ring for themselves, but it doesn’t matter, because no-one tries, distracted by Ymir diving beneath the hull of the dingy and flipping it over with titan strength, sending Annie and Armin flailing amidst her evil cackling.

Bert manages to fish Armin out of the water by his arms, but Annie surfaces with a murderous glare, and immediately scales Reiner, hauling herself up onto his shoulders and telling him to attack – just as Ymir bellyflops her way on board with all the grace of a beached whale.

Marco holds us back, just far enough away from the tidal splashing that comes with Ymir getting pushed out of the boat by everyone, _including_ her girlfriend, but he laughs when they all laugh, and cheers when Mikasa manages to capture the inflatable sea monster as her own and survive a capsizing by flipping the whole thing back over with her own strength.

I wonder if he’s aware of what he’s doing – if he consciously knows to keep us floating on the fray of the splash zone as he hangs off the side of the ring, treading water gently – or, if it’s just become something intrinsic to him now.

Can I think that? Maybe I can, considering how things have changed between us – or at least, have _taken on_ the semblance of change.

A kiss here, or a touch there …  or even the way he holds me closer to his chest we he can – I suppose that is _some_ sort of difference, but the consideration he catches people in is not. He still regards me the same way, and I don’t think it’s taken sandy kisses for him to grow in-tune to the off-beat metronome of how I tick.

I’d like to think it’s a two way street.

He laughs like he does now because he’s free – or _freer_ , than he was. He throws his head back when Mikasa and Historia team up to take down Bert, and he flicks water at Ymir when she tries to get to close with a shark-like grin, and he chatters boyishly with Armin who floats on the wakeboard nearby, hair clinging to his face and shrouding his eyes with his water-heavy fringe.

Marco’s words are saturated with a cheerful abandon, and whilst the others know that he is _good_ , I’m the one who knows that he is _better_. And not in an extrinsic sense, because I’m sure Reiner or Bert could tell you that much, or Ymir even, from what she’s heard from me – but instead, in the notion that I’ve seen the little wind-up toy in his heart, and what happened when that key wound down and its hinges began to creak. I know the signs now, because the drumbeat step of those little feet inside of him is his equivalent to my metronome, and we know each other well enough to see when smiles need oiling, or time needs resetting.

 _Two way street_. Knowing how he works is intrinsic to me too.

Ymir boisterously clambers into the dingy now, shouting nonsense as she begins to act out a dramatic scene through the shrouds of bellowing laughter and irradiated giggling, the inflatable plastic rocking from side to side dangerously as she staggers through Reiner and Historia trying to swipe at her ankles.

“Avast ye’ swarthy land lubbers!” she crows, niftily dodging and dancing out of the reach of their hands. “Get yer lily-livered hands off ‘er m— w-woah, _look_!”

She stretches out her hand dramatically towards the line of the horizon, and all our heads turn swiftly to where she points –

— _towards_ _a patch of non-descript sea_.

“Not gonna fool us, Ymir!” Reiner cackles, knocking her legs out from beneath her; she lands on her ass in the boat with a squeaking thump on the plastic, but the expected murderous scowl doesn’t set in straight away, her arm still outstretched towards the water.

“No, ya’ great thundering lump of manflesh! Look— _there_! D’ya see it?!”

This time, Historia pipes up excitedly, levering herself up on the side of the dingy for a better view.

“Ymir’s right – _there_! A fin, did you see?”

I see it now, with Historia’s guidance: a grey triangle clipping the water not fifty yards away from us, arching above the surface, and then plunging back down again amidst the spines of two waves.

“I ain’t sticking around for no fuckin’ sharks—” Reiner starts, taking a step back from the side of the inflatable dingy, hands in front of him defensively. I watch Marco snicker quietly from the corner of my eye, and Armin, beyond him, chuckles lightly.

“It’s a porpoise, Reiner” he says sincerely, and an array of subtle sniggers passes around the group as Reiner puffs out his chest defiantly. “You can tell by the shape of its dorsal—”

Armin is cut off himself by another porpoise breaking the water and rolling towards us – and then another, and another – a whole _flock_ , or whatever you call a group of them, slapping their tails against the surface of the water as they duck and dive and squeak to each other.

A fifth and a sixth pierce the veil of water, and a moment dawns on all of us that it’s the sort of sight so rare and perfect that we know not to speak on instinct, transfixed by rushes of excitement in spotting fins chopping through the surf, clipped by the brilliant, yellow sunshine above our heads.

Behind us, I hear Eren lauding about on the shore with Connie and Sasha, much more jovial and free-spirited in shouting about the _dolphins_ – (they’re not dolphins, Eren) – his bright laughter infectious and mimicking the chirps and whistles that skim over the waves from the porpoises themselves as they flick their heads to look at their audience as they go.

I glance around at my friends now – all various states of _mesmerised_ as their eyes follow the splashes and the noisy clicks of the private show. (Although I do question Reiner’s scepticism, and clearly Bert does too, nudging his boyfriend on the arm with a gentle smile).

There’s lightness in Ymir’s wonderment, open-eyed and scowless; in Historia’s sparkling grin; in the small smiles on Annie and Mikasa’s faces; and in Armin’s ecstatic and joyful fascination. I look down at Marco last, but find him smiling back at me, and not taken by the ocean so much as I am by the fondness in his face.

It reminds me of a time before, when we were drunk, and he traced patterns in the stars with an outstretched finger, exultant in the twinkling silver constellations above our heads, yet it was not the moon I found myself able to look at, but the way his fingers moved against the night sky.

This is the same, because I tilt my chin towards the crowning porpoises with a confused sort of grin, but he doesn’t budge, or at least – _not to look back at them_. He runs his teeth over his lip, and shakes his head with the blooming of a smile.

He tightens his hold around the rubber ring, and hauls himself up out of the water with it, craning his neck to steal a _kiss_ that leaves me breathless, my heart lurching out of my chest with the soft and tender movement of his lips against mine that doesn’t last nearly long enough as it needs to. He drops back into the water with a splash and a triumphant grin creasing up the skin around his dark eyes, and it’s all I can do to roll over and bury my maddened face in the pink, sun-baked plastic of the ring, as Marco’s fingers whisper up my leg and pat my knee reassuringly.

“ _Fuck you_ ,” I mouth to him, my cheeks fucking _burning_ as he bites his lip and shrugs meekly, twisting back in the water to face the shoal, the arm he has resting on the ring now half swung across my lap.  

But still, no-one notices – even if it wouldn’t really matter now if they did.

The porpoises chirp, and Ymir brays back to them in her own piercing chorus of high-pitched noise, and then they’re gone just as quickly as they came, moving away from us towards the stretch of yellow-lit and cloudless horizon.

It’s a world indescribably  found, a moment inexpressibly arrived at, filled with half-articulate songs of thought and waves of greeting towards the fathomless blueness ahead of us, and it’s a punctuation of halted breath that each of us will remember for the rest of our lives, I’d imagine. A second of purest freedom and headlong exhilaration and a happiness so simply tangible that it sets a wordless covenant all around us: beneath our toes and between our chests, in the ignition of a moment shared between friends.

This is good. _I’m okay_.

 

* * *

 

The sun has begun to set by the time we traipse out of the ocean, my head dizzy from Marco having spun me around until sick in the ring, and then dragged me up the beach whilst _still sitting in it_ , his laughter giddy and his smile vibrant.

I flop out onto the dry sand with a dying wheeze when he drops me at the campsite, rolling onto my front to sprawl out like a man thrown from a great height, and watching as the others follow in our footprints – Reiner and Bert carrying the dingy over their heads, and Ymir racing ahead, catching Historia in her arms and twirling her around in a dizzying spin.

The pool ring squeaks with a dying cry as Marco splats on top of it, and he flicks open its valve to let air come pouring out in a rush. I tilt my head from out of the sand to watch him as it deflates beneath him, some sort of childish satisfaction brilliant behind his eyes.

Eren, Connie and Sasha have been busy taking down the big tent, and what remains is a pile of protruding tent poles and billowing canvas, and all our stuff scattered across the sand, along with Eren himself, as he throws himself down on the ground with a dramatic yawn and stretch of his arms high above his head. I’m surprised Connie and Sasha aren’t there slacking with him, but I’m aware of them folding up poles and digging up tent pegs with a hush that doesn’t suit them, and exchanges of words quiet and sedate.

I don’t have time to dwell on it though, because Reiner throws down the sea-monster dingy beside me, and fucking _launches_ himself onto it, elbow first, and I’m genuinely surprised he doesn’t bust a fucking _seam_ on it as it cries out with a piercing squeak.

The chaos is subdued – bubbling laughter lilted in gentle, filling smiles, and casual teasing as people makes messes of taking down tents and clearing up rubbish and scattering the ashes of the camp fire from the night before.

I give into temptation, kicking Marco in the leg to make him move over on the pool ring, and slump down next to him on the hissing plastic, our combined weights expelling the air twice as fast as our shoulders brush up against one another.

Marco offers to help Ymir with deconstructing her tent after that, because her wailing complaints are getting louder, and Marco’s the only one who won’t tease her about it; I fold the carcass of the pool ring up, and then hep Armin and Mikasa with the trash, settling quickly into the rhythm of Mikasa flicking her toes under stray beer cans, spinning them into the air, and then me diving to catch them in a trash bag whilst Armin collects the ones I undoubtedly miss.

The sky turns almost a pale green as the sun bleeds out across low-lying clouds that slink in stippled oranges, yellows, and deep greys over the cliffs, silhouetting the steep shards of limestone in black against the gradient of fading colour.

Someone’s turned on the stereo as we pack – some sort of soft-core, electronic thing that’s not particularly offensive to my ears, and has a pretty catchy synth beat once it gets going, that has Historia’s feet tapping in the sand, and Eren nodding his head and miming drums as he kicks our bags into a pile.

The sunset colours dissolve into pinks and purples as the song rolls over to another the same, and another after that, romantically violet in the twilight haze that it paints across the faces of my friends. I offer to drag some of the bags back to the car as Eren starts dolling out the last of the beers that weren’t drunk, and Ymir starts sulking that she can’t have one if she’s to drive – the chatter is faded and drunken with the taste of burgeoning dusk, tinted rosy like the underbellies of the clouds suspended in low compromises with the dying sun and the sea.

I haul mine and Marco’s holdalls over my shoulder and gather up our sleeping bags into my arms, as well as the deflated bodies of Connie’s pool ring and dingy, and start back over the dunes, my feet slipping in the loose sand and the marram grass flicking against my bare calves. Reiner and Bert pass me in the other direction, heading back from Ymir’s van, heads bowed in hushed, private conversation, and it makes me smile for a reason that doesn’t really need a name, save for quiet contentment.

It’s weird to feel grass again under my feet when I scramble down the far side of the sand bank, glad to see both our cars still undisturbed in one piece; my toes welcome the cool, mossy earth, sprinkled delicately with sand blown up and over the natural bleachers, and I pad softly over to the trunk of the Jag, digging for my key for a moment whilst I try and juggle everything else in one arm.

I manage to hit the unlock button clumsily, but I drop half the stuff in my grasp anyway when I see Connie and Sasha drop down over the lip of the sand dune. Sasha’s eyes are on me in an instant, and she whispers something to Connie, before jogging ahead, her ponytail swinging wildly behind her. Her footfalls are light and springy on the grass, and I question why I suddenly feel so guarded.

I try to shake off the wary feeling, heaving the trunk open, and slinging mine and Marco’s stuff into the empty space, when Sasha slows to a stop beside me.

“… Hey,” I greet, holding out my hand for the stuff she’s carrying, “Here, pass it.” She hands me the bags in her hands without saying anything, waiting for Connie to catch up, far more sheepish looking as he keeps his gaze ducked and lets his feet drag.

I shuffle over to make room for him as he dumps his kit alongside mine, taking uncharacteristic care with shoving his bags into the neat spaces left in the trunk, and then fiddling with the straps on his rucksack, as if the zips aren’t already done up.

I almost ask him what he’s doing – what they’re _both_ duping, and why they’ve been so silent and so absent all afternoon – when I’m suddenly accosted by a silent hug from Sasha, arms coiling around my waist from behind, and her nose burying into my shoulder blade with a huff of breath.

“U-uh—?” I begin, the noise leaving my mouth little more than a surprised stutter. “Sash—?”

I glance quickly at Connie, whose shoulders droop as he turns around to perch on the edge of my car, fingers clamped over the top of the bumper – he heaves a sigh, but the corners of his lips turn up into a tweak of an empathetic smile.

Sasha sniffles loudly into my shoulder, and then she speaks.

“I’m sorry Jean,” she mumbles, voice muffled by my shirt. “We’re sorry. _We didn’t know_.”

“S-Sasha, I don’t know what you—” I try to twist around, but she holds me firmly, constricting her arms even tighter and shaking her head against my back. “G-guys, if this is about earlier, I—”

“You don’t like the water, do you?” comes Sasha’s voice, small and friable, and my system floods cold for a second, my fingers that hold her arms despositoning into solid, clumsy lumps against her skin. “Jean? That’s the truth … isn’t it?”

“I—I, uh—”

“We were real dicks, Jean,” Connie pipes up, and I whip around to face him again as he awkwardly scratches the back of his bald head. “You can say it. It’s cool.”

 _I—I don’t know what to_ —

I trip over my own words, stumbling and stammering noises that make no sense to any of us.

Somehow, I manage to choke out, “Y-you guys didn’t know.” It’s barely audible – barely recognisable as my own voice, because where’s the stubborn denial, where’s the gruff exterior, where’s the _sarcastic jibe that I don’t know what they’re on about_ —

Sasha turns me in her arms to face her, and there’s a twinge of something in my chest to see how her lower lip trembles and she blinks away some of the heat in her brown eyes.

 _O-oh, Sash_.

I wonder if they’ve been huddled together on the edge of the sea talking about _this_ all afternoon. The thought twists mercilessly at my heart and pricks it with a noxious sting.

The dawning understanding that had appeared on Sasha’s face before – it makes me wince, and not because I wish she hadn’t realised, or that I wish I hadn’t been right in what I had wondered, but because I think about how _crassly_ and _casually_ Eren talks about it now, and I don’t want something so stupid and so beatable to hurt her so much.

I don’t want these guys to be sad because of me.

She pats me down, her hands petting my arms, all the way to my hands, which she takes hold of purposefully. Her slender fingers are not like Marco’s, but they fit between mine in a similar way.

“We know _now_ ,” she says quietly, her expression earnest and sincere. “You’re afraid of the water, aren’t you?”

I want to play it cool, I want to shrug it off with a non-deterred, breezy laugh, but I _am_ deterred. And I’m definitely _not_ cool. The twinge in my chest becomes a pinch that scuttles up my throat, tightening gently around my airway until I feel the build-up of an unswallowable lump there.

Sasha doesn’t shy away from my gaze, fierce as the five year old I met in the school playground all those years ago, and just as stubborn as she juts out her lower lip. I sigh, and the air that escapes me shakes.

“Yep,” I murmur haltingly, “Yes— I … that’s the— yep.” _Yep_.

 _That’s the truth_.

The expression that flashes across Sasha’s face is pained for a second: her eyebrows pinched up in the middle, and her mouth small, and her eyes sad, but it passes just as quickly into something I know to be determined. She squeezes my hands in her smaller ones.

“It’s okay,” she says – and Marco’s words echo in her then. “It’s okay, it’ll be … it’ll be okay _now_ , y’know?”

“We get it now,” Connie buts back in, and both Sasha and I turn to face him, where he’s brought his knees up to his chest, and is pulling on the threads of his boarder shorts. “Like … Sasha said to me earlier, when we saw— when we saw you guys in the sea. She said _it shoulda been obvious_. We’ve done some shitty things to you, Jean, man. Really shitty. It won’t happen again.”

He gulps, and I see redness rising in his face that isn’t down to his all-over sunburn.

“You … _ugh_. All that Eren stuff. If we’d known, we coulda— coulda avoided so much _crap_. If we’d just noticed sooner, you wouldn’t have had to deal with all that – and then there was all the times we came ‘round to your place to use the pool, and— _fuck_. Just _fuck_ , y’know?”

“We understand you now,” Sasha continues, following Connie’s lead as he fumbles with his words, “You don’t have to deal with it alone now, alright? You got us. Let us know what works for you, Jean. We _love_ you.”

The gall in my throat is threatening to make me cry, and I _really_ don’t want that, because I know it’ll be fucking _blubbering_ when it’s around these two, and then Connie will start sobbing grossly, and then Sasha will start laughing, and it’ll be a great big, disgusting _mess_.

I can feel my resolve crumbling anyway, more at the feeling of being _overwhelmed_ rather than any form of shame or happiness. It’s the same, controless feeling of being suspended on Marco’s legs in the water and not being able to touch the bottom – but maybe no control is good. Maybe free falling is good, because it means I’m moving another step forward – and it’s a step that I didn’t see coming.

“Eren knows,” I manage to choke out, “And Marco … I had – _I have Marco_.”

Sasha huffs a smile as she lets go of my hands and rewraps herself around my chest, nuzzling into the crook of my neck like an over-affectionate cat. My hands flail accordingly, before resigning to my fate, and I let myself pet her sandy hair awkwardly. I let out a quiet “ _oomph_ ” when Connie koalas himself around the pair of us from the other side, and Sasha hums happily.

“Cuddle sandwich,” she grins into my shirt, and I roll my eyes despairingly. “You’re the _best_ filling, Jean.”

“Gee, thanks. I’ll add that to my résumé.”

I hear the sound of laughter and the clinking of beer bottles breeze over the sand dunes behind us, and try to struggle free of their death grip, but Sasha – at least – stays firm. She props her chin on my chest, and gazes up at me with the biggest doe eyes known to man, batting her eyelashes.

“So,” she says.

“So?” I dare to ask.

“So. _Marco_.”

I manage to wriggle my hands underneath her arms at _that_ , and push her away as she grins victoriously.

“ _No_ ,” I scold her, hearing Connie snicker behind me as he reassumes his perch in the trunk of my car. I also hear the tell-tale signs of Ymir tripping down over the brink of the sand dunes – her cursing loud – followed by some of the others too. “No, we’re not going there. _No_.”

“No?” Sasha smirks, wiggling her eyebrows. “What’s this, Connie? I am _agog_.”

“I am _aghast_ ,” Connie complies, evilly, “Is Jean in _love_ at last?”

“I’ve never heard him _ooh_ —”

“What the _fuck_ are you two on about?”

Sasha fucking _sparkles_ as I continue to hold her at arms’ length away from me, and she reaches up playfully to flick me on the end of the nose.

“We’re quoting _Les Mis_ , Jean!” she chimes, as if yes, _that’s clearly the most obvious thing in the world to me_.

“God-damn _theatre nerds_ ,” I grouse.

“You didn’t deny it though,” Connie pipes up, and I hear the snicker in his voice – and as does Sasha. The cogs are _plenty_ visible whirring inside her head.

“Are you in looo~ooove with him, Jean?” she croons, and I’d be lying to say the thought that doesn’t cross my mind then and there, is whether I can beg Ymir to swap them out for Mikasa or Armin, or even God-damn _Eren_ , on the way home.

“So what if I am?” I grumble gruffly, let my hands fall from her shoulders and rubbing my palms on my shorts, as if trying to wipe off grit or dirt. “I’m not gonna hear the end of it, _am I_?”

I expect Sasha to leap at the suggestion – quite literally. I expect her to jump on me, singing teasing songs in my ears and pulling at my shirt or my hair like an over excited child, or for Connie to elbow me in the ribs with a cheesy grin and wriggling eyebrows.

But that doesn’t happen. Weirdly.

 _Unnervingly_.

Instead, Sasha stills, her mouth falling open into a round o-shape, and her neatly plucked eyebrows curving upwards. She blinks a few times, owlishly, and I’m almost tempted to make a remark about her catching flies with her jaw hanging down like that.

She beats me to words, parroting back at me very slowly.

“ _So what if you_ —” She breaks off, and leans around me to gawp at Connie. “Did you _hear_ that?”

Connie nods seriously, but the line of his mouth is tight as he tries to compress the evil grin that lights up his eyes.

Gravely, he says, “Our little Jeanbo is all _grown up_ , Sash.”

I manage to count to five before Sasha can’t help the way she splutters grossly with bubbling giggles, spraying me with saliva.

They both keel away from other in fits of obnoxious fucking laughter, Connie doubling over into his knees, and Sasha clutching her stomach as she vibrates, and I want to _smash their heads together_.

“I hate _both_ of you,” I seethe, as Sasha pops a hand over her mouth to try and conceal her giggling as Eren crashes against Ymir’s van, giddy with a beer in his hand, followed in sort by the others, in lesser stages of tipsiness. “I take back every nice thing I _ever_ thought about you.”

“Aww, man,” Connie whines dramatically, his voice a stage whisper against Ymir’s loud grunting, and Reiner’s booming laughter, and the chatter of our friends breaching our moment, “You don’t mean that. You love us really.”

“ _Try me_.”

“No, Connie,” Sasha chimes, sliding around me to slap her boyfriend on the knee, “Jean loves _Marco_.” She then puts on a pout, blowing out her cheeks. “We gotta move on – Jean likes his men with _abs_ now.”

“Hey, I totally have abs!” Connie complains, and they descend into tangented bickering about how it _doesn’t count using a six pack of bread rolls as abs_ , or something fucking _crazy_ along those lines, but my eyes flit over to Marco as he comes slipping down the sand dune, laughing lightly in conversation with Armin and Mikasa who flank him, carrying the last of the stuff to pack into the cars.

They separate with a breezy laugh, and a delicate smile from Mikasa over something Armin says, the pair of them heading towards where Ymir barks orders about piling stuff into her van, whilst Marco meandering over towards me. His eyes find mine in a second, and his face _lights up_ , as if it hasn’t been barely five minutes sine I saw him last.

I roll my eyes at him and feel colour rising in my face as he licks his lips and tries not to grin too much – it’s a poor effort really, but Connie and Sasha are too embroiled in a debate over which of them has the better six pack to really notice. When he reaches us, I take the stuff from his hands without either of us having to say anything, and prop it into the trunk behind Connie, who doesn’t seem to notice that he’s in the way.

Ymir’s stroppiness radiates loudly and she’s keen to get back on the road before we lose the very last murmurs of daylight, and I find myself bundled into a conga line of hugs – bony, and _bone-crushing_ , and delicate, and _hugs that aren’t hugs but are in fact noogies_. (Thanks, Eren.) I get a kiss on the cheek from Historia, and so does Marco – it only makes his Hollywood smile _gleam_ – and then I’m tackled into a headlock by Ymir’s lanky arms as the others begin piling into the van in a squish of limbs and faces pressed against the glass.

“You drive safely, you little shit,” she gripes, messing up my hair with her fingers as I try to pry her arm from my throat. “Text me when you get back to your place, yeah?”

“What are you – _ack_ – my mother?” I choke, wriggling my hardest away from her, but failing under her _demon strength_.

“You’d be God-damn _fucked_ if I was,” she grins sardonically, “I better see your sorry ass again before the semester starts, ya’ hear?”

“I’ll do pizza and beer again if you’re paying,” I wheeze, and she relents a little. “Promise I won’t puke into your toilet this time.”

I stagger forward when she releases me, hands on her hips as she laughs boomingly, throwing her head back.

“I’ll make you fucking clean it if you do!” she hollers, “Now, move your scrawny ass – I wanna get on the road!”

She gives me a fond, parting _kick to the shins_ , and then leaps into the open door of her van, the engine spluttering and stalling three times before she finds the right balance of gas and aggression, and she flips me off through the window as I feel a smirk drawing on my lips. The van rumbles backwards into a poor three-point turn, and the other plaster their faces to the windows with squished-up noses and wagging tongues as I wave them off, and they go trundling towards the cattle gate at the other end of the field.

Sasha and Connie hoot as they clamber into the backseats of the Jag, tripping over each other in their stupid excitement at the two hundred mile road trip home, and my sigh is both weary and satiated.

Everything is drenched in lilac light now: the sand, the weaves of marram grass, the sound of the sea we can no longer sea, and _Marco_. He shuts the trunk door as I wander back to him, and he turns, pressing his back against my car when I stop a few paces in front of him. It barely takes a twitch of his fingers at his side to make me close the gap between us, moving into his personal space – but I manage to resist the temptation to touch him. _Just_.

(I fold my arms behind my back, just to make sure, but I find myself rocking forward on my toes with a sly grin anyway.)

“Should come back here,” I say boldly, watching him tilt his head playfully, the pink in his cheeks a good match to the sickly-sweet colour of the evening air. “Just the two of us, y’know?”

“Yeah?” he prompts, his fingers brushing against my arm casually, “I’d … I’d like that. But what about the _kids_?” He nods back over his shoulder to the ruckus inside the car, and I snort dryly, my eyes flitting back to catch the trace of his tongue wetting his lips.

“Fuck the kids,” I murmur, “They’re old enough and ugly enough to look after themselves.” Marco’s hand strays a little more purposefully against my wrist, and I feel lucid sparks tickling the ends of my nerves, subdued by the pink glaze of the sunset until then.

“Not very nice,” he chuckles, dipping his head a little closer to mine, his eyes roaming over my face, drifting from the white line across the bridge of my nose, and then down, to my mouth as I smirk up at him. “Maybe I should tell them how you feel about them.”

“Oh, _they know_.”

My feet are between his now, and he’s flat against the back of my car, sucking in a breath to maintain the hair’s breadth of distance between our chests, and I’d be lying if I said the thought of pinning him against the trunk window and kissing him sloppily didn’t _really turn me on_. Marco’s got more grace than that though – and Sasha has no grace at all, leaning out of the backseat door with a shout.

“Get a _room_ , you two!”

 

* * *

 

I give Sasha and Connie a stink eye in the rear view mirror when I climb into the driver’s seat – and I receive two, poked-out tongues and a wink in response – whilst Marco conceals his flustered chuckle behind his curled fist in the passenger seat.

It all fades into four, distinct smiles though, as we wind back through the fields, the sand and gravel crunching beneath the tires of the Jag until we find smooth asphalt again – purple-grey and soft in dwindling light, much like the atmosphere that swells magically inside the car itself: _soft_. Touchable intransience, like cumulous clouds around my fingers that are wrapped around the steering wheel, and cradling the purring hum of the engine in a blanket of thick gossamer. The sky bruises black through the windshield, Byzantium purple first, and then deeper, bathed in stratus wisps like age-old scars – but the air is cool through the crack in my window that tousles my hair, and the road ahead of us is clear.

Jinae twinkles sleepily as we tiptoe through its snoozing streets, streetlights ethereally orange and artificial, and the green flare of traffic lights punctuating the dark as hazy orbs that change to red outside of the rhythm of the song that lazes over the radio, low and throaty and barely there, tempting my subconscious with seductive guitar riffs and husky vocals.

Connie and Sasha hum along clumsily to every song – and every commercial – their words devolving into inaudible blurs of round-edged syllables when they can’t quite keep up with the speed of the singer, and I let my fingers tap along on the leather of the wheel, whilst Marco’s keep the rhythm on his thigh, idly matching the drum beat with a dizzying smile thrown into the backseat with every change of key.

The highway becomes a blur beyond our windows, the engine an elegant rumble, and the doppling headlights that pass us by a tunnel of white light on the other side of the road, approaching slowly, but them whizzing past in a silence that accentuates their noise. The black hills in the wing mirrors are speckled with flowered lights, scattered patternlessly across the silhouette of the city we leave behind, but the sense of peace and quiet that we don’t.

The stars don’t appear until we lose the orange-yellow halo of the houses in our wake behind us, and the world around us becomes only that which we can see in the pools of light beneath streetlamps that watch over the arrow of the highway north, and home.

The bulbs of light that line the way look like spaceships buzzing around our heads, and then falling behind at lightning speed as they whiz past our windows, and in that alien moment, I feel more lucky than I have ever felt.

We _soar_ down that road fifty miles in either direction from nowhere, and I don’t care how many secrets of mine the night knows, because it’s _beautiful._

A silent hour, a blissful dream, and a man behind the wheel of his car so charmed and starry eyed that it’s a blessing he doesn’t pitch off the road and into the dark – but he’s not lonely enough anymore to find need to do that.

Not anymore.

Sasha squawks, lurching forward in her seat, and breaks the dream-state with wild excitement.

“Jean! Jean! It’s the song, it’s— turn it up, _turn it up_!”

Marco’s fingers reach for the volume dial on the stereo before mine, and the seven-note rift of the _Sweet Child o’ Mine_ opening erupts into the dozy space and _scorches_ it with one thousand brilliant colours within my chest.

And God, I know the words. _Of course I do_ – Sasha and Connie were right, _so right_ before, because they’re the electric lyrics and the leather tassels and fast-moving fingers over guitar strings that I can’t help but tattoo with indelible ink onto my soul to make myself feel _alive_.

And fuck, do I feel _alive_ when Axl Rose’s warble electrocutes the air with iridescent static, twanging the chords of neon energy that glow in the dark around us; Connie and Sasha leap onto the words, and start belting them out, their lungs burning fiercely, and their wild-hearted grins even more so.

“ _She's got a smile that it seems to me_  
Reminds me of childhood memories  
Where everything  
Was as fresh as the bright blue sky—!”

I laugh ecstatically into my hands around the steering wheel, unable to keep down the way the feeling spreads and _implodes_ with the synth inside of me, my whole body shaking, uninhibited and drunk on the music.

I feel Connie and Sasha’s smiles _burst_ into their words, lips curling around wanton fire, and I feel possessed by it, the soul-healing melody and the resuscitations of their laughter mingled with marbled lyrics and the way it all swims into one, majestic love affair with the late summer night that rolls over black summer hills as we throw our arms out the open windows and feel the drag coalesce our skins like smoke.

I find the words glitter in my throat and when I breathe them loudly and longingly into the thriving dark, I hear Marco laugh brightly, rocking forward in his seat and watching me with euphoric eyes that reflect flying saucers and _stars_ as I sing.

“ _Where do we go?_  
Where do we go now?  
Where do we go?  
Sweet child o' mine—”

We chase the song along the strobe-lit asphalt, and even Marco’s lips curl around music lit with illicit laughter, so extraordinary and so _supernova_ that I want the miles to stretch out forever before us and I want the dark to paint me _visionary_.

His voice was made to go with mine, and mine was born to kiss the dark along with his.  

 

* * *

 

There’s nothing like the deep breathes after laughing so hard and singing so loud, and my stomach aches for miles after the bristling guitar ends, for all the right reasons.

Connie and Sasha press their faces to the glass, and they count the stars that make up the patterns in the sky that are meant to look like dragons or like bears and not like a dot-to-dot chain of fifteen balls of burning gas. It doesn’t matter so much to them when they start to pick out other things within the great beyond, laughing giggly over why there should be stars charted in the shapes of bunny rabbits or formula one race cars, because they’re significantly cooler than _Ursula minor_ , which, in truth, looks to me more like a spade.

Not that it’s me who knows which cluster is _Ursula minor_ , or _Ursula major_ , or whatever – that’s Marco. He knows a lot about stars – maybe he traced them on his sister’s skin before, or maybe he found them in his own. I don’t know. (Maybe I could find them _for_ him some time.) (No, Jean, _eyes on the road_.)

But he makes Connie and Sasha sparkle just as brightly when he has them looking west – at _Leo_ , because that’s Sasha’s star sign he learns amidst her awe, with her hands and nose pressed up against the window pane.

I don’t really know how it’s supposed to be a lion, but Sasha seems absorbed enough in tracing its ears and its tail and its shaggy mane in the sky.

Connie mopes when Marco tells him that it’s the wrong time of year for seeing _Taurus_ , but that he’s not alone, because his _Gemini_ is the same, only visible in the winter.

“What about mine?” I ask, eyes flicking away from the tunnelling road momentarily to find Marco, as Sasha teases Connie about his star sign in the back seat. Marco shrugs his shoulders with a small smile.

“It’s usually hard to spot,” he says, “In the spring, the glare of the sun kinda … blocks out _Aries_.”

“Figures,” I say, with a dry scoff.

“—but you can sometimes catch it in the late autumn.” His eyes say: _maybe we should try and spot it some time_. Or maybe that’s just me.

Connie’s tune changes when he learns that _Gemini_ is next to _Taurus_ , and _Taurus_ next to _Aries_ , and he spouts something philosophical about what that means about the three of us, but I’m more interested in learning about the two bright stars that make _Gemini_ so easy to spot, and there would be some whimsical parallel to draw between them and Marco himself, if it weren’t for the fact that high school history classes taught me that Zeus disguised himself as a fucking _swan_ to father the twins Castor and Pollux in ancient Greek mythology, and it kinda spoils the poetry.

 _God-damn it, Zeus. Couldn’t keep it in your pants_.

Sasha and Connie are distracted when they claim to see a coyote loping along the side of the highway, keeping to the edge of the headlight beam, all shaggy, grey shadow and parlaying with the edge of the asphalt – _apparently_. I don’t know why a dumb dog would want to be so close to so many speeding cars, but it doesn’t stop the pair of them in the backseat from mimicking howls that probably mean all sorts of offensive things in wolf-tongue.

They do it for a while, even after we’ve left whatever figure they might have seen miles behind us in dust and galloping breeze, and then they wear themselves out, splurging into a tangle of legs and floppy heads resting on each other’s shoulders as they tap their fingers lazily along to the bluesy tune from the stereo on one another’s thighs.

Marco sinks back into the plush leather of the passenger seat, and I see the flutter of his eyelashes against his cheeks as he begins to slip off – but he keeps nodding back with little huffs and a poorly concealed shiver as he rubs his hands up and down his arms.

“Hey, Con,” I call into the back seat, without peeling my eyes off the road. “Grab me my hoodie from the trunk, would’ya?”

Connie grumbles something in response, shifting himself carefully upright with Sasha’s head falling from his shoulder to against his chest. He keeps fingers laced in her hair, petting the messy, chestnut tendrils, whilst he cranes back with his other arm to feel around blindly over his headrest.

He manages to find _something_ jersey-feeling after a minute or two of muttering below his breath – and luckily enough, it _is_ a hoodie of mine: dark blue and zipped up, with soft flannel on the inside. He slaps it over my shoulder, and nuzzles back into his Sasha cuddle pile, as I take one hand off the wheel to try and unzip the thing and spread it out.

Marco startles when I try to drape it – _badly_ – over his arm, but his wide-eyed expression softens in an instant when he realises what a pig’s ear I’m making of it. He nudges my hand away, and I place it back on the steering wheel whilst he wriggles around, tugging the shoulders of the hoodie up and over his own and adopting the thing like a blanket, nestling into the warm fabric with a quiet noise of approval that I wonder if he realises I hear.

He tries hard to keep his eyes open after that, and I catch him rubbing the skin beneath his lower lashes and gently slapping his cheeks to keep himself awake – something about not wanting me to be the only one awake when I’m the one forced to drive them all home, he tells me, when I scold him for not just letting himself drift – but he falls short of any amount of thinly veiled excuses, and when he lets his eyes slide closed for just one second, his head lulls against the window, and he sleeps.

Funnily enough, it’s not the moon and the stars, or the hills bordering the sky with their cedar-pointed silhouettes, or the speckled patches of moonlight that filter between wisps of night clouds only to be refracted by the bubble of artificial streetlamp-lit light, which intoxicates me like the way Marco’s lips part gently as he breathes deeply, a twitch of his nose here, and a low murmur in dreams there.

A glance back in the rear-view mirror, and I see Connie and Sasha’s eyelids have grown too heavy for them too, and Connie snores lightly with his nose buried deep in Sasha’s hair, whilst a clear line of drool trickles from the corner of her lips as she threatens to slide off his shoulder in her comatose state.

I laugh lightly to myself, and refocus my eyes on the road, dipping the dial on the stereo one notch lower, until the sensual poetry of late night jazz becomes not a song, but a mood in the car – like a smoky Parisian bar, shrouded in heavy, velveteen drapes, twinkling city lights, and the sight of a lone tenor-saxophone on the stage before me. I dream in slow motion.

Marco shifts in the seat, turning over so that his body faces the window more squarely, and his head rests at a more comfortable angle against the vibrating glass. His eyebrows furrow a little, and then relax, with a wistful sigh of his that lodges somewhere in _my_ throat and makes my toes curl inside my sneakers.

 _Eyes on the road, you love struck idiot_ , I remind myself sternly, flexing my fingers around the wheel and blinking heavily, trying to clear the reverie out of my laden eyes. Peaking back at him is too much to ask though, so I reward myself with a glance every mile or so, and each time I feel the tension that pools in my joints flood forth and leave me pellucid.

The dark outside the window is a radar screen, and the beam of my headlights the little blip we make on the map – and the road signs that flick into existence and out again with falling numbers are the homing beacons coaxing us into the glow of Trost on the horizon with an echoed _beep beep beep_.

There’s a point reached where the monotony of the highway becomes familiar, and I come to recognise the curve of the road, the skyline of neon-lit high-rises decked in sleepless white and blue strobe, and the subway stop whose sign wakes me from my spellish daze.

The exit sign hitch-hiking its way down the hard shoulder coats me in a comfortable exhaustion, and the car zips across that invisible threshold between the small world we went to see, and the one we’re coming home to.

I wonder what the word is to describe the sight of a city you never realised you loved spouting up like a glass forest on the horizon, all black panes that twinkle and billboard signs that flash opulent under yellow streetlamps as we leave the freeway and slow into trafficless boulevards.

I wonder how you go about describing that feeling in your chest of being almost home – when home itself has not been a _home_ in a really long time, and the main reason it has been reborn like that is sitting in the passenger seat beside you.

Huh. The gritty Trost streets are shrouded in its electric light, and I fall for its façade – or maybe the beauty of the city was never really a pretence, and instead just something I never saw when my eyes were misted up with grey ideas. I don’t know.

I think of the big white house, and its neatly pruned hedges, and its weedless driveway of pristine grey bricks laid out in diamond patterns, and the light that peeks between the shutters of the blinds in the front room, and I think it hangs on an _almost_.

Almost home.

I think about mom.

It’ll be a _home_ when I fix things – because hell, does it need _fixing_. We haven’t had a conversation beyond one-word answers and the brushing off of tepid gazes in over a month. Could be longer – I’ve lost count of the days now.

I miss lipstick imprints on my forehead, even if it takes an age to scrub them off in front of the bathroom mirror. I miss takeaways in front of the TV when dad isn’t home, and laughing at her shitty soap operas. I miss being wrapped into a hug, as if she still believes I’m five years old and only come up to her knee.

I miss seeing her tottering out onto the patio with a tray of lemonade to greet Marco and I.

_Marco and I._

I want her to _know_ – whatever it is there is to know. That I love him, I guess.

I need her to be a part of that again. He’s such an important part of my life now – and maybe she knew that already, and maybe she knew that before I did – but I want her to know it from my own lips. I want to tell her who I am now, and I want to do that without cowering in the corner, or having to write it on a note and leave it in the kitchen for her to find.

I fucked up. I fucked up so badly with mom – and I mean, I knew that much. I even knew when the poison words just kept coming from my mouth – but I never saw its wake until now.

I need to apologise. And then maybe grovel, and then possibly persuade her to let me be her slave for the next three years, and then, maybe—

She doesn’t owe me an apology. She doesn’t owe me forgiveness. I’ve been a shitty son, and that’s just the bare essentials of the gravity.

I don’t deserve any love she has left to give me, but _fuck_ , I want it. Whatever’s left. I’ll take it.

My fingers curl tighter around the wheel as I imagine her face. When was the last time I looked her properly in the eyes? And didn’t just shy away with a duck of my head kindled from my own anger and my own frustration and my own _shame_?

I couldn’t tell you.

I wish I’d gained my empathy experience points soon; I wish I’d had a level up or two before it had come down to the wire between us. I wish I’d tried to see it from her point of view—

— and maybe I still _can’t_ , but it shouldn’t matter. Just acknowledging that she _has_ a different point of view has to be enough. And it will be.

I don’t know why she still stays in that house. I don’t know why she still puts up with that loveless marriage, and a husband who treats her with so little respect, expecting to come home every night to dinner and questions hidden under the table and eyes cast the other way at the things he does and the things he _doesn’t_.

I don’t know why she doesn’t leave it all behind her, because—

Because mom is better than all of it. Than everything. She will always be better than everything that dad, or me and my shitty sense of timing, throw at her, and not because she’s brave (even though she is), and not because she’s strong (and she makes up enough for the both of us), and not because the only thing she wants is to keep the peace. Simply because: she’s my _mom_.

She’s the God-damn best thing that ever happened to me.

I have to set it straight.

(I don’t know how it’ll work out.)

(Do I deserve forgiveness?)

(But I have to _try_.)

Make that house become a home again.

 

* * *

 

I spurn through the city with a determination not quite burning, but _embering_ resolutely within my chest. I expect a spike of anxious nausea to twist my stomach up into knots, but it doesn’t come, and I drive through the light fields of midtown with a strange aura of calm stroking my hair and keeping bad thoughts at bay.

Maybe it’s because I have _no doubt_ , and that doesn’t usually happen. Because I know fiercely in my heart what I must do when I park my car on the driveway later, even if the thought itself is like reaching a river and knowing I must cross and march up towards its source, against free-flowing tributaries rolling down from the mountains, and do things that might be scary.

Because I know it’s also about love and about memory. And about sorrow.

And recognising that fact fills me with a bewildering sort of courage.

Sleek black buildings turn into crumbling gas stations and dodgy dry-cleaner’s, and those in turn become sandstone, and then the familiar mismatch of houses that line the winding streets of Marco’s neighbourhood.

The streetlights fizzle and flicker here, grainy in the light they splash upon the pot-holed tarmac, and not so pristinely polished like those that track the streets in the affluent parts of Trost. There’s a strange silence here, devoid of the friendly chatter of neighbours and the barks of dogs, and the thundering feet of kids playing in the road, and _daylight_ ; and something’s missing.

It’s not peaceful – just void, and I slow the engine to a crawl as we approach Marco’s house, and I see stripes of yellow light escaping from between the curtains of front windows, stretched long across his front lawn.

It’s late – gone midnight, from what the clock on my dashboard says, but I guess Anita’s been waiting up for him to get home. I let the Jag purr, and then let her sleep, as I pull up against the curb in front of Marco’s van; but no-one in the car stirs.

I imagine Anita sitting in their living room, legs curled up on the sofa, because she won’t dare feel up to sitting Mr Bodt’s arm chair yet, the fuzzy words of the TV bathing the room in a green, pixelated grain and soft sound, enough to keep her mind occupied.

I don’t know her that well – I don’t know where all her strength lies. I don’t know if two weeks has been long enough to put a foot forward yet. I don’t know if the house has felt emptier without Marco there for just three days.

Maybe that’s why the streets feel empty here too – because they’ve been missing two people they’ve grown and twined themselves around. Only one came back.

I swallow back the thickness in my throat, and shake my head to clear myself of heavy tasting things. I need to apologise to Anita too – because I made her a promise that I only half kept – but for now, it can wait. There will be other opportunities.

I turn to Marco now, and his unfaltering breathing, and the smooth, frownless contours of his face, and the peacefulness that presides over him as he sleeps – it’s been a while since I’ve seen him doze without lines between his eyebrows, or carved around his lips when downturned.

His breath fogs against the glass where he’s leant against it, his hair mused and turned up in stupid cow licks that I want to flatten with my fingers.

And I could. I could. That’s something I could do now.

He has tan lines on his legs, I notice – deeper shades of brown below the line of his shorts, and he’s broken out with more freckles from the sun; they show up well against his colour. I’ll need to find the excuse to count them soon. I’m sure the same could be said for his arms too, but he has them coiled up beneath the blanket of my hoodie, which is still draped over him, if slipping slightly off one shoulder.

I snort lightly through my nose, and run a hand through my dishevelled hair, maybe as some sort of grounding mechanism – reminding myself that he is in fact _real_. Very real. Stupidly dorky and stupidly _cute_ when he sleeps, but real.

And I know words like _boyfriend_ or _partner_ haven’t been thrown around yet, so I’m not sure what to call our red strings of fate yet, or even if I can call the ones we share _mine_ – but I know it’s physical and I know it’s tangible, and I know there will be things to give me strength to wake up in the morning and roll over to silence my alarm clock: the promise of conversations not yet had, and kisses not yet given.

It is real. But _real_ means other things too.

I wonder if he’ll be sad to not feel the thrum of the engine when he wakes; to see the porch steps of his house beyond the window; to be reminded about what _he_ had left behind, and what will wake him in his mornings.

 _It’s going to take a while for everything to go away. It might never_.

I know that. But I also know that it’s possible to feel happiness and sadness at the same time, and it doesn’t have to be a paradox. No-one has to be limited to one sort of feeling, because that’s the sort of thing that suffocates if you let yourself believe it.

He has the capacity for _so much_. And I’ll be _damned_ if I let him believe that his grief defines him.

I reach across the gear stick and shake him lightly on the shoulder, not drawing my fingers away when his eyes blear open and he murmurs incoherently – I keep my touch steady; steady, and _loving_. I let my fingers slide a little further down his arm, and then brush them back up again; the noise that parts his lips is more recognisable as a contented mumble now.

“Rise and shine, _Sleepin’ Beauty_ ,” I say fondly, watching him as he blinks wearily and tries to shift himself more upright in the passenger seat, his limbs blocky and stiff, and a low rumble in his throat as he re-enters the atmosphere of our reality.  “Got you home by midnight, so you’re safe from turning into a pumpkin.”

“That’s … _Cinderella_ ,” he murmurs, lifting a hand to rub slow circles into his eyes with his knuckles. “Sort of. She didn’t … turn into a pumpkin.”

“My bad,” I grin as he yawns, stretching his arms out in front of him, fingers hitting the dashboard with a _thunk_. “ _Sleeping Beauty_ gets woken up with a kiss, right?”

He laughs dazedly, still not quite all there, but enough at least for the glint I know is in my eyes to cause colour to rise in his cheeks. He ducks his head with another sleepy chuckle, and stretches some more, rolling his shoulders until they click.

“ _Mmm_ – meant to be a handsome prince though,” he hums, and I scoff, sitting back in my seat and letting my palms fall onto my thighs with an offended slap. “I _dunno_ about you, Jean.”

“Right princess _you_ are,” I snort – and then hear a grumble in the back seat. I glance over my headrest to see Sasha stir, but only to curl back into Connie’s arms with a soft sigh. I make sure to keep my voice low as I nod towards his house through the passenger window. “You wanna?”

He follows my train of thought and turns his head to look out at his house and the threads of light seeping through the windows. His expression doesn’t sour – which I’m glad of – but it does sombre.

“Yeah,” he agrees softly, his smile more forlorn. “I suppose.”

He reaches for the door handle, but I stop him with a hand clamped on his shoulder; he turns back to me immediately, eyes curious and questioning.

“’S alright, y’know,” I say with a small shrug, “Being happy and sad isn’t like … it isn’t mutually exclusive. It’s okay to feel both. It’s okay to have fun whilst you’re still … mourning, and stuff.” My eyes follow the bobs of his throat as he swallows, but I’m relieved not to see any glisten in his eyes, like the last time we were parked in the dark outside of his house. “I … I don’t want you feelin’ guilty. I want you to be happy.”

Marco covers my hand on his shoulder with his own, and gives my fingers a little squeeze.

“I am happy.” And then he adds, as an afterthought, “Thank you, Jean.”

There’s an intensity in his gaze that makes me blush, and I let my eyes drop from him and scuttle away to stare at the floor. He squeezes my hand again, and then climbs out of the car. I do the same.

The night air is cooler than I expect, and an autumnal chill ripples up my arms and raises goosebumps across my skin. I peek in the back window as I round the car, but Connie and Sasha sleep on, undisturbed, and I reckon it best not to wake them. They’ll see Marco again soon, I’d imagine.

Marco holds out my hoodie to me, standing next to the trunk with a gentle, wordless smile. I take it from him graciously as he turns to grab his stuff, and I sneakily press the jersey fabric against my nose, breathing in faint camomile and his lingering body heat. I’m slightly less shameful in slipping it on over my arms and pulling the cuffs down over my palms, and then flipping the hood up over my bird’s nest hair with another waft of earthy detergent and the left over trace of seaside.

Marco rolls his eyes and bites his lip as his cheeks grow warm when he catches me pressing the side of the hood against my nose, but he doesn’t say anything beyond the nudge he gives me in the side as he slings his bags over his shoulder and shuts the trunk.

There’s a hop in my step as I keep up with his long strides along the garden path, playing with the edges of my hoodie’s sleeves between my fingers. The porch light flicks on with a droning buzz when we step onto the bottom step, plating long shadows along the wooden slats of the decking and beneath the eaves of the flower pots that are stacked around the front door.

Marco props his stuff on the doormat, fiddles for his key in the pocket of his shorts, and unlocks the front door with a tentative creak as it squeaks on its hinges. The light in the hallway is off, but the faint glow from elsewhere in the house paints the busy walls dusty.

When he turns back to me, he holds himself meekly, his shoulders hunched as he scuffs his loafer against the bristles of the _Welcome Home_ mat. I know we probably only have moments before I hear Anita’s slippers padding on the floor, or Connie and Sasha wake up and yell something obscene out the window of my car, but I can’t shed the feeling of shuffling awkwardly as I shift my weight from one foot to the other, and then back again, biting the inside of my cheek as I cast Marco a glance upwards.

I stuff my hands deep into the pockets of my hoodie and watch the way his lips twitch as he stumbles in his head over what he wants to say.

“ _So_ ,” is what he manages. I feel my own lips quirk upwards at the edges, and I roll my tongue across my teeth insolently.

“So,” I mimic audaciously, and he flushes, hand racing up to itch the end of his nose, as always.

“I … I, _uhm_. I’d invite you in, but, I—” He gulps audibly when I inch half a step closer to him. “Well, uh – Connie and Sasha need to get home.”

“Could leave them in the car overnight,” I shrug, “There’s like two leftover beers and some hot dog buns in the trunk. They’ll survive.”

Marco laughs off my suggestion, even though I am half serious. (And half not serious, of course, because _mom_. I got things to do too.) (But it doesn’t mean I want to leave.)

(And hey, if he _actually_ wanted to invite me in, I think I could delay the real world for a little while longer.)

I’m tugged out of my daydreaming when Marco reaches up to tangle our fingers lightly together, the touch loose and limp as his smile softens and becomes heartened with wistfulness. I realise he’s going to say something serious, so I quickly school my features into a smirk less lewd.

“Jean,” he says, my name stalling on his tongue. Oh, the things he does to the vowels in my name will never _not_ make my heart lurch. “It’s … it’s, uh— _the funeral is on Wednesday_. I— I should’ve said something earlier, but y-you know how it— _well_. I was thinking, if you wanted to come, that would be— good. That would be _good_. I’d be glad of it.”

“Sure.”

He blinks owlishly.

“Sure?”

“Yeah,” I say plainly, twining my fingers tighter with his. “’Course I’ll be there.” He seems surprised at the ease of my agreement, but he really shouldn’t be. It’s a simple answer to give, because I love him.

“Oh. Oh, I … uhm, that—” He stutters a little, bowing his head. “That … that m-means a lot.”

“Text me the time and the place, yeah?” I offer gently, leaning up onto my toes. “And lemme know if your mom needs me to bring anything, or— _y’know_. Just let me know.”

Marco nods firmly, and then we’re occupied by silence. I drop back down onto the soles of my feet, rocking back a little on my heels and swinging his hand in mine. I see him shyly run his eyes over my face, pausing at my mouth _totally unsubtlely_ , and then flashing back to my eyes, knowing he’s been caught.  He laughs bashfully.

“We’re not very good at this, are we?” he asks carefully.

“’S okay,” I reply, “We’ll get there.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” _There’s a whole lot of future out there for us. And we’ve got the time to test it all_.

I close the gap between us, unlacing my fingers to curl them instead in his shirt and pull our chests flush over a breathy chuckle escaping my lips. Marco’s own shaky intake of breath rises in unison with mine and makes the still air tremble.

But I figure that breathing is of little consequence when his hands find my face and my cheeks _scorch_ his flat palms, and he kisses me fucking _senseless_. It’s a crash of lips and panting gasps that has Marco staggering backwards when I arch my back and rock my hips up into his with a muffled rumble caught somewhere between his name and a moan.

His hands tangle in my hair and he separates from my lips for a second to gasp hitchingly, pupils fiercely dilated, before he chases back after me with a rough pull back against his chest. His lips collide with mine messily, and I scrabble at the fine hairs of his undercut for something to hold on tight to as I taste the slip of his tongue against my hard palette, followed by an obtrusive little _moan_ launching itself from my lungs that’s definitely going to land me in it with the entire fucking _neighbourhood_.

I tug his lower lip between my teeth, and then _bite_ , and the growl that I get in return makes me _weak at the fucking knees_.  I lean my head to the side and he presses his nose into my cheek, breath hot and wet as he pants against my skin, his hands still clinging desperately to my roots and his thigh edging between mine, pooling viscous warmth in the recesses of my body.

He keeps his lips an excruciating _fraction_ away from my simmering skin, but the _heat_ is enough to make me sigh raggedly and arch up into him again. The friction between us makes Marco wobble, and his breaths become shaky, and then calmer, slowing the rocking of his hips as his hands glide down the back of my head to curl around the nape of my neck.

I feel myself _prickling_ with the come down, my heart still _hammering_ blood around my body, and I shiver when Marco presses his lips perfectly against the spot of tender skin just below my ear, nipping gently, and then kissing softly over the bite mark with silver-tongued, _beautiful_ promise.

“ _Goodnight_ , Jean,” he breathes huskily into my jaw line, and it’s quite possible that my soul evaporates from my body on the spot.

Despite that, I manage to choke out a response.

“G-goodnight—?”

(Pfft. _Barely_ a response.)

I’m unwilling to let him go, but I _do_ let him pull back with some sort of leeway and watch his fierce intensity melt away into the biggest, _goofiest_ fucking smile I’ve ever seen in my life. And then, he has the nerve to wriggle free and turn back into his house with a coy bite of his lips, and I’m left on the porch with the most fucking obvious boner on the planet.

Thank you for that, _Marco_.

 

* * *

 

I don’t stick around, just in case I’m caught with my tent up on their front porch by Anita – I scramble back to the car, whipping off my hoodie on route and throwing it over my lap as I dive into the driver’s seat. I press my forehead against the sticky leather of the steering wheel, and try to recap all the _possible_ ways to reduce my blood pressure, when I feel hot air against my ear and a chin come to rest on my shoulder.

“ _Erection detection_ ,” Sasha whispers into my ear with the most _lecherous_ expression known to man.

It’s safe to say that we don’t pull away from the curb until I’ve yanked off my shoe and thrown myself into the backseat trying to smack her with it, boner be damned.

 

* * *

 

I dump the pair of them practically on the curb when we reach my house, even though Connie is still bleary eyed and confused, having managed to sleep through the entire commotion of me trying to murder his girlfriend. Sasha cackles relentlessly as we unload all their stuff from the Jag and throw it into the bed of the pick-up, and I swear to God, I almost scoop her up and chuck her over the side too, because I’m _this close_ to tearing my eyes out in embarrassment over how she chooses to address my fucking _dick_ instead of my _face_ when she laughs at me.

Connie trips his way behind the driver’s seat of the truck as Sasha and I continue to shout at each other over the roof of the cabin, and then I watch them trundle down the street with my middle finger projected in parting at the one Sasha extends out the passenger window in response. The red tail lights wiggle in the dark as Connie weaves down the road, and then they disappear around the corner, and my head rush collides to a stop.

I give myself a moment to breathe, collapsing against the side of my car as I regulate the way I wheeze and run my hands through my hair with the trails of unbridled, electric energy; the night air cools my cheeks and soothes the lining of my lungs, and I manage to shuffle around to the trunk of the Jag to collect my kit.

I notice now that my dad’s car isn’t home – and it’s late, so I doubt he’ll be returning to tonight – but mom’s coupe _is_. There’s also faint light to be seen streaming through the windows of the front door, not bright enough to be from the hallway, but from the kitchen or the living room maybe, and that _really_ douses me with a cold shower.

Mom’s still awake. I wonder if she’s been waiting up for me, like Anita.

I sling my holdall over my shoulder, and bundle up my sleeping bag and my hoodie under my arm, knocking the trunk closed with my hip. The Jag bleeps in the dark with a flash of orange light as I lock it, and then begins the marathon-feeling trek to the front door.

My finger hesitates over the doorbell for some time, until I decide to search for my house key, heart pounding in my ears. It takes me three or four attempts to jam the thing into the lock, but when it clicks, suddenly the inside of my head is quiet.

There are still things that need fixing.

Marco and I – what we _are_ now – is not without its creases. I know there are still hurdles to overcome, and still things I want to ask him, and still folds to iron out, after what was said and done. There are still things to explore _together_.

With Anita too – things I want to tell her.

With dad – let’s not even _go_ there.

But mom … _mom has to be first_. Because fixing this rift between us will mean I can continue to fix myself. 

So maybe that’s selfish of me. But maybe it’s not. Maybe taking care of myself is a pretty important thing.

So, if I can fix _mom_ , and fix _me_ , with one stone’s throw, I figure: _that’s what I need to do_.

I push the door open carefully, and am flooded with the feeling of _home_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that was basically 30,000 words of solid fluff, corr blimey. But hey, I think it was necessary, and I felt like we went back to to essence of what Droplets first started out of: a bit of good-natured summer fun, friendships, sunshine, and unbridled sexual tension. Heh.
> 
> No, but still: some important stuff did happen here, even if it was nothing particularly dramatic. Connie, Sasha, and Jean's dynamic has changed, and for the better. I have been wanting to write that scene where they /understand/ for an age, so there ya go. Jean's friendship with Springles means the world to me, and means the world to him.
> 
> Other than that ... Jean's starting to think about consequences more, and about reality more, which we'll be exploring more now that they're all home. Lots more things to now discover about himself and being in a relationship.
> 
> (One of those being ... does Marco appear to have a hair pulling kink? Maybe he does ... gracious.)
> 
> Uhm, so next time! Céline's back! Finally! Praise the lord! The angel returns! But seriously, thank goodness, because I miss her, and I need her back because she's a doll to write, and she's got a big role in what is still to come in the story. The drama ain't over yet folks. We'll be taking a few trips back to planet angst yet.
> 
> Anita and Mina will also be back next time, so we can see how they're coping. The funeral will also be next chapter, so I feel that will show you guys the facets to Marco at the moment, when he isn't all miles away, escaping on planet goo-goo eyes. Some good Jean and Mina scenes next time too. Important stuff. Gonna be good.
> 
> Other than that ... songs: Let Me In (Grouplove), Sunday Driving (Max Frost), Last Night I Dreamt Everything In Slow Motion (Oliver Tank), and Safe In My Hands (Eli Lieb). Kinda covers all the dynamics of this chapter.
> 
> Super thanks for the crazy feedback from last time ... so much beautiful fan art, and so many lovely comments! I am so humbled by you guys! Please continue to leave me feedback, as that's what encourages me to write. Feel free to ask me any questions. AO3 is a great place to drop your comments, and my Tumblr inbox a great place to throw questions.
> 
> Until next time!


	21. Timshel (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And you are the mother  
> The mother of your baby child  
> The one to whom you gave life  
> And you have your choices  
> And these are what make man great  
> His ladder to the stars
> 
> \--"Timshel", Mumford & Sons

I think one of the biggest lies you’re told as a child is that a parent’s love is immortal. It’s a safety net, isn’t it – the thought that _I can fuck up real bad and they’ll still love me at the end of the day, because that’s the unspoken rule_. They have to keep loving you. That’s their job as a parent. That’s what they signed up for. That’s just how it _is_.

But it’s a lie.

I don’t think there’s any sort of love that can be so _unconditional_ , and I don’t think anyone is obligated to keep loving a person when they’ve shattered a trust into a thousand tiny fragments and shattered it far and wide. Just like how you can fall out of love with a friend or a lover – I think it’s just as possible to fall out love where blood in involved too. What makes the nature of the beast any different when it’s a child and a parent? A son and his mother?

The truth, in fact, is that parents damage their children. And children damage their parents. Maybe not everyone – maybe some people out there have perfect, honey-sweet home lives that glow and begin each morning with the rise of the sun and a kiss on the forehead and indelible declarations of love. Maybe some people out there don’t know what it’s like to hurt someone they’ve been conditioned into loving.

But in general … I think the rule is that people damage each other, and blood ties don’t make you immune to that. Children absorb the fingerprints of their parents; they become smeared with dirty smudges, or maybe they crack, and maybe the unlucky ones _do_ shatter. And the same can be said for parents too, because it’s not like glass gets stronger with age. It’s not like a dirty window will get clean if there’s no-one around to wash it.

It didn’t take me being cynical about the world to come to terms with the lie. I mean, that would’ve done it, regardless, but it started first, with my friends.

It started first, with Eren, when his father bailed on him and Mikasa at the beginning of our freshman year in high school without a word, without a note, in the knowledge that he couldn’t bring himself to look at his son who so reminded him of his late wife. He left them because loving his children was not in his selfish interest. (What he will never know is how Mikasa came to school hungry more times than I wanted to count because scraping up enough cash for both her and Eren to eat was too difficult, and asking Armin’s grandfather for help was too wounding to their pride.)

It started first, with Historia, when her parents estranged her the first time she tried to introduce a girlfriend to them in our junior year. It was how she was suddenly so cold behind the eyes and her smiles were only skin deep for weeks where she dreaded going home in the evenings to get another mouthful about how they’d been expecting white weddings and grandchildren. (What they never understood was that they could still have that; but I know that it’s also been fourteen months and Ymir hasn’t once met the rest of her girlfriend’s family.)

It started first, with Sasha, when she told her parents that she was selling the car her father had bought her for her eighteenth birthday, in order to fund the repair of Connie’s pick-up truck. She hadn’t told her parents they were dating yet – even if it had been as obvious as the sun in the sky to the rest of us who surround them that they’ve been stupidly in love since middle school – and she never realised it would be a problem until her dad had scolded her with his disapproval over dating someone who’s social status was little more than dirt in his eyes. (What they will one day discover, I’m sure, is that it’s that pick-up truck that Connie and Sasha will one day drive to Vegas in order to get married in a shot-gun ceremony, because they’re so in love that they would never care where they swapped vows, or the things their parents might say about them being together.)

I’ve seen the evidence from that side of the line.

And I am my own proof for this side of the line.

A parent’s love doesn’t have to be immortal. And it’s people like my mom who are probably the sort of parents who were caught up in the fishing net of that lie too; believing that she still has to _love_ me despite the words of hate that spilled acidly from my mouth more times than I dare to count.

I wouldn’t blame her if she doesn’t want to forgive me. I wouldn’t blame her if she doesn’t like me anymore. I wouldn’t blame her if she’s realised that loving me is a thing that’s become too out of reach with every dragging step the three of us in this family have taken away from one another.

I wouldn’t blame her. She’s my mom. I love—

 _Ah_.

You see, there’s the fault line in my otherwise insurmountable proof.

Maybe for one brief, fleeting, _idiotic_ moment driven by anger and confusion and frustration, I thought I hated them: my parents. I thought I hated them all, I thought I hated the world, I thought I—

I thought I hated _her_ because she didn’t tell me something I already knew. I thought I hated her because she refuses to leave something I’ve admitted to myself that I don’t understand.

I’m still confused. I know that much. I still don’t get it. I don’t get my dad and what he’s done. I don’t get mom and why she won’t leave him. I don’t get how this family ever came to be if this miscommunication has been a long standing thing.

But hey, here we are.

Here _I_ am, standing in the hallway of my own home – the white walls and wooden floorboards illuminated in a soft glow from the kitchen, and the pervasive call of a summer breeze whistling up my neck through the open door, tempting me back out into the night.

No. No. I won’t go.

I love my mom. And it’s fucking _unconditional_.

I’m the anomaly to my own universal truth. But who are we kidding – as if being an anomaly is something I haven’t gotten used to for the last nineteen and a bit years of my life. It’s a thing. It’s a thing I’ve accepted.

(It’s a thing some people even _love_.)

(Even if she doesn’t.)

(I won’t blame her.)

I let my bags drop onto the floor with a _thud_ that seems muffled by the grainy light; the click of the door as I close it behind me seems quiet, as do my breaths, and the heartbeat that I thought for sure would be drowning out any rational thought from my ears.

Instead, here I am with a strange sort of calm clarity that’s allowing me to soliloquise.  To watch the tide that maybe I once feared, go out, the waves wondering far away from me, making me realise that the only true way to deal with this sort of thing is to lie still on the floor, not really laughing or sobbing, but just existing – waiting, I guess. Waiting for what has to happen, even you can’t tell what that might be.

I toe off my sneakers at the end of the stairs and prop them neatly next to the row of mom’s high-heels by the door to the cloakroom – I occupy the space where dad would usually leave his loafers, if he were here to abandon them as such.

The hazy feeling doesn’t leave me, but it changes. It’s no longer the lilac-dappled sunset from the beach, or the night-time rush of satellite streetlamps and constellations of the highway, or the electric buzz of the neon city capillaries. But it does paint the bare walls of my house in faded yellows that are almost black in their depths. Oranges, purples-blues, shards of jagged light through the windows on the front door, and sinkholes of shadow in their absence – but none of it is white. I mean, in theory, it all is. Mom likes a minimalist house. She likes how clean it feels. So, I know the walls are white. I know the ceiling is too, and the couches in the living rooms _are_ , and the paint job on the kitchen cabinets _is_.

But sequentially, all of it is not.

There is colour where I didn’t see it before.

The lights are off in the house, save for the rectangle of yellow light that is in sharp contrast to the dappled dark in the hallway, spreading outwards from the kitchen. There are no lights on upstairs; no buzz of the TV playing in the living room; no sound.

I swallow thickly, and I breathe – and it tastes of all the grey days, and all the lethargic afternoons spent curled up on my bed, and all the tightness that ever poisoned my chest, and all the panic desolation that I ever felt like a viscous muck inside of me, swallowing up the jagged pieces of my broken self in a suctioning gloop. It tastes of all that, but I swallow it down – because that’s the way I’m going to get rid of it. Dissolve it in my acid self, and move forward to taste better things, and—

I put it all behind me. I walk towards the light in the kitchen – a light which bleeds with all sorts of dread and uncertainty that would make the past me fly away and bury his head between his knees – and whilst my steps do falter, and my footsteps sound too hollow, I do not run. I don’t feel the need to run; I feel the need to try and put things right, and walk towards the retreating ocean.

At first, the kitchen light it too bright, and when I round the archway into its glare, I find myself squinting. It’s painfully artificial in its colour, and I figure I’m unused to the glower of things that aren’t camp fire flames and moonlight. I blink carefully a few times and let my pupils constrict, before my eyes fall on my mom.

She’s sitting on one of the bar stools which she’s dragged up to the island counter in the middle of the room – and it’s not the magazine she’s reading that I notice first, or the empty coffee mug beside her ring finger, or the white jeans she’s wearing, or the surprised expression that first flashes up on her face when she sees me standing here like a blinded rabbit in the doorway.

The first thing I actually notice is her _hair_.

She’s had it cut – straightened too, I reckon – and it skims just above her shoulders in a sleek, yet soft-looking, ash-blonde bob.

And, _my God_ , does it make her look _younger_.

Better than any frivolous perm that made me think she was trying too hard to hold onto her youth with long hair. Better than any surplus amount of Botox injections to her forehead to cement together frown lines and wrinkles.

Her expression is open and fluid and not gelled in place, and she looks younger, somehow – even if she’s thrown away all the things that tied to her to being a woman desperate to be half her age.

Her hair … looks really good. It suits her.

But I don’t quite think that it’s the thing that looks _different_ about her.

“J… _Jean_.” My name spills from her claret red lips – her makeup immaculate and surprisingly put together for it being gone midnight and our situations being as they are – but whilst the sound stutters and falters, it’s not through onset of tears, I don’t think. It’s just surprise. Surprise, and a little something else, but it’s hard to see beyond the wideness of her eyes, framed by spidery lashes.

I stand in the doorway awkwardly for a moment, my arms frozen at my side as I watch mom move to stand, slipping off the stool, before freezing – she makes it no further than one foot on the floor, and one still resting on the footrest. She opens her mouth to speak again, but falls short of words, clamping her lips tightly shut again. Her eyes flicker briefly over to the door of the oven – and mine follow too – to see the gentle light of the grill warming the glass window.

Huh. She saved me some food. She hasn’t had dinner yet.

(My stomach recoils at the thought, and it’s not because I’m hungry. I am. It’s not because I don’t want to eat her food. I do. It’s because of the stab of something I can really only call guilt that lacerates up my insides in a split second.)

“Y-you … you didn’t have to wait for me to eat,” I choke out, the sound of my own voice thick and stiff in my own throat as I fight down words against the current of gall coming up. Neither of us moves for a beat of a heart, my eyes on the floor, and hers away from my face too, and her hands clasped below the edge of the countertop – but I can tell she’s ringing them in her lap.

It’s the worst sort of tension, because it’s entirely unreadable. I don’t know if I can take a step forward – I don’t know if I’ve been granted that permission. I don’t know if I _want_ to test out that girth.

Mom breathes heavily, and I see it in the deflation in her thin shoulders and the lax of her spine as she expels a puff of wispy breath. Mom is strong, and if anything, I learned how to steel myself against the currents, from her. She does it well.

“It’s fine,” is all she says.

She slips completely from her seat them, padding around the edge of the counter and grabbing the oven mitts on her way; I seize my chance to slink into the kitchen, wiping the floor with my bow-headed guilt as I slip her by, as she opens the oven door and pulls out a deep dish of something that bubbles away and smells _so good_.

I pull up a second stool to the other side of the counter as she dolls out portions onto two plates set out on the sideboard; no-one speaks, and so when the feet of the stool squeak on the white tiles, I flinch violently, as if I’ve been struck hissingly across the cheek. Mom twitches too, but she doesn’t turn back to me until she’s finished dividing up our dinner.

I swallow thickly – but it does me no good whatsoever – when she lays both plates down on the countertop, one in front of each stool, and she slides back up onto her perch in continued silence, not sparing me a look.

And God – it’s not like it’s an aggressive silent treatment. Far, _far_ from it. It’s just hurt, and it’s just damaged, and really, it’s just weather-worn. It’s a resigned silence that tells me everything I already know about how I made her feel, and what I did to us, and so much more that I can’t even begin to place.

All I know is that it makes the air both brittle and stagnant, and it reminds me of the viscous thickness of the sort of water that plagues me the most.

When mom picks up her fork with her sharply-manicured fingers, I take that as my cue to climb up onto my own stool – but I keep my chin submissively bowed, staring hard at the plate in front of me. It’s a casserole, or something – and it looks just as good as it smells, richly meaty with steaming vegetables and things that will taste infinity times better than burned bacon and the wash of stale beer – but my fingers are leaden and remain demagnetised, unable to pick up any of my own cutlery.

Her movements are careful and inoffensive, as if she doesn’t want to disturb the air too much by moving a forkful of food from her plate to her mouth too suddenly. She even chews slowly, and I know every bite tastes like anticipation or maybe _fear_ over the thought that I might lash out and say something _bad_ again – I can taste it all too, without having to take a bite. The flavour is uniquely bitter.

 _Breathe, Jean. Just breathe_.

The thought that the tension alone could send me into a tight-lipped panic could almost make me laugh. Y’know – loud, sharp, _barking_ laughter. Ironic laughter. But naturally, that’s not what happens.

_Gotta be an adult about this now._

“Your … _hair_ looks nice, mom.”

She starts as if she’s been slapped. The thought alone makes me wince.

She doesn’t say anything, but I feel her eyes on me for a while, and I know she’s searching my down-turned face for something I don’t know how to describe – other than the way it seems to focus my twister of a mind like laser beam onto a single thought.

 _Have I ever just told her that she looks nice before_?

You know, I can’t tell you. I don’t know. I can’t remember. All that swirls inside my head is the twenty-year game of them seeing how much they can avoid each other whilst sleeping next to one another in the same bed; of trying to fall asleep despite shouting; of concealing the sound of my voice into the telephone receiver with my hand; of the stab to my gut every time my dad came home drunk and covered in someone else’s lipstick and I holed up in my room with my hands over my ears, because I was never meant to hear them admit their faults.

And in that same instance, I regret – I regret _so much_ the knowledge that I never pinned any memory of a particular hug or a kiss or a word to my internal cork board. I know that all those things happened – moments where she showed me how much she loved me. I know that there were mom’s arms, mom’s body, a picture book as a bedtime story.  I know that there were lipstick prints on my forehead, and handkerchiefs smeared across my face. I know that she was there in every school play I was ever in, and I know that she was there to drive me in on my first day of high school, and I know she was the one who picked me up from Connie’s house when I was a snivelling wreck after beating Eren to a pulp.

She was there.

But when I search inside myself for just one instance – one, _particular_ moment in time when I can replay the thoughts in my head of the way she’s held me above swirling water despite the aches pooling in her arms, I find nothing.

I find vague recollection, I find hazy nostalgia, I find the sobs that made my bedroom door tremble as she sunk down outside it that one time that made me want to tear my hair out with guilt. I find the way her face had broken in the same way mine might, in terror, staring at the sea.

And I just wish that I’d tried harder to make more memories. Trivial memories. Just the simple things – the things that might remind me now that it never took some dazzling performance, or some tearful, messy implosion of myself for her to love me. Sometimes it was just a passing hug in the kitchen.

I wish I had realised what I had before I screwed it all up.

Frown lines appear between mom’s neatly plucked eyebrows; I realise quickly that I’ve looked up, and now, that I’ve met her gaze. The lines are shallow, and they look out of place for the span of one blink. She really hasn’t been near the Botox in a while.

And to think I used to judge her for that.

To think I used to see her as not as good a mom because she wears those stupid heels, or because she gets her hair done every other week, or her nails manicured on a Sunday, or goes to yoga and drinks health shakes, and—

And like it _ever_ affected how much she loved me. It didn’t. I was just fucking stupid.

She and I have the same eyes. We’re both lanky and bony, and white as fuck despite living in a city that sees so much sun.  She dyes her hair the same colour as mine so that other people will know that she’s my mom. She sent me to art classes when she found out it was important to me. She kept Marco on when she realised how much he means to me.

 _Doesn’t that say enough_?

I can’t eat. There’s word vomit sliding up my throat.

“Mom—”

“Jean—”

Both of us sound broken. And I know you’re not supposed to romanticise the sort of sadness that spirals as depthless vortexes of sorrow and hurt and confusion and whatever else you can conjure up to fill the empty spaces, but if I could own a beauty like hers when she’s so close to tears, well, I would feel—

Her brown eyes glisten with pricking heat; quietly, she sets down her cutlery and wipes her mouth on her napkin, smearing the square of white linen with the red of her lipstick. She blinks a few times, clearly trying to keep the flood gates closed, but I can see how the forming dew drops begin to clump her mascara together, thick and black on her lashes.

“You first,” she says, barely audibly, and undoubtedly cracked with the hairline fractures that have run and splintered through her bones for too many years to count – and only made worse and more fragile in the past weeks by me, and me alone.

She seems to brace herself for the worst, and I watch the barriers be erected behind her eyes and in her body posture – the way she wraps her arms around her chest, in much the same way I do when I’m scared, or panicked, or just _falling apart_. We’re the same. Not in all respects, but in _enough_ respects.

I wonder what she expects me to say. I wonder what more she can think there can be in terms of hurtful, poison words. I wonder if she thinks there’s still space in her heart for me to cause _more_ damage.

Isn’t _that_ a thought. I wonder if she’s still holding onto some semblance of something for me that isn’t sprung from the most forlorn of regrets. You know – I feel the prickling of something that tries to coax me into believing that the lie is not actually a lie, and that she might still hold love for me, despite everything I said to her.

Can I hope for that? Not her forgiveness. Just her love. Is that the sort of clemency I can ask for?

Heat swipes stickily at the back of my eyes, and there’s a wretched moment, curled up on that bar stool under her unreadable gaze as our food goes cold, that I think about Marco’s _dad_. And I think about how they deserved more time together – him and Marco – and how I still wish with every fibre of my being that they still had the opportunity to make new memories together.

 _Don’t waste your time_.

That’s what I tell myself.

 _You don’t ever know how long you’ve got left_.

It’s enough to spill a single tear, and the bead of salty water goes plummeting down my cheek, carving out a pathway on my skin until I flick it away with a swat of my hand and a low huff. I brush the moisture off onto my jeans, and resolve myself to let that be enough shed for tonight. I don’t have the right to cry in front of her.

Mom’s face softens.

My resolve weakens.

God, there’s so much to say. So much I _need_ to say. And it’s a tedious job building back up what was broken, firmly cast in the knowledge that whatever I might say will never reflect as brightly as the sun-comprehending glass we might once have had encasing us in our transparent boxes from the world and the things we overlooked.

There’s so much I want to say. And I’ve been through it all already – too many times to count. It all screams inside my head too loudly to ignore; all the bitter words said and not said, and their venom that seeped even deeper when lips were shut. Such things always _louder_ than all the plethora of _other_ things that could be; might be. The future is mute, but it’s not quite deaf. Maybe it’s in that same was that a blind man learns to read braille so fluently, or a deaf man sees so clearly, or maybe me – whatever words don’t come crawling from my mouth form masterfully, instead, inside my head, although they can never leave.

There’s so much I want to say. There’s so much I want to understand.

There are so many new things about myself that I want her to _know_.

It doesn’t come out as some poetically profound jargon – but when has it ever? When have I ever not stuttered and stammered and fallen over convoluted words?

Do not cry. _Do not cry_.

The reality is just some cut-off whimper as I bury my head in my hands, but as long as it’s noise, it’s enough.

“M-mom, _I’m sorry_.”

My forehead meets the countertop – cold and cool marble against my skin – and I fold my hands over my head, fisting my own fingers in my hair. Maybe if I tug hard enough at my roots, I’ll be able to drag myself out of this feeling, and return to that camaraderie shared at the shore edge.

 _No. No running away. Not this time_.

I don’t cry, and it must be scary for her, as she watches each heaving rise and fall of my spine as I breathe deeply. One, twice, three times – more. There’s maybe thirty seconds of silence.  Probably more. I have to wait until I think I can look her in the face without crumpling, and yet even when I raise my head again to look at her so pitifully, my jaw quivers and quakes like there’s no tomorrow.

“Mom, _I’m sorry_.”

The feeling in my throat is like sandpaper, rough with frustration above anything else. Mom has become marble too, stone, still, and silent, with doe eyes and white knuckles, and she’s holding herself together like someone’s driven a chisel into her ribcage and there are cracks veining up throughout her mineral insides.

She doesn’t say anything, so I _have_ to say _something_ to fill the awful space.

“I—I—I’m sorry,” I spit out again, and my damn voice crumbles into dust with the only two words I seem to know how to say. “I—I didn’t mean— I never wanted to— _f-fuck_. I’m sorry.”

My hands are on my thighs now, fingers tight and tendoned around my legs and the creases in my jeans, pressing through the fabric and into my own skin hard enough to bruise. I stare down at my lap with a glare just as fierce.

It’s like there’s a coil of something inside my gut – and it’s not anger, and it’s not the onset of tidal tears, and it’s not anything I _know_ – but it’s disgusting, and makes me skin crawl and my muscles _wheeze_ with how tightly they’re strung around my bones, and I know I have to get it out, but it just won’t _come_ —

“I … I never meant all those— all those _things_. I never meant them, I _never_ —”

Maybe I did once. Once, long, long ago, when I was different, and everything was different, and the walls I had built up around myself were so high that I could never expect to see over them, and I was _stuck_.

“I shouldn’t have— I shouldn’t have said— _f-fuck_ , I shouldn’t have taken it out on … on _you_ , mom, not on you, because I—”

It was not anger meant for her. It was never anger meant for her. It was anger meant for dad, it was anger meant for the things I was never meant to control, and anger meant for the burning moment when I realised that much. It was anger for whoever, or whatever, decided to do those things to Marco, to his _family_.  It was anger at myself for not turning back – for _never_ turning back and facing _anything_ , until that moment.

And it had been the wrong moment.

“You don’t deserve a son like me, I— I should’ve known better. I shoulda _known_. And I just—” I gulp violently, and drag my hands up from my lap to wrap my white fingers around the edge of the countertop. My knuckles press against my translucent skin from the inside, weird and blotchy and shifting tensile. “I don’t _want_ you to forgive me. Please don’t. I don’t deserve it. You … you probably don’t even want to, and that’s okay, _that’s really okay_ , I just—”

Intake of sharp breath. I think it’s mine.

“ _I—I just want it to go back to normal, p-please._ ”

It sounds too selfish the moment it spills over my lips, and I wince away from it, in the same moment that mom’s stool _screeches_ across the tiles as she stands.

It’s a jolt of excruciating electricity that rattles my system, and my eyes fly up to hers as she clings onto the corner of the counter with her manicured fingers, standing now, and I wonder, and I wait for it—

Wait for it—

“… _Jean_.”

I shake my head from side to side, and squeeze my eyes shut for a second.

“Mom. Mom, _please_ , just— just shout at me. _Please_. Please just—”

“ _Jean_.” She takes another step around the counter, her porcelain jaw tense and trembling. Closer.

“Please, tell me you don’t forgive me, _please_ — I can’t deal with all this silence anymore, because it— it just—”

Her hands find my cheeks, and suddenly, I’m drawn into her chest, my nose squashed against the hollow of her neck. She is warm. _She is warm, and I deserve none of it_.

“Jean, stop talking,” she says, weakly – but maybe it’s _not_ weak, maybe that’s just the tremor in her voice. She is stronger than me, and she curls her arms around my shoulders and holds me tightly against her chest, fingers running smoothing circles over the nape of my neck. “It’s okay.”

 _It’s okay_. Those same words again.

“ _Mom, I—_ ”

“It’s okay.”

It’s not that simple. It’s not that simple, she can’t just say it’s okay, when it’s not, because she’s supposed to be angry at me, she’s supposed to tell me what a shitty son I’ve been before any semblance of _this_ was meant to happen, she’s supposed to—

“You’re… you’re not supposed to _forgive_ m-me,” I whimper muffledly; _pathetically_. I feel her shake, and hear her tiny hiccup, and I know she’s crying, and I know she’s pressing it into the crown of my hair where she now buries her face.

“It doesn’t matter,” she whispers, the words spooling inside my head, twisting, tangling. “It doesn’t matter. _I love you_ , baby. _That’s_ the only thing that matters.”

It can’t be okay.

Okay doesn’t happen this easily.

It can’t, it can’t— it can’t just happen like that—

 _It’s okay_.

It’s okay. And I’ll tell you why.

Because she’s not saying that she’s forgiven me. That’s not the thing that doesn’t matter.

She’s saying that the fact that she _doesn’t_ forgive me doesn’t matter. She’s telling me that she’s still hurt, and it’s not gone away, but it doesn’t matter, because she loves me _more_ than my words hurt her.

I want to be stubborn. I want to pull away, and shake my head, and tell her that she’s crazy, and judge her own hurt for myself, but—

But I don’t. I don’t, because I’m still riding on the coattails of all the honesty that I’ve found within myself, and the wear of so many emotions felt at once, and the high of Marco’s kisses and of Connie and Sasha’s apologies, and I know that the only thing I’ve ever wanted is for things to be fixed.

This is fixed. This is how _fixed_ is. Never quite there, but enough. Fixed is the lie which is not actually a lie. Fixed is when I wrap my own arms around my mom’s waist and pull myself closer to her like I’m still five years old somewhere deep inside myself and always will be.

“It’s okay, baby,” she says again, “It’s okay. _It’s okay_.”

Fixed is _it’s okay_ when it’s not okay, but it doesn’t matter because whilst you’ve been _double crossed_ , you can also be _fingers crossed_ , _star crossed_ , and it all balances itself out until _okay_ doesn’t really matter because it’s such a mundane feeling and you can only bring yourself to care about the euphoric once you’ve tasted it.

I screw up my eyelids and fight back the feeling of wetness against my forehead where mom’s tears roll down her sharp features and meld with my hairline.

“I … I love you, mom. _I’m sorry_.”

There’s a strange sort of whimper that rises in her throat and she hides it in my hair, gently rocking us from side to side, as best the stool I’m still sitting on will allow. I feel _dirty_ , and I feel _small_ , but she just hugs me tighter.

And it’s the same feeling as what it’s like to be loved by Marco, y’know. The same feeling of realisation that there’s something about me that’s worth loving, even if it can be sometimes difficult to see. Well, whatever it is, they both see it, and maybe I can trust them to do that when I can’t.

They both know how to scale my walls, and they both know how to make me fucking _cry_. And they’ve both held me up above all the swirling water in my lungs, and it took me too long in both cases to realise what they’d endured to keep me there.

But I realise now. Or at least, I realised for Marco. I _will realise_ for mom. I will _make_ myself realise.

“C-can we talk?” I murmur into the layer of warm air between us. “Properly. We … _we need to talk_.”

I say that, but my fingers curl tighter into her shirt, and she mimics me, carding one hand through my undercut protectively, and squeezing the other on my shoulder.  I feel her press a kiss into my roots, and my chest seizes again.

“I know. I know,” she says, letting out a delicate breath. “You should eat first. And shower too, because … because you smell _disgusting_.”

My chest vibrates with a weary laugh and she smoothes my hair down and plants another kiss atop my head, before pulling back. There are tear tracks in her foundation and kohl smears around her eyes, and she tries to dab it away when she finds me staring, but I frown, and I don’t care about _any_ of that. This world that we’ve built is too small for the both of us.

Her claret lips pull up into a watery smile to match the moisture in her eyes, but it’s a smile. It’s a smile. A smile like a bow, which shoots an arrow far and away into the sky. It’s all I wanted.

 _You’re so lucky, Jean. So lucky_.

 

* * *

 

I don’t realise until I’m running conditioner through my salt-dried hair that this is first shower I’ve taken in a long time where I don’t feel the water.

The pitter-patter of droplets against my skin is still heavy, but it doesn’t sting. The watery run-off slides down shallow gullies of my collarbones and chest, rolling over the rise and fall of my ribs and trickling down the insides of my legs, and it feels fine.

Or not fine, maybe; but it feels like its _not_ -fineness is inconsequential, with the thought of water intertwined with other memories that mean more and weigh heftier.

Droplets on my skin and on the shower door are made into metaphors inside my head; singular drips and drops of people making their own way amidst a crowd of similarities, only to meet with others halfway through their journey, and accelerate towards their destination with the force of a current that shoulders them. They’re all the same to begin with – waiting to be tipped, to be pushed down the path, but once they’re shown the way by others, their journeys are unpredictable.

There’s a droplets on the shower door that seems to be stuck in its tracks – I smear my finger across the glass to get it moving again, and gravity does the rest of the job for me. It whizzes down towards the shower drain, and joins the flow of a fast-moving stream.

 

* * *

 

There’s a lot of grime on my skin to be washed off, literal and not. The jet of water from the shower head feels like a pumice stone, both rough and relieving, in taking off the layer of salt residue that has adhered to my skin over the last few days. It’s like flicking off flakes of a sandy film, and the me underneath feels pink and raw but clean; that soft and squishy sort of clean that turns your skin white when you press it too hard with your fingertips.

I watch with fascination the way my finger pads prune like rain treads in car tires – it doesn’t happen often. Water beats down on the back of my neck, sharp on the faint red lines of the sun’s attention, but renewing in the same instance, in the way the feeling in my gut that is hot and _wrong wrong wrong_ burns itself out into steam, and then I’m left only with the luke-warm rhythm splattering onto my shoulders; and I stare long and hard at my fingertips in a stupor.

Phantom feelings ghost in my hands, perhaps the caress of steam against my tender skin, or perhaps fatigue catching up with me; the softness of mom’s shirt against my palm as I hugged her; the straw tickle of Sasha’s hair beneath my awkward petting; the languid flood of water between my fingers as I trailed them through lapping ocean waves; the prickle of Marco’s jaw.

I curl my wrinkled fingers into my palm and squeeze them tight as a bead of water rolls from the longest strands of my hair plastered to my forehead, and splats onto my wrists, fragmenting into smaller drops.

 

* * *

 

Even with the softest of mom’s fluffy, Egyptian-cotton towels, my scrubbed skin still chafes, so I perch on the toilet seat butt naked for a while, blasting my hair with the blow-dryer until the feeling of red-rawness wears away.

I change straight into sweatpants and a fresh t-shirt for bed, chucking my clothes into my wash hamper with the smattering of sand that seems to fall out of them as I do. (There’s undoubtedly a small _beach_ worth of _more_ sand left in my bags downstairs, but I’ll deal with that another time.)

I don’t feel rushed – that’s the essence of it. There’s a hazy feeling settled over me, that stems from the soft, lilting colours of night-time mixed with streetlamp songs that spills through the windows and battles back the artificial glare from the overhead lights. It’s much the same as the feeling that absorbed me on the highway; a sentient detachment and subtle intransience, and it’s only gradiented into more gentle softness when I shuffle back downstairs, fresh-faced and anaesthetised, to find mom curled up on the big, white couch in the living room, bathed in the fuzzy glow of the television on low, and our reheated dinners steaming on the coffee table.

Her eyes flick up when she sees me loitering in the doorway, with one hand holding my other arm still against my side stiffly, and in the same instance turns the volume on whatever programme she’s half-watching down to mute.

“Hey,” I say hesitantly, as if it hasn’t barely been half an hour since I traipsed upstairs to shower. Still, it feels necessary. I make it feel necessary.

Mom’s smile is still aqueous, but the trembling wateriness has soothed into temperance and stillness; she pats the space on the sofa beside her amiably.

“Come and eat your dinner,” she says simply, and I accept her invitation, shuffling docilely across the hard wood to flump back into the couch cushions with a deflating huff, but being sure to maintain a safety-net gap of space between her and me. She has her legs folded up beneath her, one arm holding her knees in place, so I reckon it’s the right decision. Being this close is enough. I don’t want to push that which hasn’t settled in its ripples yet.

I practically inhale my dinner, even if my first few mouthfuls are tentative, caught up in watching her eat quietly from the corner of my eye, and analysing the movement of her every forkful from her plate balancing on her knees, to her red lips, and back again.

(But once the filling feeling starts to hit my stomach, I’m more interested in scraping every smear of sauce from the rim of my own plate, remembering gloriously what real food tastes like when it hasn’t been barbecued by Connie Springer. It’s good. I didn’t realise how _hungry_ I was.)

I finish first, and set my empty plate back on the coffee table with a satiated sigh, flopping back into the downy cushions with hands resting on my stomach. The silence that settles is still uneasy, but I let my deep breathing replace the need for words in my ears, and allow my eyelids to flicker closed for the briefest moment, waiting for the sound of mom setting down her cutlery next to mine.

We don’t speak for a while, even after she does that – I figure she’s trying to collect her words, whilst I’m sifting through a vacancy of _no words_ ; light and colour and the tempting onset of sleep only.

I think I almost doze off, coherent thought slipping from my finger tips for a slim second, until she finally chooses what she wants to say.

“We did love each other, once upon a time, Jean.”

I turn my head towards her and blink my eyes open, but she casts her gaze away from me, staring hard at the coffee table or the middle distance or somewhere else entirely suspended twenty-something years in the past, as she chews her lips and tightens her hold on herself.

I could ask her straight forwardly what I want to know – what I want to _understand_ – but the threads of wear and drowsiness keep me gently strung up, out of reach of quick thinking and an honest tongue. I let my head loll back against the spine of couch, and keep my eyes on her face, letting her continue – _if she wishes_.

For a moment that extends into a silent while, I think that she doesn’t want to go on. I see the quiver in her jawline again, and I see the glossiness in her eyes, and she flicks her fingers beneath her lashes to catch dew-drops I don’t see, but figure threaten to fall. She swallows thickly, gulping back the words that come forth, but that don’t quite feel right to tell me.

I guess it hurts. I don’t know why, but I guess it just does. It’s gotta be more than just the things I’m able to see. Those things burst anger, and hurt too, and bubbling frustration – but they never sewed seeds of sorrow quite like the ones that clearly mist up mom’s expression.

I wait patiently, because I’ve learned how to be patient.

“We did … we did love each other,” she says again, her voice less her own as she repeats the same words with less vitrification. “When we first met – your father and I. The people around us … they were good at pretending, and so were we, but he— there was a way he smiled at me, Jean, that felt so genuine. As if it were reserved for me, and then for you as well, you know—”

She breaks off, if only to sniff loudly, and bite back the things that sting her eyes.

“You should’ve seen him when he held you for the first time, Jean,” she says, and her eyes flit to mine, momentarily. “You should’ve seen his smile. It was perfect. Maybe it was never conventional … I don’t know. Maybe we were using each other for convenience even then, but I— it was good, Jean. It was good.”

I’ve known for a while now that the air that mom exudes, all tied-up in clothes and health shakes and yoga classes and general airheadedness, is just a ruse, even if she doesn’t always know it herself. I’ve known for a while that she can be astute – but I guess I didn’t realise exactly _how_ astute. She knows. She understands. She gets all the things I used to think she didn’t get, or that she purposefully ignored, but _no_. No. Not at all. She understands them better than I do, and that’s because she’s had years of experience in coming to terms with the scaffolds that hold up the life she’s built, yet creak far too loudly for comfort under its weight.

She’s had years to realise.

 _How many years_?

“How long have you known?” The words spill out of my mouth on autopilot, and her eyes widen as she meets the vagueness of my stare. She bites her lip again and bows her head, scooping a lock of short hair behind her ear.  I can see how much the question rocks her, and makes her cling on helplessly to the edges of her little boat, begging it not to capsize – but I think it’s a little late for that. We all went under a long time ago.

“The first time was twelve years ago,” she says quietly, “It was only a one-off thing. He promised it wouldn’t happen again.”

“It was a lie.”

“I know.”

She focuses her gaze on the strained fabric of her jeans over her knees, and scratches at the denim with one sharply manicured finger, almost obsessively. For going overboard, the splash was mighty quiet, and I don’t find myself losing balance as I might’ve thought I would.

Twelve years ago.

 _So, I was seven_.

It doesn’t shock me so much. It’s just a fact. Just a fact.

“How … how long have _you_ known?” mom then asks, not diverting her attention away from the fabric of her jeans; her hand does fall still, however. She curls her fingers over her knee, and her knuckles look strained.

It’s a good question – and only good because I have to think. Not good in the answer I come up with; because discerning between when I denied that the phone calls I overheard my dad make in his study were not appropriate to be making to his secretary, and when I realised what it meant, is too vague a line to be able to draw, even now.

I hadn’t wanted to accept it for a long time. I clung onto the father who bought me game consoles and new bikes for my birthdays, and the father who showed me off to his work colleagues with a broadness in his chest as if he might burst with pride. I clung onto his favour for a long time, and I didn’t want to accept what it meant to my happy family if I acknowledged his murkier coloured secrets.

“A while,” is what I end up saying, dejectedly. “Maybe four or five years. Not sure.”

Mom whines. It’s not a groan – it’s a _whine_ , and she presses her hand to her face as she hides whatever expression she doesn’t want me to see. She doesn’t conceal too well the tearful noise that slips through her lips, but _God_ , she’s strong. She’s holds her walls together enough to not let me see her cry again.

The sobs that do make it through the defences are airy and more than a little bit broken, however. She doesn’t have to say a word for me to know that it hurts her to know that I found out so long ago, and I found out despite her best interests to keep it from me. Whatever those were.

“Mom,” I start, my voice thrumming with low vibrations. She shakes her head too violently, and keeps her face covered, and her breath hitches ugly again, and it _hurts_. It hurts me way, way down inside, at the thought that she’s held all this inside her for so long, and the one person who she didn’t have to tell, but could depend on – _me_ – did the things that I did to break her trust. She’s had to bottle all this up inside her for twelve God-damn _years_. How is that fair?

How is that fair on anyone? How could it ever be?

How can she still want to stay living like this?

Mom’s jilted breaths stutter as she tries to calm herself, her palm pressed tightly across her lips and her eyes screwed shut as she tells herself to heave slower and she tells her pain to be silent again and for longer.

It’s not _fair_. I want her to be happy. I want her to know what it feels like to be happy – properly happy – outside of this house, and outside of whatever shared surname we might have with the man; my father; her husband. I want her to have another chance, and a better chance, with someone who sees her for her; and if that person has to be me, or if _that person_ can become _those people_ in a life that could exist beyond this loveless marriage, then that’s what I want.

I pull my legs up onto the couch and let myself slink down in the sofa cushions, folding my arms on top of my knees. I don’t quite manage to close the gap between mom and me, but maybe she feels my intention, because she finally draws her hand away from her face and steadies her shoulders. I tell myself that now is as good as ever to ask what I want to know, being that which has defined us for _twelve fucking years_.

Whatever frustrated bravado I might have translates poorly onto my skin however, and I feel like shrinking.

In a whisper, I ask her, “Why don’t you leave him, mom?”

She seems startled – taken aback, I figure, judging by the way she seems to withdraw further into the couch cushions. I see the flicker of the memory in her eyes, but we both know I was angry the last time I asked that question. Really angry. Wrongfully angry. _She can see that, can’t she_?

I want to know. I really do. I want to know what it is that stops us leaving. Because I could leave. I could now, because I have something more for me than the safety net of this family – even if what it is boasts no security of money or school or career; only the knowledge that I’ve been lucky enough the stumble into the life of a person better than all of that.

But I won’t. Because I can’t leave mom by herself, even if I have Marco on the other side. I can’t leave her behind here, not in place of even him.

“It’s … it’s better here,” mom says, falteringly. Something fearful crosses her glossy eyes when she sees my grimace, mouse quiet yet thunder loud. I think she sees my cynicism. “Jean … _Jean, please_. Believe me. It’s better like this.”

“Don’t see how,” I remark coarsely, folding in on myself even tighter, as mom’s shoulder deflate and the sigh she expels is all parts wistful and tormented. “You said it yourself. It _was_ good. It’s not good anymore, is it? So let’s just _go_ , mom. Let’s just … let’s just _leave_.”

She huffs again and passes her thin hand through her hair, dragging the ash blonde wisps back against her head. A tremble ripples through her figure and swallows up every molecule of air in her lungs; she closes her eyes for a moment, and then twists around on the sofa to face me, head on.

“We can’t, baby,” she says, and it’s anguishing. For both her and me. “We … we can’t. Oh— oh God, Jean, I wish … I wish we could but I—” She reaches out her hand and lets it come to gentle rest on my forearm, not deigning to squeeze, but the pressure of her touch enough to chill me and burn me simultaneously. “I can’t give you a good life if I leave him, baby.”

“I have a good life!” I say, my voice raising the hackles on the back of my neck, and making mom flinch. I regret it in an instance, for the flash of a cowering, little bird that I see in her eyes – a reflection or not, I cannot say. Maybe it is and it isn’t. Maybe it’s a figment of us both. “I— I … I have a good life, mom. Without him. Without being here, in the same house as him, without doing all the _shit_ that he wants me to do. It’s good. The other things … they’re good now. They’re really good. I—”

“J-Jean … Jean, don’t,” she fades, “You … I know what you mean, baby, but I— how am I meant to keep you in school? We can’t pay your college bills without your father, and … and just when you got going with your art – I can’t. Jean, I can’t. I have no … no useful skills, I’ll only be able to pick up a minimum wage job, I won’t be able to support both of us, Jean, if … if we leave. I won’t be able to … to be—” She swallows thickly, and tears threaten once more. “I won’t be able to be a good mother to you. I won’t be able to _look after_ you.”

She … does she have any clue what she’s saying? As if her worth as a mom depends on her ability to provide me with a car worth tens of thousands of dollars, or give me more than one present at Christmas, or for us to live in a house that has a TV bigger than my arm span and two spare rooms for guests. As if any of that matters. I’m almost twenty years old. I’m not a child anymore that depends on her like that. We’re both adults now. We’re supposed to be the same.

As if any of that _material_ shit matters.

As if any of that _matters_.

How could it?

I turn to face her then, unfolding and untangling myself enough from my own limbs to shuffle around in the small space to meet her gaze and let the fire in my chest burn brightly _for_ her, and not _at_ her.

“I don’t care about any of that, mom,” I whisper hoarsely, “I don’t care. We’ll manage, we will – I promise. I’ll … I can get a job. Work some night shifts after class, grab something at the weekends, I— I can sell my _car_. That’ll be enough for a down payment on a house, for Christ’s sake.  We’ll make it work. Please. Please, mom.”

“Jean … Jean, I—”

“ _Please_ , mom. I’m not asking for tomorrow. I’m just … I just want the promise of one day. One day. Just say that _one day_ we’ll get outta here. I can’t leave you here alone, but I can’t— I can’t cope with living like this much longer, with all these fucking _lies_ and how … how he _treats_ us, and— please, mom. Just— just _one day_.”

I move my hand to rest over the one she still has clasped around my forearm. I don’t see in her expression the things I want to see – I don’t see the will, or the drive, or the promise. Twelve years have sucked it out of her. She’s resigned to it – whether it be this life, or it be giving me things I don’t really need, or it being blinded as to what _she_ deserves herself.

She gives my arm a squeeze, but I don’t want it. I don’t want it, I don’t want it, _I don’t want it_.

“Jean, I can’t promise you that. Please … please understand.”

I want to understand. I really do.

I can accept that it was good once. I can accept all the reasons she might have fallen for my dad’s charms, and all the eloquences of his smiles for her when they were both still young, and all the ways in which he used to be a _dad_ , and not just a father by formality. I can accept that she thinks she has to stay because she believes it’s better for me, but I—

I _can’t_ accept that I can’t make her change her mind. I can’t accept that she’s willing to forgo her own happiness, for me. For him. She’s worth more than both of us put together, a thousand times over.

Maybe I can tell her. Maybe I can make her see. Make her understand, from my point of view, that this is not _fair_.

“You’re too good for him, mom,” I croak; the tensile strength in my put-together façade threatens to crumble. My resolve wobbles under the weight of the lie that isn’t a lie; under how much I’ve come to realise that my mom is more than a mom. That she’s my best friend, and that she’s a God-damn _super woman_ , and that she’s a _human being_ in her own fucking right. “You’re too good for this _shithole_ of a marriage. You’re better than … than _all_ of this.”

Her gaze softens – or at least, turns from wilted to a sad sort of fondness, and she blooms a weak smile on her red lips.

“Not all of this, Jean. It wasn’t all bad. It’s not … it still isn’t all bad,” she tells me softly, blinking carefully to keep tears within her eyes and not freefalling down her cheeks. “It … it wasn’t a mistake, Jean. It never was – because of you. _You_ made it worthwhile … there’s – there can _never_ be a tragedy in that. You were the greatest thing to come out of all this, and I can’t regret that— I can’t. I would go through it all a thousand times again for you, baby. You’re … you’re the best so— you’re _my_ son, and I love you, Jean. You make me _proud_.”

Shit. Shit, I’m gonna cry – I can _feel_ it. And this isn’t the curse of some newfound empathy blossomed by the boy with the freckles; or the experience gained from listening to the bloodied and beat up Eren on the sidewalk of the football stadium; or the relief of finally being honest with my two best friends about what it is that plagues me. This is just me, and my mom. It’s simple. Too simple, because whilst the rule might change from her side of the line, it will never change for me. I was born with all the love in my veins for her, and that can’t be taken away from me. _Unconditional_.

I don’t want her to think like she could do it all over again. I don’t want that. It hurts.

I keel forward into her embrace, because it’s the only thing I’m programmed to do, and the only thing my head wants, and I just want to show her how much I love her, and how sorry I am. She doesn’t hesitate to bundle me up into her spindly arms and draw me into the sort of hug that melts frost and quenches the thirst and the smoke itch brought on by burning brackish thoughts like kindling on your heart. She feels tense; all sharp angles and sinew and skin stretched too thinly, but I cannot blame her. She holds me tightly, and that’s enough, that’s enough. That has to be _enough_ , even when it’s not.

I wriggle closer into her hold, burying my head on her shoulder and wrapping my arms around her back. She feels so small, so fragile. And she’s always been this way; I just never noticed until now.

She pets my hair and it makes my chest ache, a twinge more intense than any feeling I’ve known to take root there.

“Your father and I know where we stand with each other, Jean,” she whispers to me, “We know what it is. I knew – and I think he did too – that when it became a … _a hide and seek game_ , that it was going to end up this way. We knew. We _know_. Don’t think that we don’t. But it’s easier this way, and it works, okay? It works like this.”

Her hand in my hair moves to my back, and I let go of whatever small, gnarled piece of what I thought was her weakness, that I was still holding onto. She realises sooner than I do how dry my breaths have become, and she smoothes each one down with fingers rubbed up and down my spine as she holds me tight, and I hold her tighter.

“You have to promise me something, baby,” she continues, “When it happens for you, when you meet that person – you’ve got to seek _each other_. Don’t let it turn out like this. Cherish them _so much_ , and spoil them rotten … but make sure they spoil you rotten too. Love each other _so much_ until your sides hurt from laughing and longing. I want you to remember that when it happens for you, baby. When it happens for you.”

I don’t have the heart to tell her now of the great dramatic irony; the words do form in my throat, and they bubble up into sombre excitement into my mouth and sit expectantly on my tongue, but ultimately, are misplaced.

I would tell her. I want to tell her. But I haven’t talked to Marco about it – I haven’t talked to Marco about a lot of things yet, and whilst I’m almost sure that’s all still to come, I need to know what he wants first, before I go telling my mom that _it’s okay_.

 _It’s really okay, because it happened for me already, mom. It’s okay. I love him a whole,_ stupid _amount. It’s okay._

So, I’ll hold onto it for now, and let it simmer with the good sort of embers in my chest – fuelled some by fear, but more by hope. Because I think she’ll be okay with it, when I tell her. I think she’ll understand. I _hope_ she’ll understand.

Maybe when she sees, she’ll realise truly that it’s _not_ the cushy lifestyle that we need to make ourselves happy. It’s much simpler than that. It doesn’t have to be four, white walls that make a home. Two eyes and a heartbeat is enough.

She just doesn’t know yet. _Yet_. There will be our _one day_. I swear it.

But for now, _for now_ – I’ll support her in what she decides to do. It’s the only thing I _can_ do, because there’s no way I’m gonna let anything split us apart again. I love her more than I hate this situation.

I hug her for a while – until both of us have swallowed it all back and have reminded ourselves of the twelve years’ façade, even if it’s a steel that will never hold up the same way again. I pull away first, and wait for mom to settle back into the couch cushions before I squidge up next to her, pressing my shoulder against hers as she finds the TV remote and the returns the volume to a low buzz.

There’s not much to be said for TV at one in the morning, but whatever is fading in and out across the screen doesn’t really matter; what matters is letting my head drop onto mom’s bony shoulder, and her petting my hair as I let my eyelids droop and sweep into the light metronome of her breathing.

I drift off with ease, the roller coaster of the last few days catching up with me in the instant I let my eyes fall shut; it’s not even a light doze, perpetuated by the drone of the TV or a dopey fitfulness. It’s straight out unconsciousness, and I’m more than willing to have it subdue me.

I don’t know for how long mom lets me rest on her, and I’m only rudely awakened when my head slips from her shoulder abruptly and I start with a snort and a splutter.

“Go up to bed, Jean,” mom says softly, giving me a gentle nudge as I rub my palms into my eyes  and try to clear the disorientated haze as my head swims. “It’s late. Go to sleep.”

I do as I’m told, but wobble on my feet as I groan and grumble my way up off the sofa cushions. The red, LCD display of the time on the television is too much of a blur to make out properly, but it’s late – dark, sleepy sort of late, where you feel just a little bit detached from reality.

All things considered, it’s no surprise, really.

 There’s some sort of invisible line that I’ve crossed over, and its threshold leads to the possibility of a sleep fruitful with a little, harmless dreaming; there’s a weight missing from my chest and the buoyancy it has left behind makes my feet feel light with each step, even if the reality is that I barely lift my toes from the floor as I shuffle dozily towards the living room door.

I can taste cool, grey mist and ocean spray, and the warmth of a scorching sun, and the welcoming recesses of the embrace of a lilac-black night, lit by pin-prick strobes and euphoria – all simultaneously, and all blurred, yet not dulled, by the weight pulling at my eyelids.

I taste a lot of things. I _feel_ a lot of things.

Mainly, the ripples of water as they spread forever outwards, towards what I might one day be able to call the semblance of a _happily ever after_. There’s still a far stretch of deep blue sea still to navigate, and swells of stormy ocean named: _Jean, I can’t promise you that_ or even _father, dearest_ between myself and the promise of calmer waters – but I can imagine them being in sight. It’s a hope I haven’t gifted myself in a long while. Perhaps _ever_. I don’t care to think about if I have _ever_.

I think what matters is the _now_. Glue the cracks back together, heave myself up the last few rungs of a ladder I’ve been climbing all my life, dream of stars and fairy-tale nonsense, and go to sleep wondering if things like that _can_ actually transcend the realm of fiction.

Maybe. Maybe they can. We start finding out _now_.

I stop in the doorway, holding myself up against the wood grain, and look back over my shoulder at mom as she levers herself out of the depths of the sofa too, fatigue weighing her limbs down and painting deep, purple-grey colour on her skin beneath the plasterboard of makeup still intact across her cheeks.

“Mom,” I say; she pricks up, blinking at me curiously. I level my gaze. “No … no more lies between us, mom.”

She nods.

“No more lies.”

 

* * *

 

I’m gone the moment I hit my pillow, and sleep deeply for a dreamless age, dead to the world. There are no thoughts of oceans or bottomless pools or fuzzy figures standing on the mosaic edge, watching from a distance. No shapes of people cut out dimly in the black; mothers, fathers, friends, Marco. None of that. It’s a black silence, and I remember a blissful none of it.

 

* * *

 

I wake to an afternoon of latest August; I can feel the slipping summer and arriving autumn in the colour of the new-fall light that is split across my floor and sheets through the slats of my blinds, and a swelter in the air that’s less humid and muggy, and more crisp, brittling the wetness and rain in the atmosphere left over from the late night thunderstorms of the last two and a bit weeks.

September starts on Wednesday – the same day as the funeral. The new semester starts the week after this one.

For a time of year when things are supposed to be shrivelling up and dying, and making headway for the winter that still seems many long months away, there is something to be said about the sense of rebirth and renewal and _clarity_ in the air. I would call it a spring-like autumn, save for the way it still dances with the threads of summer heat and summer laziness.

I feel lazy as a result, but it’s not a groggy or frustrating sort of laziness – it’s a satisfying calm of being able to stretch out across my mattress and wriggle my toes and unfurl my arms above my head, which is distinctly uncomplicated and unregrettable. I don’t have to get up. I don’t have to _feel_ like getting up, and, equally, I don’t feel like I have to stay in bed and wallow away the day in miserable thoughts.

I feel _peaceful_.

I let my arm flop into the space on my mattress between myself and the wall with a feathery thump; the spiral binds of my sketchpads peek out from the gap down the side of my bed still, and briefly I wonder whether they deserve to live like that for much longer, shoved away in embarrassed insecurity. But my sleep-crusted eyes don’t focus on them for long, drifting onto the ruffled sheets beside me and following the creases and crevices in how they’re mused.

I think about that space next to me on my bed, wide enough for another person, perhaps waking up blearily and meeting my fond gaze over a goofy smile, and then I think about Marco.

And then I blush – _furiously_.

Just the thought makes my heart pound in my chest and my blood echo like a drum beat in my ears, alive in my throat and alive in my cheeks also. God, I must be _transparent_ – you could probably _see_ the pulsation of the veins beneath my skin if you so much as looked, and be deafened if you laid an ear upon my wrist or chest or throat—

I remember the feel of his lips, soft and pliant against my _throat_. I remember the nip of teeth on the underside of my jaw and on the tender skin below my ear, and then the soothing, sweet kisses that followed.

Tangled hands. Lips, gasps, panting noises. Rocking hips. Breath _h-hot_ and _wet_ , and—

Real. God, it was real. It _is_ real.

Real, real, real. _Real_.

There’s a rumble that forces itself up my throat – flustered and embarrassed and completely and utterly done for, I’d imagine – so I roll over onto my other side, burying my face into my pillow to muffle the noise and try and suffocate that stupidly _gleeful_ tickle at the thought of being able to just phone him up and tell him that I’m thinking about kissing him, and _for that to be okay_.

Well, it would be okay if I could ever get over the fucking _butterflies_ causing a right storm inside my gut at the thought of telling him something like that so bluntly, but the idea is the same. If he were here, I could pull him down onto my bed amidst giddy laughter and flustered, feathery rasps of breath, and smother him in a hailstorm of pretty kisses, and pin him down on my—

Okay. Okay, so I’m going to have to overcome the whole embarrassed, blushing _virgin_ façade first, but— but there’s time for that. It’s scary thinking about all the things still to learn, but it’s more exciting in the same stead. I’ve only tasted two days of— of _this_. It’s a prickle of sensory electricity that has me thinking about all the time I am going to have to count exactly how many freckles he has littered down his back; or to get lost in the feeling of his hands playing with my hair when we’ve drunk too much, instead of being stuck shoulder to shoulder and burning with _what ifs_ ; or to fall asleep with the freedom of laying fingers upon his stomach in an essence of unremarkable but perfect bliss.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I totally don’t.

But I think it’s the fact that it’s _him_ with whom I don’t know what I’m doing that makes it feel like whatever it is I haven’t yet learned is exactly what _needs_ doing. What is _right_.

And importantly, what makes us _happy_ now.

I scramble for my cell phone on my bedside table, still practiced in the art of knocking over half the rubbish I leave lying around it, and unlock the screen with a swipe of my fingers as I roll back onto my back, cushioned in my pillows.

It’s clogged with notifications from Facebook and Instagram and all the other stupid social media websites that Sasha or Connie or both have persuaded or bullied me to get over the years – I open up Facebook for the clearest summary of what’s been going on.

I’ve been tagged in a handful of status updates – mopey and corny things from a few of my friends, lauding about how nice it was to see the summer out in style at the beach, and others (namely Reiner), complaining about the state of his squaddie tan lines, which are really more _burn lines_ than anything, judging by the photo he’s clearly had Bert take of his lobster skin. Connie has been quick off the mark, having uploaded an album full of photos from the trip – the majority of which being poor and blurry candids which I don’t remember being taken _at all_ – and I’ve been tagged in a handful, as well as in some snaps from Ymir and Armin also.

I open up Connie’s album for a nosey anyway, thumbing down through the tile grid of previews, and laughing lightly to myself at the photographic evidence of Reiner being buried in the sand, and the bacon burned to the inside of the frying pan, and Eren’s grouchy-eyed hangover as he tries to swat at the camera in a stream full of photos. I smile more warmly at the cutesy selfies of Connie as he’s kissed on the cheek by an affectionate Sasha, and at the more, stolen snaps of Sasha from further away, not noticing the camera, captioned with horribly insipid things that make me roll my eyes at how much Connie worships the ground she walks on. There are photos of the campfire, and of the porpoises, and of people posing victoriously in front of constructed tents, and I feel full with the thought that so much of what we enjoyed there together is savoured in these small, hundredth of a second snapshots.

I open up the few that include Marco, enjoying the ones of him posing with Bert and Reiner, broad smiles stretched across the three of them, and the selfies he was clearly forced into by Connie and Sasha – including a photobombing Ymir – when I was apparently elsewhere. You can see the colour in his eyes: the flecks of honey and chestnut brown and sunlit yellow – all sorts of beautiful things.

There are more, of course, and we’re together in some of them. Not _together_ together, but there are some group photos in which I’m squished up next to him, smiling forcefully at the camera; and some candid ones snuck with the two of us sat next to each other in the sand, heads bowed and talking hushedly.

The one I particularly like is the last one in the album, talking in the dark of my car on the journey home, taken from Sasha’s scope in the backseat. The blur of Connie’s hand appears in one corner, but the focus is on me and Marco in the front: me, mainly obscured by my headrest, and facing forward with my eyes on the road so that my face is not visible, but him turned towards me, and leaning a little across the stick shift between us, his face bright and his eyes alive and looking disgustingly, and _wonderfully_ absorbed in whatever it is that he was saying to me. Absorbed in the moment.

In _me_. He’s looking at me in the photograph, and even the quality of Connie’s camera can’t conceal the red tint high in Marco’s cheeks and scolding the tips of his ears. His gaze is soft – loving and tender – and the affection is his eyes is the lull of the beach and the wild of the bonfire and the sunshine of a mid-summer morning, where you might melt to hold the rays between your greedy, stardust fingertips. My stomach does fucking _somersaults_ , and I let my phone drop onto my chest with a wheeze that curdles into a clumsy grin.

This _can’t_ be real. I was totally wrong before – how can it be? There’s no way that Marco Bodt can possibly, scientifically, _plausibly_ be fucking _real_.

That, or I severely underestimated my own ability to act like what a thirteen year old schoolgirl does around her first crush. Because hey, I’m succeeding pretty well so far. I could fool anyone.

I open up the photograph again on my phone and spend a while longer staring at it, absorbed in the way Marco’s eyes seem to move despite being captured by the camera, and immersed in my own internal debate over whether I would prefer more to share the picture of such a sweet, summer sky boy with a starlit smile with everyone I know, or lock it away and keep it only to myself, should my own heart be a locket.

In the end, I settle on leaving a _like_ on Connie’s photo – alongside the five others it has already garnered – but no comment, deciding ultimately that whatever I could choose to say would only dig my hole deeper with the shovels of _merciless teasing_.

It doesn’t look like Marco’s seen the photos though – I flick through a few more, and he hasn’t liked any of them, and none of the statuses he’s been tagged in either. My inbox is devoid of any texts from him as well, and I’d be lying to say I didn’t feel a little disappointed.

Well, not _disappointed_. I don’t think that’s the right word, because I don’t think I was _expecting_ anything. I’m sure he’s busy at home and is overwhelmed by preparations for the funeral and hasn’t had the time to sit down at his desk, and boot up that decrepit monster of a desktop computer to check his Facebook.

So, I’m not disappointed. I think I’m just thrown a loop by the way my heart beats as I stare at my empty inbox, with the dawning realisation that the ache in my chest is not new, but different. Stronger, hotter, _different_. 

 _Be patient_ , I tell myself. _You’ve been patient this fucking long – what difference is a day gonna make?_

I drop my cell phone onto my duvet and wriggle myself upright against the headboard, out of the creeping glare of sunlight that is slowly shifting its way around my room. The light through my blinds is just too bright to be able to make out much of what is beyond my window; blue and cloudless skies absorbed and saturated by the whiteness of the sun, dissolving the contrasting outlines of the house on the other side of the street into nothing I can see.

I hear footsteps on the landing – heel clicks on the hard, wooden floorboards – moments before there’s a soft knock at my door. My heart does seize, but it’s more just the notion of constriction than any compressing pain or fear. I don’t have to call out before mom’s nudging her way into my room, a tray balanced between one hand and her hip.

She smiles softly at me when our eyes meet, her red lips pulled up by a twitch of an invisible string. She looks meticulously put-together this morning, and I wonder what that’s supposed to mean, in the grand scheme of things.

“Did you sleep well?” she asks me, tottering over to my bed and laying the tray in her arms down on my quilts. My stomach growls at the sight of hot, buttered toast, eggs sunny-side up, and lashings of bacon. “I made you breakfast— or _lunch_ , I suppose it is.” She nods towards my overturned clock on my bedside table, but I’m distracted by unloading the plate of food onto my lap and brandishing my cutlery like weapons.

Mom hums a quiet noise of approval as I crunch loudly into the first piece of toast, and she folds her arms over her chest as she watches me, unmoving from the side of my bed. Her posture is stiff, but at the same time, unsure, as if she’s doubtful of whether she should leave or not. I swallow coarsely my mouthful of toast before I go about inhaling the forkful of egg I have poised in mid-air, and give a nod towards the foot of my bed.

“Y’ can sit,” I mumble over the food in my mouth, “If you want.”

“Oh,” mom seems to startle, blinking widely. I watch her weight shift uneasily from one foot to the other – or maybe that’s just her alleviating the ache of stiletto-heels on the balls of her feet. She glances down at my mattress and I make a show of drawing my legs up underneath my sheets to make room for her at my feet. “W-well, okay. For a little while, sweetie.”

She says that, but as she settles down onto my bed, wriggling backwards until she’s lent up against the wall, with just her ankles hanging off the edge of the mattress, she reaches for one of the two cups of coffee still on the tray. I figure she wants to talk.

Or, if not talk, she just wants to sit and stay a while. Get a feel for whether or not our last-night truths meant as much as I hoped they did. That’s okay with me.

She cradles the mug of pitch-black coffee in both hands, fingers drumming softly against the porcelain as she stares down at the bitter liquid for a while. She still seems fragile, I think – as if the wrong sort of pressure applied to her glassy surface would be the last sort of pressure; but the great irony is that now I’ve finally come to see how smeared with finger prints she is, I realise how clouded my vision was before now. Things are clearer, more transparent, _here_. Now. Despite how muddied up the both of us might be. The translucency is born of our honesty.

I munch slowly on my breakfast, fuelling the grumbling gremlin in my stomach with much-missed, home-cooked food, but my eyes stray longer on her as she blows gently across the steam rising from her mug and sips it diligently, than on the plate on my lap.

I’ve never been great at making small talk, and probably even worse at reading delicate situations, so I’m unsure what I could say. Or what I’m supposed to say, if there is even that. Going back to crass normalcy so quickly seems like a disservice to her, and to me as well. To the new found intelligibility between us.

I feel an anxious twitch spiking in my gut amidst the thick and assuming silence and the too loud crunch of toast between my teeth, but I don’t need to worry.

Mom takes a long sip of her coffee and then sets the mug on her lap, fingers curled around the warm china, before looking up and facing me.

“You haven’t told me about your trip,” she says quietly, but with a curve in her lips more secret and less flaky. Her eyes are soft-hearted and genuine; I feel a deep breath mellow the pressure in my chest. “Was it fun?”

“Y-yeah,” I reply, concealing the wobble in my voice with a forkful piled high with bacon and eggs pressed between my lips. I swallow it back without chewing enough, and the bacon scratches my throat on the way down. “Yeah. It was … uh, good. Really good, actually.”

Mom seems to relax.

“I’m glad. I’m sure it was a much needed holiday,” she smiles, and her implications are clear enough. It was an escape. I really did need it. “It was Jinae, wasn’t it? Gosh, I haven’t been there in years. It would be lovely to go back again and see the beaches. Living in a city like … like _this_ , you almost forget that the sea is out there.”

“Mm,” I agree auspiciously, carefully sliding my plate from my lap and back onto the tray. I pull my legs up further beneath the blanket, crossing them, before reaching gingerly for my cup of coffee. There’s the need to move slowly – cautiously, as it were – in fear that doing anything too suddenly would stop her in her tracks of speaking so freely and with such growing ease. “Was a beach a little way up from Jinae, actually. Stohess, or something. It was nice. We had it all to ourselves, which was good.”

 _Better than good_.

“It sounds just lovely,” mom muses, slinking down a little against the wall, which ruffles her neatly-combed hair, “Who was it that you went with? Connie and Sasha?”

“Yeah. Those guys. Uh, Armin, Mikasa, Historia, Eren—” I don’t pretend not to see the way mom’s eyebrows rise at Eren’s name, but it’s a conversation for another day, when she asks. I continue, “Some guys that you haven’t met from college and stuff, and uh— M-Marco.”

If she notices the way I stumble on his name, she doesn’t mention it. In fact, she barely reacts, just nodding and humming gently in placid agreement.

“What I wouldn’t give to be back in college,” she then sighs, bringing her coffee to her lips. “I used to go down to the beach every other weekend during the semester – we’d set up the boom box – none of your fancy, pocketsize iPod stereos back then, I can assure you – on the sand, and dance until the sun came up, and oh, Jean, you would have had a _migraine_ at how short the men’s shorts were back then, but gosh, it was _great_.”

“It sounds _wild_ , mom,” I snort, and she rolls her eyes.

“Where do you think Hollywood got all its inspiration for the _Brat Pack_ movies, Jean,” she says wistfully, “It wasn’t all glitter and wild perms—”

“Sorry, how could I forget the double denim and leg warmers. _My bad_.”

“ _Jean_ ,” mom lauds, but it’s punctuated by an easy, tender giggle that doesn’t fail to make me grin, however deft I am at hiding it behind my coffee mug. “You’re _awful_ , you know that? Gracious, you make it sound like I went to college on a different planet, not the eighties. It wasn’t that different to what you get up to, I’m sure.”

I snigger into my coffee, but it’s a pretence to only hide the way my cheeks flush when I think about the things that I _actually_ got up to. I wonder how mom would react if I told her about sandy kisses and last night’s front-porch make-out.

Actually, screw that, she’d probably champion me with a list of her summer conquests during her time at university. (And that’s a conversation I don’t want to be involved with, thank you very much. Some things really do need to remain a secret.)

But … but the point still stands. Thinking about Marco makes my cheeks burn.

Maybe mom sees how my expression sombres for a moment, because her smile twitches and threatens to fall, and I see uncertainty flash in her eyes again, as if she’s worried she’s said something I don’t like. Far from it.

_Far from it._

It hurts to see her worry though.

“We, uh— we didn’t really get up to … much,” I add reassuringly, “Just … hung out, played Frisbee and stuff, sunbathing … y’know.”

_Made out with the pool b— nope. Shut up._

“It sounds nice,” mom agrees.

“Y-yep. Yep, it was.”

She asks me about how the drive was, of what we ate and drank, and if the weather stayed pleasant for the entirety of the trip, considering how the storms have been floating around the outskirts of Trost for the last fortnight or so – all the trivial details which aren’t quite enough to drag me away from the lingering thoughts of kisses on the shoreline and things I really shouldn’t be contemplating when mom is practically sitting at my feet and trying to maintain a conversation with me, her son, who’s too busy fantasising over the memory of making out with the pool boy on the against the front door of his house.

We settle into a comfortable silence when conversation dies of its own accord, and I switch on my television for a voice to fill the void, letting mom have control of the remote whilst I clear away the breakfast stuff, dumping it resolutely on the floor.

Mom finds something that resembles a cooking channel, with some far-too-well-spoken chef grouching at the camera about ingredients no normal person would ever have in their kitchen; she’s engrossed in it instantly, barely shifting when I tunnel out of the folds of my sheets, shimmying across my duvet to plonk myself against the wall and next to her. I shove a pillow into the hollow of her back for her, and she shoots me a brief smile, peeling her eyes away from the screen for a second as I go about building myself a nest beside her.

My stomach bubbles away hungrily at the phantom smell of simmering hot pots on the screen, despite the fact I’ve just filled myself with food, and by the time we reach a commercial break, it practically feels like I haven’t eaten in a week.

I’m surprised when I hear the opening chords of The Who’s _Who Are You_ muffled by blankets with the incoming arrival of a text message.  Mom turns towards the sound of the jingle as I start patting down the jumble of blankets to find my cell phone.

I know my face lights up when I unlock the screen and see Marco’s contact name scrolling across the top as a banner with an unopened message. I know my mouth blooms into a stupid and eager grin. I know it’s not the weather that makes my ears feel warm and reddened.

I know, for a fact, that I must look God-damn _ridiculous_.

Because mom picks up on it.

“Jean, you’ve gone beet red!” she laughs charmingly, and it’s like I’ve been skewered with an electric cattle prod to my ribs – I jolt, and almost fling my phone from my hands. “What sort of sordid things are you texting people, hmm? Not things you should be doing around your mother, surely.”

“M-mom!” I squawk. Should I throw my phone out the window? Should I throw _myself_ out the window? “N-no, it’s— it’s just Marco, oh my G-God!”

Mom laughs again, something sparkling in her eyes that I haven’t seen in a really long time. Well, I’m glad it takes crucifying me with mortification to get her laughing normally again. _Jesus fucking Christ_.

With skittish hands, I somehow manage to lock my phone again, and I shove it under the safety of my duvet, surprised that I don’t end up flinging it across the room with my fumbling hands and sweaty palms. I don’t even have a chance to read his message. Balls.

Fortunately – although that’s probably up for debate – mom lets the topic of illicit love affairs and steamy text messages drop, because she’s more interested in Marco himself. (She doesn’t need to know that those two things are … well, kinda more connected than she’d care to realise. F-fuck.)

“How is he?” she asks, as I cautiously lower myself back down into a sitting position, maintaining a safer distance from her side, just in case I need to throw myself between her and where my phone is buried in a split second. “How’s Marco? I haven’t seen him in so long – I do miss having him around.”

“H-he’s … uh, he’s good?” I stammer, unable to look up at mom’s face, and instead focussing on twiddling my thumbs in my lap awkwardly. “Uhm, y-yeah. He’s getting there.”

We haven’t spoken about what happened yet – of Anita’s sobbing phone call and the 5AM wake up that drizzly morning. I don’t exactly know how to tackle that, as much as I don’t know how to tackle much of anything else, but it feels like there’s less need for explanation when it comes to mom. She knows what happened, even if she might not know why, or any of what occurred afterwards.

“I’m glad,” she admits softly, her gaze growing a touch forlorn as she whisks it away from my face and stares into the middle distance. “The poor thing. He must’ve been all over the place. To think he was dealing with such a horrible thing with his father all this time. It’s unbearable just thinking about it.”

“Y-yeah,” I nod, gulping back the lump in my throat.  “Yeah, it was, uh … it was rough for a little while.”

“But it’s okay now?”

“Yeah, I already said—”

“Between the two of _you_ , I mean.”

“ _Oh_.”

For a moment, I think she knows. But that’s stupid – she _can’t_ know. There’s no way she could know, because I barely know myself. Still, my guarded and flustered surprise registers in my face as my eyebrows shoot up into my hairline, and as a startled expression, and incoherent noises dripping out of the porous mesh of my head and pooling in my mouth.

“I figured something happened,” mom adds reservedly, “I thought you two might’ve fallen out or had a fight. It had to be something to do with him to throw you into such a … such a _flunk_ for so long, honey.”

Oh. I see. She means it like _that_.

It’s not like she’s wrong. It was a little more complicated than just a fight, but in essence … of course. Of course. It was him that threw me so far off kilter.

Or, the part of me that thinks of him. I think that’s more accurate, because I can’t blame him for all the things that were said, especially when he was hurting so much. There was thoughtlessness on both sides, but he was in pain, and he was broken, and I was the one meant to be holding it together to keep him upright, and I just … didn’t.

So, maybe it was me who launched myself so far out of orbit, burning myself as I shot through the atmosphere far too fast. A combination of a whole lot of things.

Doesn’t change the fact that mom realises how intrinsic he is to me.

Doesn’t change the fact that it was _obvious_.

“It … it’s better now,” I mumble, squeezing my fingers tightly in my own palms. “It’s … better. We, uh – sorted it out.”

_And that’s just the half of it._

Mom smiles kindly and reaches across the space between us to pat my knee; her fingers hesitate at first – I’m not blind to it – but she finds the courage to touch me lightly and unremorsefully.

“That’s good,” she hushes, “I see how important he is to you. I’m happy you have a friend like him now.”

What’s unspoken, but resting firmly in her eyes, is how she is thankful not to go through what happened with Eren again. How she’s glad I haven’t lost another friend and fallen into another downward spiral. She was there with me for that entire year of my life – she saw what happened. She saw every crevice of what I felt like.

I wouldn’t want to put _her_ through that again, either. Let alone myself.

Thankfully, I can’t imagine it ever being a possibility. I’ve grown up a lot since then.

“Me too,” I whisper, feeling words sitting heavily on the back of my tongue, but not being willing forward between my lips. Another time. Another time, maybe. Mom squeezes my knee, and then withdraws her hand.

“Do you know when he’ll be coming back to work?” she asks. I shake my head.

“No. I mean— maybe soon. But he, uh … he said something about going back to school, actually. So, he … he might not.”

“Well,” mom says, curling her fingers around her near-empty mug again, “All the more reason to find excuses for you to invite him over more often then. It will be a shame not to have him cleaning the pool, but—”

“ _Mom._ ”

“I know, I know. He deserves to have the chance to go back to school, bless him. I just wish there was something we could do to help those poor souls out. College is so expensive these days, and if they’ve got medical bills to pay, heaven knows what poor Anita must be going through.”

I think I know well enough the sort of person Marco is, and I know enough of his family, to understand that they wouldn’t accept our charity if we offered it. It’s something I’ve thought about so many times before – because there’s little I can do to help the pain save for the space I can give and the love I can shower him in, and that’s only Marco, and not his mom or his sister. But money … money is something we have, and money is something I wish I could give to them, if I didn’t feel like I would be denting their pride in doing so.

Our part has to be to make it easier in other ways.

“I was thinking … maybe it would be an idea to invite them ‘round for dinner or something,” I suggest slowly, waiting to gage mom’s reaction. “Anita, she … she always seems kinda rushed off her feet dealing with work, and with Marco’s sister, and everything going on right now, and I dunno, maybe just cooking for them one night or something would help. I dunno.”

“That sounds like a lovely idea, Jean.”

I glance up at her fleetingly, but her smile is warm and it reaches her eyes, even creasing the skin around the corners of her apexes. That’s new. It distils me with some brasher fraction of confidence.

“I … I really want you to meet them, mom.”

_It doesn’t matter that you don’t know why. All that matters is that you know he’s important to me. So, they’re important to me too._

“Me too, sweetie. Me too.”

I reflect her smile upon my face, and go scrabbling with calmer hands for my hidden phone, eventually finding the hard, plastic lump concealed deep within the caves of my duvet. Mom doesn’t try to lean over my shoulder and nosily read my text messages, nor does she try to tease me for the things she said before; she just waits, patiently watching my face as I open up my inbox.

 **From: Marco-Polo**  
Hey :^) I need to buy a suit for Wednesday and I was wondering if you would come with me? x

I stare at that little kiss at the end of his message for far longer than necessary, my eyes having barely scanned the other words before alighting at that single “x” with a rush of blood to my head and my heart.

_Would’ya look at that._

It says so much, despite being so little. He’s shy. I can tell. He’s testing the waters with just one kiss, when the reality is I would’ve wanted to send a good few _thousand_ if I were in his shoes. He’s nervous and unsure and _expectant_. He feels the same way as me.

_Or maybe you’re just over analysing a text message signed with a kiss from the guy who, funnily enough, kissed you last night. Y’know. It isn’t some sort of Steinbeck with a secret meaning._

I feel the colour rising in my cheeks again, nonetheless, and tilt my screen a little further away from mom, just to be safe.

“Everything alright?” she asks, cheerfully oblivious – or just really good at acting that she isn’t – of the way I automatically curl in on myself to try and suffocate all the mushy, fluffy feelings clogging up inside all of my vital organs.

“Y-yeah,” I squeak, my voice an octave higher than I would like. I cough it back violently. “U-uhm, I mean— Marco wants me to go shopping with him for, uh … for a suit. For the funeral.”

Mom’s face sobers in an instant, and her eyes become more serious.

“It hasn’t passed yet?” she asks solemnly.

“No. Wednesday. I’m … I’m gonna go to it. Marco asked me.”

Mom nods and sits back, becoming quiet in thought. I watch her for a moment, wondering what it is that I can’t see, which she stares at so scrutinisingly. Maybe thirty seconds of silence pass before she speaks again, her tone sounding more measured and reserved.

“And he needs a new suit?”

I nod.

“Well … I think I have the names of a few tailors,” she says quietly, sliding forwards to the edge of my bed and plopping her feet down on the floor with a click of her heels. “I’ll go and write down some details for you, and we’ll see if we can’t wrangle some discounts out of them. One of the ladies from the salon is married to a tailor in town – might as well make the most of these connections, don’t you think?”

She hops to her feet, and for a moment, I feel a strange surge of swelling, blubbing pride rise in my chest, which dissolves quickly into the white foam of gratitude, and then a tender smile for her.

“Thanks, mom. He’ll appreciate it.”

“It’s the least I can do, baby.”

 

* * *

 

I text Marco back once she leaves the room, balancing the empty tray of plates and mugs on her hip, and humming a pleasant song on her lips, that disappears timorously down the hallway and the stairs. I add three kisses to the end of my message despite the tremble in my fingers.

I receive three back when he replies.

I feel like I might _burst_.

 

* * *

 

We arrange to meet up tomorrow, and I have to physically _drag_ myself away from the realm of increasingly smiley-faced and overzealous text messages before they get too gooey, slipping out of my bedroom and following the sound of the radio blaring down to the kitchen.

Mom has her laptop out on the counter and a notebook next to it, in which she’s enthusiastically scribbled down some notes and some addresses. She looks up when I slide through the doorway, and doesn’t hesitate to comment on the grin I’m ever so poorly hiding.

“If I’d known it would take only one text from Marco to get you bouncing off the walls, I would have phoned him myself. Look at you. You’re _beaming_ , Jean.”

I blush feverishly, and will myself to hide it as I slink over to her side, peering over her shoulder at the phone numbers she’s written down for me.

_Yeah, look at me. Just look at me._

_Everything is better now._

 

 

* * *

 

I tell myself on Tuesday morning that it shouldn’t matter what I wear. It’s just Marco.

I tell myself: _Jean, he’s seen you in your fucking underwear – what difference is it going to make if you wear a jacket or not_?

I tell myself that my ass looks _really_ good in these jeans.

It’s true.

 _Really_ good.

It’s a fine line between knowing full well that Marco won’t care what I’m wearing and that it won’t matter what I’m wearing, and the very definite and very vocal part of my inner psyche that wants desperately to give him the excuse to look at me, now that … well, now that he can.

( _I mean, he could’ve before, if he’d wanted … maybe he did? Oh geez, maybe he did? I wonder if he ever checked me out like I checked him out? Oh. Oh wow._ )

This sort of manic, looped thinking goes on for a while, and it’s really just a good thing that I got up with time to spare, under the pretence of preening myself – even if the reality is me just tripping over my own ridiculous inebriation for the few hours it takes to get myself looking halfway presentable.

I pick out my best jeans in the end – no holes in the knees and no weird stains and no grungy stonewash – just plain black and simple. I throw on a t-shirt and a light blazer over the top, deciding at the last minute that it’s _basically_ autumn, which is _totally_ an excuse for wearing a jacket, and not just because I think it makes me look trim. No, not at all. Whatever could give _that_ impression.

(Okay, so I’m feeling pretty shameless. I just want to look my best.)

There’s a weird feeling that sits in my gut: anticipation that isn’t really anticipation, and more a twitching eagerness, much like that feeling of waiting for a friend to turn up, and you can’t save yourself from peering out the window every ten seconds, just to make sure they haven’t arrived half an hour early.

My knees jitter for every second that I sit still and don’t pace around my room, picking at my jacket sleeves and rolling them neurotically up and down my forearms, as I check my appearance far too many times in my mirror.

There are still the remnants of red colour in my face from the actual sun burn sustained at the weekend – not all of it was frantic blushing, it turns out – but it’s calmed down a lot with sloshings of aloe vera from the bottle mom had shoved into my hands yesterday after she’d finished on the computer.

My back is probably worse and its redness more violent, but hey – at least I didn’t fall prey to Reiner getting a dick drawn on his back in sunscreen. There’s photographic evidence of that in Connie’s Facebook album of Reiner discovering the art work in the van on the way home. Kinda wish I‘d been there to see his reaction. Kinda glad I escaped the chaos that undoubtedly ensued.

Not that it matters what colour my bare back is – because I don’t think Marco will be seeing it _today_. (Do not think about the implications of that, Jean. Do not.) Or my face for that matter, because I can feel the pre-emptive, manic flushing coming on strong already, that will surely conceal any shreds of lasting sunburn the minute I see his face again.

Still, I stand in front of my closet mirror for too long, and realise that I’m scowling at myself. Thinking too hard. Worrying too much.

Just Marco. Just gonna help him buy a suit.

I run a slightly shaky hand through my hair and take a deep breath, and try not to think too hard and too long about kissing him.

 

* * *

 

On the way out of the house, I tell my mom that I love her. I garble over the words and they come out clumsily, as barely a mutter – and she almost seems to startle, eyes flying up to mine when she spots me peeking around the doorway of the living room, my shoulders hunched as I chew the inside of my cheek fixatedly.

There’s no reason and _every_ reason to it, and I tell myself to _man the hell up_ when I feel myself squirming over the sappier thoughts in my head.

“I … I love you too, sweetheart,” she replies questioningly, sitting up straight on the couch where I’ve interrupted her, fingers pressed firmly into the arm rest as if she half means to stand and greet me, but isn’t entirely sure if or why she should. I don’t wait around to see her expression, giving her a quick nod and a quirk of an awkward smile before I duck out of the living room, and make my way to my car.

 

* * *

 

The piece of paper with mom’s scribbles across it remains folded up in the back pocket of my jeans as I make the drive across town to the mall.

I have a vague recollection of the tailor that mom mentioned – faint memories of being unwillingly dragged around when I was younger, and of ties and shirts being held up to my throat, mom babbling to an old, moustachioed man in a suit at one hundred miles an hour, whilst I wanted nothing more than to return home to my game consoles and escape the trials and tribulations of a shopping trip.

The parking lot is full – lots of mothers pushing buggies and yanking their other children along by their wrists to complete the last minute back-to-school shopping for the beginning of the new semester. The number of pouting, grumbling faces of unenthusiastic six year olds that I pass as I search for a space is enough to make me smirk – out of solidarity, of course. Totally _not_ a wicked sense of satisfaction at not having to be on that end of the stick ever again. Totally.

I spot the roof of Marco’s van a few rows over, just as I beat a rumbling old Vauxhall to the seemingly only free space in the entire lot, and earn daggers from the grouchy old man behind the wheel. Tough luck. I’ve got a mission today.

I roll clumsily out of the Jag with my cell phone already in my hand as I shoot Marco a text, weaving through the mesh of parked cars towards the slightly grimy-white shell of his van, squished in between two, far cleaner Honda Civics.

Marco is bowed over in the driver’s seat, focussed on the screen of his phone with a crease between his eyebrows and his mouth screwed up into a pucker, when I saunter up to his window and give it a tap that makes him jump a mile out of his skin. His dark eyes fly up and he almost launches his phone out of his hands and across the cabin of the van as I watch him squeak my name through the glass. I can’t help but grin boldly.

There’s a prickle of electricity in my chest, as if someone’s flinted the frayed edges of my nerves together to create vibrant sparks, but I conduct it down and diffuse the static feeling thin throughout every square inch of my skin, wrapping my knuckles against the window pane again, and motioning for him to step out.

He runs a hand through the forest of his hair, failing entirely in smoothing it down, and he huffs visibly, jamming his phone into the pocket of his pants and then grabbing his wallet from the cradle of the passenger seat; I back up a little when he edges the driver’s door open, and slips out stumblingly.

The weekend’s sun has done him more favours than it did for me – his skin is darker and richer, and littered with newer freckles brought on by warm rays and slow cooking on the sand. He’s wearing a pair of light-coloured chinos, and a striped t-shirt I’ve seen him in before. He looks good. Really good. I let my eyes run over him once, sparingly, before realising that I’m really _obvious_.  Oh.

My gaze springs up to find his – creased with a lip-biting smile and a faint pinkness saturating his cheeks. _Oh_ , indeed.

“H-hey,” I gabble excruciatingly, whipping my eyes away from his to stare pointedly at … at his chest. Welp, not much better. “You look, uhm— how are yo— uh— _hey_.” Smooth.

Marco scoffs lightly, and rocks back on his heels; I deign to peak back up at his face, and his smile, although softened, is still gleeful.

“Hey,” he replies gently as his own eyes roam a little; I gulp thickly. “You look … you look handsome today, Jean.”

Mayday, _mayday_. It feels like I’ve just gone and shoved my fingers in a toaster, and then thrown myself with it into the bathtub. I short-circuit and feel the surge of electricity blow whatever filament it is that keeps me functioning. Hah.

“This is nice,” Marco continues, reaching out gently to brush his fingers against the lapels of my blazer, his touch fleeting and momentary. I feel my face decide to incinerate itself, and some sort of throaty garbled noise squawks its way out between my tightly clamped lips. Marco bites back a sly smile, but it genuinely threatens to burst through his insufferably attractive dimples as he gnaws his bottom lip. “It … _uhm_ , really suits you.”

“It— it was just ‘cus … ‘cus,” I scramble, “’Cus they won’t let me into the store if I look like a t-tramp.” Marco fails to hold back his chuckle. I scowl at him. “S-shut up!”

He reaches out again – with a tremble in his fingers – and carefully smoothes down the collar of my jacket, even though it’s perfectly flat against my sternum as it is. The bare pressure of his cautious hands is _thermogenic_. I’m gonna boil in my own skin. Definitely should’ve forgone the jacket. Too warm for this.

“Should we go have a look around?” he then asks me, more reservedly. He peels his hands away without letting himself linger, and glances over his shoulder towards the glass-panelled slug of a shopping mall gleaming rainbows under the strong, late summer sunlight.

 

* * *

 

To say it’s awkward would be an understatement. Well, for _me_ at least – _he_ seems perfectly chipper, a few notes of a whistle escaping his lips here and there, and a smile thrown my way every time he glances sideways at me and notices that I’m studying him meticulously as we walk through the shopping centre.

It’s not really that I’m scowling at his face – more the acute distance between his swinging hand my stiff one. I’ve never been so aware of my hands in my life; never been so unsure about the distance between me and him – am I too close? Am I too far away? What’s the correct amount of space I’m supposed to leave between us when we walk side by side like this? I don’t know. There’s no protocol for this sort of thing.

There’s an erratic twitch in my fingers – almost as if I want to bridge that gap and grab his hand in mine. Almost.

We’re in public. I hadn’t thought about _that_ side of things until now. But it’s almost as if every passing person, whose line of sight I accidentally meet, is already judging me, and squinting down at the hand I’m not holding, as if they already know and if they’re already devilling me for it.

I try and console myself by reminding my psyche of the fact that arms looped around waists, and public kisses on the cheek, and _handholding_ – that’s _boyfriend_ stuff. He hasn’t asked me to be his boyfriend yet. Y’know – _formally_ , and stuff. If that’s even how it works. I don’t know. I don’t need to be thinking about it. I don’t need to be this aware of what facial expression I might be pulling. I don’t need to be—

“Jean?”

“Y-yep?!”

Marco’s pace slows, forcing me to match it.

“Are you okay? You seem … a little on edge.”

I realise my palms are sweating, so I wipe them unceremoniously on my thighs, before shoving me hands deep into my pockets to prevent any more nervous twitching.

“I’m … I’m fine,” I blanch, watching Marco’s eyebrows quirk upwards doubtfully. “I, uh – just thinking, y’know? H-hey, isn’t this— isn’t that the place?”

I tilt my chin in the direction of the store front that has sprung up in front of us: sleekly dressed mannequins in the window, pressed in grey herringbone and tweed, and black lacquer boarding embossed with rubbed, gold lettering in the name of the resident tailor above the door – which does, thankfully, match the name etched onto the scrap of paper I have in my back pocket.

Marco’s eyes follow, and widen to saucers at the darkly lit store interior and the glimmer of a brass chime above the door. He slows to a complete stop beside me, and his body language changes in time with the shift from his elated whistling to a small and quiet intake of breath.

“Oh.”

I glance at him quizzically.

“Oh?” I press, “W-what’s up?” Marco’s shoulders droop a little and he passes me an apologetic smile.

“I think … this is a little out of my price range, Jean.”

I glance back and forth between his face and the swanky, dusty yellow lit interior of the store. Right. Didn’t think about that. I guess mom didn’t either.

“’S alright,” I say, and when Marco bites his lip apprehensively, I drift closer to him – enough to elbow him gently in the arm. “Can at least get you measured up properly and stuff. See what looks good, and then go find it elsewhere for cheap. That good?”

He seems to look himself up and down – and then glances at my jacket, with my sleeves pushed up around my elbows – and maybe figures why I dressed up a little. He smoothes out some of the creases in his t-shirt and continues to nibble at his lower lip.

“You sure it’ll be okay … like this?” he asks me, gesturing weakly at himself. “I, uh … I’m probably not the sort of person who goes in to … to buy their stuff. M-maybe we should just try Target, or—”

“Yeah, _no_. I’m not letting you buy a suit from Target. Nope. No way, José,” I retort forcibly, folding my arms across my chest. “You look _fine_ , believe me. The dude won’t care. And if he does care, then I’ll have something to say about it. C’mon, let’s get this done. I want to get food after.”

Marco grits his teeth and is hesitant, even when I walk forward a little, and turn back to face him pointedly. He crosses his arms over his chest, but then drops them, slinking his hands into his pockets – but then removing them just as quickly again, as if unsure what to do with his hands.

I feel some twisted sort of camaraderie with my mom, for every time she tried to drag six-year-old me shopping for school shoes. Except I was more angrily complaining and tugging on her hands in a murderous sort of tantrum, whereas Marco’s reluctance is more down to some deep rooted anxiety that I’ve seen pique the surface of him once or twice before.

I think back to Ymir’s exhibition, and his nerves when we’d left the safety of the car. He’d been worried then, too, about fitting in.

Not that he has anything to worry about. I was _born_ into the life of flashy cars and smart, new suits for every birthday, and whatever I wanted, when I wanted it, because of the father I had with money pouring out of his pockets. But I’ve never been _good_ at it.

And I wouldn’t say Marco would be good at it either – because I wouldn’t want to wish all of what I’ve had onto him, because, hell, you can still be really, fucking _miserable_ in the front seat of a Jaguar – but he would be better at it than me. He would enjoy being passed around from distant friend to distant friend at social gatherings, and making small talk with the ladies from mom’s fitness class, and living up to the grandeur of parental expectations. That’s the sort of guy he is. He would fit in anywhere he was thrown, because people can’t help but be drawn in by the ineffable orbit of his, and charmed by the dumbass, freckled smile that makes you feel confidence in everything he says and does – even if he’s nervously wringing his hands outside of some downtown tailor’s store-front.

I try to ease my expression to be less severe, and relax my posture, gesturing for him to follow me with an outstretched hand.

“C’mon, Freckles. Let’s get you suited and booted.”

His eyes focus on my hand, and maybe all the confidence he ever instilled in me through the same gesture is returned in favour to him, although diluted and dropwise and probably not nearly as effecting as what was given to me – but that’s not the point.

I grin up at him when he strides up to me, and let myself pet him gently on the shoulder in reassurance, feeling his wobbly smile solidify into something more concrete with just the touch. He nods at me nervously with just a tilt of his head.

I lead the way into the store, the little bell above the door chiming over our heads. The whole place is decked out in polished wood – on the floors, the shelves, all the furniture that sports neat, angular piles of pressed trousers and folded shirts. Even the soft soles of our sneakers make noise on the hard floor, amplified by the fact that the place is literally deserted, save for the hunched, barrel-of-a-man leant over a cutting table towards the back of the main space, a tape measure looped around his stout neck, and a rotary fabric cutter in his stubby hand with which he traces lines across an unmarked wool melton.

Marco falls back, eyes immediately on the half-mannequins atop the mahogany-wood tables that litter the store floor, all dressed to the nines in sharp fitting shirts, crisp jackets, and spangled, silk ties. Suit pants fill most of the available space on the enormous, carved dressers that line three of the walls, floor to ceiling; iron-flat piles of stiff linen organised by vibrant colour and pant length, interspersed with decorative spools of thread, and one or two ancient-looking, hand-operated sewing machines.

I don’t let myself dawdle on appreciating the aesthetic of the place, stuffed with the smell of clean fabric and musty leathers, and settle my eyes on the prize as the old man looks up at the sound of our footsteps, and drops his spectacles from the top of his balding head. He squints down his nose at the pair of us.

“Can I help you?” he says, his voice gravelly and laced with a thick, European accent; he untangles his tape measure from his neck, and drapes it over his work bench, straightening up to his full height of probably no more than five foot and five inches.

“Yeah,” I say, finding assurance in my own voice. “Wanting to get this guy measured up, and then see what you’ve got on offer.” I thumb over my shoulder at Marco, and feel the tailor’s beady stare follow my gesture as he appraises the pair of us. His squint furrows the closer he gets to us with his hobbling walk, and he tilts his spectacles further down his nose – he focuses in on my pierced ears and the sharp grain of my undercut, but doesn’t say anything.

 

* * *

 

The tailor gets Marco standing on a circular dais at the back of the store floor, surrounded by an audience of mirrors, and barely gives him time to feel uncomfortable before he has him with his arms outstretched and his stance wide as he lays his tape measure against every curve and angle.

I catch Marco’s eyes in his reflection in one of the mirrors – his eyes are wide and he mouths something childish at me, and I can’t help but smirk, hiding the sly quirk in my lips behind my fist.

Marco sticks his tongue out at me, and I have to turn away as the old tailor glares at the pair of us, and manoeuvres Marco’s arms out straight once more with a gruff puff of air. I leave him to be manhandled, slinking off into the hazier light of the store to investigate some of the blazers arranged meticulously on metal racks.

I run my fingers over the expensive wool mix – thick and heavy and probably too dense for wear at this time of year still. Black and grey and navy blue; some plain, some darted with herringbone skeleton, others with broad checks. I tug out the price labels from the lining of a few of them – and swallow back the figures heavily; I wonder how many shifts Marco would have to pull, or how many pools he’d have to clean to scrape together enough cash for just a jacket.

I glance back over my shoulder momentarily to see Marco emerging from a little, curtained changing room in crisply pressed black pants and shrugging on a suit jacket not-quite-effortlessly. He hops back up onto the dais and immediately the old tailor is tugging at his sleeves and at the hems, trying to balance the fabric well on Marco’s broad frame.

It’s not bad, but it’s nothing special, I decide, letting my eyes trail down Marco’s back as he turns to inspect himself in the mirrors. Okay, well, _he_ is definitely something special – he could make a garbage bag with armholes look hot to trot – but I figure we can find something just as good elsewhere.

Marco listens to the tailor like an attentive school pupil, nodding sagely at everything he says, and extending his arms when instructed, accepting whatever jargonial nonsense is babbled through the old man’s thick, European twang.

I turn back to flitting around the store floor as Marco hops off the platform to try on another suit handed to him, and I drift from the smart blazers over to the shelves packed with dress shirts of every colour under sun. A dusty blue-grey tab collar grabs my attention and I slide up to it, deigning to touch the creaseless fabric and tug on its neatly arranged lapels.

 _Could always get something for myself_ , I think, before asking myself when the _hell_ am I ever gonna wear something like that to make it worth its money. Splurging on things I’ll only drag out of the closet when _mamie_ ’s over isn’t the mind-set I need to be living in anymore. Gotta be frugal. Gotta save. We don’t know when mine and mom’s _one day_ will come, and every dollar will start to count.

“Jean? How about this one?” Marco calls out to me, and I turn away from the shirt display casually – only to be greeted by _the most flattering suit known to man_. Wow. _Wow_.

Marco blinks owlishly at me over his shoulder, before turning back to the mirrors, twisting himself around to scope out the fit of the sleek, Italian-cut of fabric that has _descended from above to exist on Marco’s body right now._

He admires himself smartly, tugging at the sleeves that lie flat just above his wrists, and then fiddling with the buttons, undoing them and redoing them.

 _I_ admire his ass. It’s pretty fucking _godly_.

_It’s a fucking funeral suit, you piece of trash – get a grip!_

I let my eyes wander down the backs of his legs, appreciating the slim fit of the tapered pants, and then back up again, practically slobbering over the curve of black cashmere blend that really moves _so well_ when Marco shifts his weight from one leg to another— I splutter when I find the tailor’s black, squinty eyes boring into my face, and whip my gaze immediately to the floor with a silent wheeze.

“Jean?” Marco probes again, and I dare to peek up at his face, sliding back across the shiny, wooden floor towards him like a heeling dog. The tailor follows me with his beady eyes for a moment, before returning to Marco, prodding and picking at the suit on his back. “What do you think?”

I look up at Marco, his expression earnest and expectant, and I angrily chew the inside of my cheek to try and prevent myself from stealing another glance away from his face and back at his ass, like the sorry son of a bitch I am. No such luck. I look anyway – _but only for a second, I swear_.

“Looks good,” I choke out, returning to Marco’s curious brown gaze. “I, uh— yep. _Good_.”

Marco smiles briefly down at me, slightly bewildered, I’m sure, but then turns back to face the mirror, pulling at the suit jacket again with a little sigh. I steal the second to mentally slap myself in the face.

“Do you want to buy?” the old tailor says, the musical tone of his accent hoarse with his age and musky cigar smoke, “Or would you like to see another?”

Marco opens his mouth – maybe to request to see something cheaper, or maybe to tell him that we’re done – but I beat him to the mark. Sort of.

“Y-yep. Yep. We’ll take it.”

Marco flounders like a fish out of water, opening and closing his mouth whilst I nod firmly and cling tightly to my resolve, even if it is entirely and humiliatingly _thirst driven_. So be it. It’s worth it.

 

* * *

 

It takes a lot of huffing and puffing before Marco’s eventually persuaded to get changed, and the tailor disappears into the back of the store to collect a bag and a hanger for us. I lean up against the small changing room, watching the curtain flit as Marco moves around behind it, listening to him grumble.

“It’s too expensive!” I hear him gripe, just before his head pops out from the side of the curtain, and he brandishes the suit jacket in his hands, wagging the label in my face, “Look, see, here’s the label, and— Jean, it’s over three-hundred dollars! Jean!”

“’S fine,” I say, trying to bite back my amusement at his flustered face. I glance down, peaking between the gap in the curtain, but Marco’s already thrown on his chinos again, by the looks of things. “I said I’d buy it.”

Marco whines, and it makes me snort as he ducks back into the changing room.

“It’s too much money,” comes his frantic squeak. I roll my eyes and quickly scope out the store floor, making sure the tailor is still clear, before ducking under the flagging curtain and squeezing into the small space next to Marco, busy doing up the catch in his pants, his fingers far too hasty and his face flushed red, and his shirt caught up around his stomach, flashing me a teasing little glimpse of dark hair.

I lean back against the wall of the cubicle, sucking in my stomach and my chest, causing the little laugh in my throat to escape as an airy chuckle.

“It’s a gift,” I say, and Marco looks up, squinting angrily at me, “Ba— _Marco_. C’mon. Think of it as an investment. A good suit will last you a long time, y’know.”

He doesn’t seem particularly fussed by our close proximities, not even as he finally manages to catch the button of his pants and then do up his fly, brushing his shirt flat; but I think I make up for the both of us with the vice tightness in my chest as I try to keep my eyes trained determinedly on his face and pretend I’m not blushing up a storm.

He steps into his shoes with a light grumble, and uses me as a crutch whilst he wriggles his toes around and pulls the creased-down backs of his boaters up flat against his Achilles’ tendons. My heart beats a little faster, even if it’s just his hand resting firmly on my shoulder.

“I can’t pay you back,” is what he says next, and he doesn’t quite manage to draw his eyes from his shoes to my face, essentially muffling his words. “I don’t have the money.”

I hear the tailor shuffling back into the store front, and so gently remove Marco’s hand from my shoulder with a tender touch.

“It’s a gift,” I say again.

 

* * *

 

Even when we’re leant over the register at the front of the store, Marco doesn’t stop knocking me with his hip grumpily as the tailor talks me through putting my card in the machine, and entering my pin number, and yadda yadda yadda. I let myself by jostled around because it’s cute – _Marco’s cute_ – and the way he sticks out his lower lip when I’m handed a pen to sign the receipt makes the rush in my chest burn all the whiter.

I scribble my signature whilst gritting my teeth, trying to stop myself from grinning triumphantly, and then slide the thin paper back across the desk. The tailor files away one copy of the receipt, and then folds the other and presses it into my palm, before handing the bag containing the suit to Marco.

He bobs his head with a nod and thanks the old man, but not before nudging me with his hip once more for good measure. My grin sparks, and I can’t help but reach out and pinch him through his shirt in his side, in cheap revenge.

 

* * *

 

“Wow, I never would’ve pegged you for such a _whiney baby_ ,” I laugh teasingly as we meander back across the parking lot, Marco holding the suit bag out in front of him like he’s carrying the next baby Jesus, but still with his mouth puckered up into a scowl, and his nose all wrinkled.

(I think he’d probably be tempted to hit me if I remarked on how he’s the furthest thing from threatening I‘ve ever seen in my life. _Endearing_ is probably more the street we’re walking down.)

We reach Marco’s van, and he passes me the carrier bag as he delves into his pocket for the keys, clicking them pointedly with his thumb when he does find them.

“You’ve got to promise that’s the last and _only_ time,” he says grumblingly, tugging open the driver’s door with a creak. “You’ve …. you’ve spent enough money on me to last … _forever_.” He clambers unceremoniously behind the wheel, and then gestures for me to pass him the suit – I do so, and he lays it cautiously down on the passenger seat next to him. I’m not sure if I’d get away with laughing.

“I’m not sure about _forever_ ,” I chirp instead, leaning my weight on the roof of the van and leering down into the cabin brazenly; Marco quirks an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Just say it makes up for that shitty mixtape I made you for your birthday that cost me a grand total of, what … fifty cents, maybe?”

“I _like_ that mixtape, thank you very much,” he says sternly, but I see the mellifluous glimmer in his eyes. “I listen to it regularly. It’s the sort of gift I am _quite_ partial to, I’ll have you know.”

“Oh?” I grin, leaning down a little closer, “I guess I should remember that, huh?”

Marco purses his lips, but swallows back whatever comeback he was planning on, and instead just narrows his eyes playfully at me. I scoff.

“Stop pouting,” I chuckle breathily – or _breathlessly_ , as it probably is, because is it me, or is it getting kinda _hot_ out today? “You look like your sister when you make that face. Just wear the damn suit tomorrow and look sharp.”

“I’m going to,” he retorts. “After you spent stupid amounts of money on it.”

I roll my eyes, and lean back an inch or two, subtly stealing a lungful of cooler, thinner air. It clears my head from the magnetism of staring so long at his eyes and his _mouth_ , and I think a little rationally again – but _questionably_ rationally, maybe.

Cautiously, I mumble, “I reckon … reckon your dad would’ve wanted you to have a suit that didn’t look like it’d fallen through a musty wormhole out of the seventies, y’know.”

Marco’s surprised by my forwardness – and I am too, feeling a lump apparate in my throat, coaxed by a quick spike of dread that I’ve said the wrong thing at the wrong moment. His dark eyes are wide, and the glimmer in them extinguished for a instant by something I can’t read— but then, a warm, _fond_ -feeling smile replaces what melodic teasing had flashed with shock.

“Hmm,” he hums softly in agreement, fiddling with his fingers in his lap, “You’re probably right.”

There’s a moment of summer-stiff silence, and neither of us look at each other; because it’s awkward for me, but maybe not for him, as he muses and mulls over something that doesn’t cross the track lines of my mind or jostle the ride of my internal cart.

I can tell by the way his eyes gloss over – not like the fade of mist or frost, but rather shiny like stained glass or Christmas ornaments, a far cry from the stagnation of water – with shades of field barley browns, honey yellows, and golds and greys, that he thinks, for a moment, about his father, and he dallies sparingly in the far-reaching planes of memory.

It’s not a sadness that turns his eyes glassy, because they’re far from lifeless. But it’s a thought that he stumbles across, and I wonder what it might be. But I don’t ask. I decide to keep things as buoyant as I can.

“A-anyway,” I say, reaching into my pocket to pull out the now-crumpled till receipt. The sheen across Marco’s expression melts away, and he turns to watch me curiously. I smirk pre-emptively, and scrunch it up into a ball in my fist, stuffing the paper into my mouth and chewing on it violently. “Carnnf ta’ it barr norff!” _(“Can’t take it back now!”_ )

“J-Jean! That’s _disgusting_!” Marco welps; the receipt is mush in my mouth now, and I stick out my tongue to show him the white pulp, victoriously. “Oh my God, that’s gross!”

I snort loudly, and then hack the glob of paper and spit onto the asphalt, much to Marco’s chagrin. The taste it leaves in my mouth is not exactly something I’ll be rushing to tell a five star chef about, but the horrified scowl on Marco’s face is sweet victory enough to let it pass.

“And there we were just having a nice moment,” he sighs dramatically, shaking his head disdainfully. “Have I ever told you that you’re _ridiculous_?”

“Nope, _never_ ,” I chortle, and Marco all but throws his hands in the air. I grin like an idiot.

He complains about me for a while longer as I hang on the roof of his van, lapping up every one of his words that falls so _flat_ with the gleeful glint he tries to keep concealed behind his eyes and behind the way his lips keep trying to curl up into a smile without his wanting to. After he’s toured through all the possible reasons why I’m so _revolting_ , I manage to bid him goodbye through a laugh as he pulls his driver’s door closed and winds down the window, poking his head immediately back outside.

“Do you need me to send you directions for tomorrow?” he asks me gently, as the creases in our lips sombre gracefully.

“Nah, I’ve got it,” I reply, with a wave of my hand, stepping back a pace. “I know the place. Starts at two, right?”

“Right,” he confirms softly, and his lips twitch, but don’t quite manage to pull themselves up into anything distinctive.

I offer him a small smile of my own to cradle the one he can’t quite muster. “I look forward to seein’ the suit. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” I back up another few paces, watching as he looks away for a moment, back at his hands in his lap in solemn thought as he chews his lip. I almost turn away, twitchy with the nerves over what I might or might not ask for when it comes to saying goodbye, but he calls out to me again.

“J-Jean—”

I stop in my tracks, and perk up, embarrassingly.

“Y-yeah?”

Marco nibbles his lip and then tilts his head in a gesture that tells me to come back. I’m more than eager to do as I’m told, striding quickly back up to the driver’s window.

“What’s up?” I ask, trying to force confidence in my voice, even though the reality is a wobble that only becomes more vocal when I see the rising pinkness saturating his cheeks prettily as he fumbles over looking up at me.

He shrugs meekly, and the colour emboldens in his face. I snort crassly, but it loses its edge with the rounded-out erasing caused by the heat tickling the tips of my ears.

I risk a spitfire glance around the parking lot, but there’s no-one nearby, save for some grannies pushing their shopping carts, and I’m sure their eyesight is not anything like it used to be. There’s a snide comment forming in my head that isn’t so snide because of the intermittent breath I suck in as I dip my head through the open window, and press a peck of my lips to Marco’s flaring cheek.

I lurch back out of the window with my face on fire and my shoulders hunched defensively as I stuff my hands into my pockets; Marco chuckles lightly, his fingers ghosting over where I just kissed him, and I’m tempted to ask him just to push me on my ass, because that’s what the coy expression he wears _feels like it does to me_.

“I’ll see y-you tomorrow, Jean,” he says, his voice low and breathy, and more than a little bit distracted. “Drive safe.”

“Yeah,” I pout, “You too.”

Never have I made a more hasty retreat back to my own car, only to sit behind the wheel and try to scrub the redness out of my face with the heels of my palms for some minutes after.

 

* * *

 

It feels like Wednesday arrives quietly – without grandeur, and also without pestilence, not quite sneaking up on me, but creeping silently over internal floorboards in my head that should creak more than they do under the weight of the suit I leave hanging up on my closet door the night before.

I’ve never been to a funeral before. When my grandfather died – my mom’s father, who she was estranged from anyway – I was too young to go, apparently. Mom went alone, flying out to France, and I was left in the house alone with my dad, too young and too wide eyed to understand why mom’s suitcase had been so full of black clothing when I’d unhelpfully helped her pack, and why her usual, dazzling smile had been so grim and drawn for the few weeks prior.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky enough that the only death I’ve ever experienced in the family was when I was too young to understand its magnitude.

But at the same time, it’s that very thing that makes me feel like the dawning arrival of a funeral should feel more morose than it does – more built-up, and more weighty – and less like I’m waking up to just another grey morning, that, in reality, is really quite blue and sunny.

Doesn’t feel like the sort of day you should be burying somebody on.

You think of funerals in the movies, or in the soap operas mom watches on TV, and you think of a windy hilltop, with the ominous rustle threading through trees and grass, and the woeful twitch of untendered yew or juniper being the embodiment of funeral gloom. You imagine stony faces and black veils and an overcast grey sky and so many flowers piled up on top of a coffin that you can’t smell how sweet they are anymore because their stench is just a little too overwhelming, and a little too _not right_ for the moment.

It doesn’t feel right burying people on a sunny day – but maybe … maybe that’s a good thing. I can imagine that getting used to the feeling of burying the people you love is not something you’d ever want to realise about yourself.

I slap my cheeks in the mirror as I stare at my sleep-deprived expression and my mess of bed hair, and I wonder if maybe it’s a good thing that the sun outside the window is so bright, because it will give Marco the sort of energy he needs on a day like today, without asking for anything in return.

It’s a sheer wall to climb: imagining what he must be feeling on a day like this. My head spirals with all sorts of things, wondering what it might feel like, deep, deep down in my chest, if I were in his place – but I’m not sure it’s the sort of thing I can find analogies for, when I’ve only ever stepped inside churches for weddings, and not for the memorial of my own father.

I pap my cheeks again, this time a little gentler, staring firmly at my own reflection, pretending I catch a lagging movement in the flitter of my own eyes as they scan my mirror-face. I don’t even know how _I_ feel.

I didn’t know Mr Bodt very well. If _at all_. What I knew of him – and I mean _him_ , as a person, and not as some faceless buoyancy Marco was trying to hold onto, only for the lapping water around us both to make his grip slippery with each week that passed – was based on two afternoons only.

I might have not exchanged more than a few words with him, or struggled under an anxious shudder of finding the right words to make small talk when we were left alone in their front living room, or even known what sort of a person he might once have been, a long, long time before he was dealt a hand like this; but I did get a good look into the man’s eyes as I helped him up the porch steps in his wheelchair that one time – and what I saw was acceptance.

It was scary, yes. I don’t think I can deny that fact, because seeing someone so given up on living is rattling, and it’s an open, saturnine honesty that reminds you exactly where draughts enter the cracks your skin and your bones.

But acceptance, too, meant that he had come to terms with dying. He didn’t want to go on suffering in a corpse of a body that could do nothing, and feel nothing – save for pain, in all its forms, I’d imagine. He’d made peace with it, and in that fact, I don’t think there can be any great tragedy on his part as a man. He’s not suffering now. It’s better for him.

Marco said to me that his father’s cancer came because he smoked; he lived the sort of life where he was chained to a computer and a desk from nine ‘till five every day, crunching numbers that he didn’t care about, and filing paper that he didn’t care about – and it was a job he didn’t love, in the end. He took up smoking when he was a young man, firstly, for joining the other dejected fledgling employees on the rooftop at lunch time, bemoaning over how their grand ideas from university had been sucked away down the drain of corporate monotony, and then secondly, for the buzz. The sort of buzz I’m sure he needed to keep him awake enough to slug through each day – I know it, because I needed it too, on the worse nights.

When you smoke, you know. You know what it might do to you – and it’s patronising enough to hear people around you criticise you for what you’re doing to your body, because, believe me, _you know_. You would stop if you could.

I don’t think it’s my place to ask myself – or any others – if the cancer caused was fault on part of his own decisions. I’m sure there would be some people out there who would berate Marco’s dad for putting himself at such a risk when he had a young family around him to support; but equally, there would be others who would remind him that cancer isn’t picky. It just happens, and then you deal with it. Even if it’s your own body mutating against you, you can’t be blamed.

I’m not sure on which side of the line I sit. Maybe there isn’t a line – maybe it’s a spectrum. Still, I don’t know how I feel about it, and I don’t think my opinion would matter. So it’s not important.

I know, imperviously, that I’m not going to this funeral for my relation to Mr Bodt. It goes without saying. I didn’t know him well enough for my grief to rattle – if it’s even grief at all, and not just sympathy – or for justifying having to compartmentalise quiet, half-hearted jokes and shy whispers, like Marco and his family must have to do so many times. I’m not the one who has to sit on a hard pew bench and try not to wince when the wounds sewn up with fishing line threaten to ache and wheeze because of bad stitches that have not yet been replaced with something cleaner.

I’m going for the reason Marco had to walk away from the campfire light; for the times he held my hand or hugged me tight or let himself slip enough to sob a little into the crook of my shoulder; for the way my heart had skipped a beat leaning into his van yesterday to plant a crude kiss on his cheek, both of us blushing, _stuttering_ messes.

Birds chirp outside my window, house martins and starlings hiding in the rafters of the rooftop, singing shrilly and worshipping the warm, coating gaze of the mid-afternoon sun. I take a deep breath, watching the way my shoulders rise and fall heavily in the mirror, before reaching for my suit on its hanger on my closet door.

There are a lot of other reasons, too, but I think they’re all easily condensed enough. _It goes without saying_. He needs me. He wants me.

I dress surprisingly quickly, my jacket fitting snuggly over my dress shirt, and my tie lying straight the first time I attempt to tie it. I muse my hands through my hair, fluffing up the strands, and it looks okay. The creases in my dress pants are still sharp. My shoes have no scuffs.

Mom is milling around in the kitchen when I eventually drift downstairs, dressed in her Day-Glo sports kit, and switching between liquefying fruit in our blender, and flicking through today’s newspaper.

“Yoga?” I say cordially, watching as her head pings up when she hears the soles of my shoes on the kitchen tiles. Her eyes are wide for a moment, and she prickles involuntarily – I pretend not to notice. (I don’t want to think about why – whether she’s still on edge around me, or if she’s waiting for the day when dad might randomly decide to show up for dinner, or if she’s so ingrained with that nervous twitch that she can’t yet shake the habit of being on the knife’s verge every time someone passes into her orbit.) (Hell, I thought about it anyway. Fuck.)

It doesn’t last of course – her red lips break out more easily now, into a broad smile.

“Not today, no,” she says, reaching for a tall, crystalline tumbler to decant her smoothie into; it slops down the sides of the glass with the gloopy insides of decimated bananas and blueberries. “Running. A couple of the girls and I have taken up jogging. It’s _wonderfully_ therapeutic. You should come with us one day, honey.”

I snort lightly, sliding up to the breakfast bar to dump my cell phone and my car keys on the spotless marble.

“I wouldn’t even run for the _bus_ , mom,” I remark, and she pulls a face. “Never gonna happen, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll rope you into something _one day_ ,” she promises, “You liked the yoga classes I took you to last year, didn’t you?”

“I think you’ve mistrewn the meaning of the word _like_ , to be honest.”

Mom rolls her eyes, and smothers her breezy chuckle behind a sip of her smoothie. She hums a noise of content at the taste, before setting her glass carefully down on the surface top, her eyes on me more focussed.

“You look really smart today, Jean.”

A simpering blush rises in my cheeks, and I glance bashfully down at my feet – shiny, black leather looks back up at me.

“Uh, t-thanks. Glad it still fits.”

Mom’s smile is warm as she rounds the counter to me, resting both hands on my shoulders as she turns me to face her, my feet shuffling awkwardly. She pats down my jacket sleeves, and then moves to fiddle with my lapels – amid a sense of déjà vu – before wrapping her fingers around my tie, and wiggling the knot up closer to the gulp in my throat.

“Very smart,” she reiterates fondly, and I duck my head for her as she strains to plant a smacker of a kiss on my forehead.

“Can’t expect any less from a son of Céline Kirschtein,” I add jokingly – although it seems a bold statement to be making, the moment the thought leaves my lips. Not bold in that it’s inappropriate, or untruthful, but in that it’s weighty. Meaningful. Significant.

Mom looks a little taken aback, physically leaning away from me to judge my expression for a moment. I clench my teeth firmly, but then her bright smile blooms once more, and I cough out a puff of a relieved breath.

“I think that’s a truth I can live by,” she says proudly, “You’ll have people swooning at your feet.”

“Inappropriate, mom,” I laugh briskly, “ _Funeral_ , remember?”

“Yes, yes, my bad,” she says dismissively, “You give my love to all of them, you hear? I expect them all to know that I’m thinking of them. Especially poor, darling Marco – bless his heart—”

“Will do, mom.” I grab my phone and my keys, stuffing them into the deep pockets of my dress pants, before edging a step backwards, and then another, towards the doorway. “I dunno when I’ll be back, so don’t wait around, yeah? I’ll be back … when I’m back.”

I take another step backwards, but she stops me.

“Jean.”

“Yeah?”

“My lipstick print is on your forehead – let me clean that off for you before you go.”

“ _Mom_!”

 

* * *

 

The funeral service is held at a church a little way out of town – almost so rural that you’d forget that Trost is only just over the skyline, and you’ve not just driven miraculously into the sticks. I only know the place because of a wedding I got dragged to by my parents a few years back – some colleague of my dad’s that I was supposed to know, but I swear to God the first time I ever saw his name was when the invite was shoved unceremoniously into my hands one day.

I can tell I’ve left the fine dining of Trost behind when the black asphalt roads merge gradually into grey pot-holes lined by grassy verges and tall cypress and cedar trees, a refreshing replacement to the usual horizon of slate roofs and glass high-rises in the distance.

The church itself is quaint and picturesque, proudly red-brick and white pillared on the furlong of the roadside, its white steeple bright and sun-reflecting in the cloudless sky. A white picket fence spreads out from its awnings, disappearing into the thick undergrowth of trees – juniper and yew, but no breeze to ruffle them – encircling the plot of cemetery that flanks the building on both sides.  It’s a far cry from the post-modern churches from the inner city, which look more like rocket ships than places to figure out what terms you’re on with the big man upstairs.

The road is quiet, and as such, there are cars parked up and down its flanks, tires dipped into cracks in the summer-baked tarmac, and roofs sparkling and simmering in the sunlight that makes them looks like they’re miraging as I edge the Jaguar to a stop behind what I recognise to be Anita’s clapped-out old Honda Accord.

The large, white-washed doors of the church are flung open to the heat of the day, and a crowd of people dressed in black are milling around on the stone steps, dallying in the shade cast by proud columns and the overhang of the roof.

I check myself in the rear-view mirror before I slip out of my car, checking twice that I lock the door behind me, and then eyeing up the road before me and behind me, and hoping no idiot comes flying down it too fast, and clips my wing mirror.

I slink across the grass, brown-yellow and dry beneath the soles of my shoes; the earth feels hard, thirsting for the coming rains of autumn which can’t arrive soon enough. I wonder briefly if the dryness of the soil makes it easier or harder to dig up and repack over the dome of a casket.

A few people glance my way as I slip into their midst and amble my way up the front steps of the church, but no-one approaches me; the air feels grave, strangled somehow by the same feeling one tastes when looking at a beautiful flower wrapped up by the tendrils of weeds left too long, but there are no teary faces, and only the hush of apposite conversation to be heard.

There are a few faces that throw me for a moment, and I’m on the receiving ends of a few squinting, curious glares as I double-take more than once, surprised by the uncanny familiarity of one or two expressions that looks too close to Marco’s, or a woman and her pack of roaming children, all dusted in a cloud of dark freckles, that clearly share the same strains of Italian blood as his mom. I can tell who’s family in an instant, and it’s almost unsettling seeing so many near-clones of Anita, Marco, and Mina in one place – but they themselves are not be found.

It makes me tick, a feeling like some invisible fingers plucking at the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck, and I feel distinctly alone; the glare of the sun makes me sweat beneath the collar of my dress shirt. I tug at the knot of my tie awkwardly, passing another searchlight gaze around the bustling faces all garbed in black. I almost leap out of my skin when two of the little freckled clones come barraging past me in a flummox of wind, and floaty skirts and jackets they’ve been stuffed into by their parents, racing into the foyer of the red-brick building. They’re followed in suit by an exasperated looking woman, too uncanny to be anything other than a close relation of Anita: sun-tanned skin, and unruly, dark brown hair, coiled up on the top of her head in a bun straggled with fly-aways, and held together with a black-net fascinator.

I’m overcome with the same feeling as before – the same feeling scorched by the sun into my retinas on a day like today. There’s too much energy here, and whilst the conversations around me might be doused in funeral whispers, there seem to be no rain clouds, even if the air tastes starchy and soupy. Maybe I was expecting too much – dreaming of tears and damp handkerchiefs and throaty sobs, and _scaring_ myself that I needed to be prepared for all that. Maybe mourning isn’t like that. I suppose it’s impossible to wield unless you know its secrets. I wouldn’t know.

I drift through the open doors of the church to escape the sun and the breathless air, finding a literal blessing in the shade and the welcome coolness radiating from the brick and stone work beneath hemispherical windows high above my head.

It’s not a grand affair on the inside – but there are actual pews, and the floor is tiled intricately, with none of that fuzzy green hotel carpet you sometimes find in the churches closer towards the city’s nucleus. Sunlight scatters diagonally from wall to wall, ping-ponging down from the ceiling windows to the floor pretty majestically, turmeric yellow and shimmering gold and _peaceful_ with the glow of a settling afternoon. It takes the edge off the hustle and bustle of all the people already here – more than crowded outside on the steps – and I’m surprised by the turn out.

I suppose you wonder why so many people gather at a funeral, don’t you? There have to be some people here that didn’t know Mr Bodt so well, yet they still came. Why do they feel that they should?

Maybe he was the sort of person to touch other people. Maybe he had a trajectory like Marco, and a magnetism that drew friendships to him over the course of his life. I can’t tell you, because I didn’t know him well enough – but maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe people gather around a casket because, somewhere intrinsically, they know that all lives intersect somehow; they know that Mr Bodt could’ve been anyone else’s husband or anyone else’s father, at any other time; they know that however small, a death still causes an infinitesimal change in you, because you can’t help but wonder _what was it that picked them out, of all the people in the world_?

I don’t know, and I’m not exactly about to ask, as I slip through the gap between two conversations, people far too caught up in discussing whatever there is to discuss at a funeral to pay any attention to a lone man sneaking through the back of a congregation, prowling something that he’s sure doesn’t need prowling, and only stepping lightly because it’s how he’s come to cope with social situations like this. I’m not interested in all that talk about souls, or about energy, or about pearly gates and whatever someone might believe in – in my mind, it’s gotta be a disservice to the person who lived, as if everything that defined them was just a greater ploy to get to Heaven, or wherever. Maybe he was just a good person, because he was a good person. Because he made himself _for himself_. Thinking about all that frilly stuff doesn’t sit well with me.

Being ignored is good enough for me – it quells the anxious spasm in my gut, and silences the questions of whether other people are looking at _me_ and wondering why _I_ came. I scan the few pews from the back to try and find a space not too obvious, but not too deliberately antisocial – and not next to someone that’s bound to ask too many questions that I’d rather not have to answer.

There’s a solitary old man dozing in the fourth row from the door, and even his sleeping face looks grumpy – I figure he won’t want to strike up a conversation with a barely-adult with metal pierced through his ears, so I make a beeline for the end of his pew, eyeing up the space on the bench next to him for myself.

I don’t quite make it, of course, because as I’m dithering around the back of some people who won’t quite move out the way, a voice I recognise pops out of the crowd before I find a face to match.

“J… Jean!”

My eyes whip down from scanning the rows of cedar benches, just as Mina squeezes her way through the gap between the backs of two suits. She’s been thrown into a floaty black dress and a crochet bolero jacket which looks just a little too cutesy and young for her, and her hair is scraped up into a high ponytail, with no wisps of unruly tangles to conceal the light scowl in her face.

“H-hey kid,” I say, my voice stuttering more than I’d like it to.

It’s been over three weeks since I saw her last – and that last time was in their front yard, kicking around a deflated football with no more cares other than what _Spongebob’s_ bubblegum eyeballs tasted like.

I’ve thought about her – of course I have. I’ve thought about her mom too, and what the both of them must’ve been through over the course of the last few weeks – but I’ve been left primarily to my imagination, and we’ve already established that I don’t have much of that when it comes to dealing with … with this. Marco hasn’t told me much – or had time to tell me much – about how they’ve been.

What do you do when you’re not even ten years old, and your dad dies? How do you feel? How do you process that? _Can_ you even process that, when you’re that young? I’m nineteen years old, and I’m not even sure _I_ know how to grieve properly.

_(If you’re old enough to love, you’re old enough to grieve. That counts for both you, and for her.)_

The other thing about Mina – and I see this clearly now as she studies my face scrupulously, her frown not receding – is that she’s far harder than her brother to read. Far less open, and considering all she’s been through, it’s no great surprise, but it makes my heart twist for her when I can’t decide whether it’s fear, or grief, or frustration, or just shielding tiredness on her little face. Maybe it’s a combination of all of those things, but whatever it is makes her dark eyes matte, and the line of her mouth taught, and there is no gloss of tears, or wobble in her demeanour, save the way the thin line of her scowl melts away into her freckles once she’s appraised me stiffly for a few seconds, and decided that I’m not like every other faceless in black who’s about to grill her over how she’s coping.

Normally, I’d expect some scathing remark, or insult directed at my hair, but this time, I get nothing. I watch her swallow thickly, and turn her eyes to the floor, staring at my shoes, before squaring her shoulders and returning her beady gaze to my face.

“You’re going to sit with us, right?” she says, and there’s something about her voice that throws me for a bone. Her edge is gone, whatever that edge might have been – her pitch, her tone, her bite. Whatever it was, it’s gone, and she sounds all the more reserved now, as if someone’s unfairly clipped her little sparrow wings, and she hadn’t realised it until she fell flat on her face trying to fly. “At the front?”

“Am … am I allowed?” I gulp awkwardly. Her frown twitches back into place, and I tell myself that it’s reassuring that _I’m_ the cause of her scowl, and not anything else.

“Yeah,” she says plainly with a huff, looking up at me like she’s just stumbled across a very dense, and very slow _idiot_ , clearly trying her short straw of patience. She’s not exactly wrong. “Why wouldn’t you be _allowed_?”

 I try and phrase my concerns as delicately as possible for a ten year old, my hand straying up to scratch at the back of my neck out of habit.

“Well, y’know … this is your family thing, and I— I don’t want to impose, just in case your mom doesn’t want me there, or—”

“My mom wants you there.”

I blink slowly at the kid, taken aback and muted by her forwardness. She still doesn’t seem overly impressed with me, brashly crossing her thin arms across her chest and quirking her bushy eyebrows upwards.

Ideally, I would say no. I’m not the one grieving, and I don’t want to poke my nose into something that is going to mean a lot to their family for a long time to come. I also don’t want this to be the way I see Anita again. Not when there is still the weight of an apology I need to make pressing down on my shoulders, and the guilt in my stomach over forcing her into addressing me in a situation like this, when I’m sure the last thing she wants to think about is the last time we spoke.

_And I promised I’d find him, and tell her where he was. I didn’t do that. I ran away._

She’s a good woman. Probably far too good for any of us _mere mortals_ , and I think it’s unspoken enough that she’d forgive me if I brought it up or asked her of it. But still, it doesn’t quite feel right, y’know? Maybe that’s just because I feel queasy. Nerves, and stuff. Well, nerves have always dictated a lot of what I do, so it’s no great revelation to write home about.

Mina has no time or patience for neither my inner philosophising, nor my inner anguish over what regrets I might hold as cards close to my chest; she tugs on my jacket sleeve petulantly.

“My mom wants you there,” she says again, whatever irateness I might expect to see in her face replaced, merely, by a disgruntled pout. “… Please?”

That’s when I know something’s definitely been thrown adrift inside the little whirring cog work of her mind; it’s not a jam in her gears, but it sounds to me like they’ve started revolving in another direction. It tugs at my heart strings, and not pleasantly. It’s like something inside my rib cage physically shrivels up, and what takes its place in a minute, chasmal abyss that boulders an uncomfortable, heavy emptiness right next to my heart and my lungs.

“S… sure, kid,” I find myself mumbling, “Sure. ‘Course I will.”

I try to school my face when she lets go of my sleeve, only to grab hold of my fingers tightly, and tow me forwards through the throes of her relatives and other mourners, tugging me forcibly beneath elbows and miscible conversation, towards the front of the church.

Wreaths and wreaths of flowers are already piled up around a framed photo of Mr Bodt, but I would hardly recognise him in it, if I weren’t one hundred percent sure I was at the right funeral. He barely looks himself – or, in fact, he _does_ look himself, and the man I met was never himself. He looks more like Marco than I ever quite imagined; lighter hair and lighter eyes, and no freckles on his pale skin, but the strong jaw, and the dimples around the corners of his smile, and the creases at the corners of his eyes – they’re one and the same. There are candles lit too, and the sharper, muskier smell of incense dilutes the sweetness of the flowers, and the tickle of smokiness at the back of my throat is grounding. I don’t get a good look at the other, smaller photos arranged sporadically between the leaves of classic white lilies and rosebuds, because Mina ushers me forwards, and I seem too quickly thrown in front of Anita, perched in the middle of the very front pew, in whispered conversation with the freckled woman I spotted before, who sits to her right, her lively children missing.

Mina lets go of my hand to crowd her mom, patting her knees incessantly and bobbing up and down in front of her, to attract her mom’s attention, until Anita turns away from her doppelgänger, her arms immediately encircling her youngest.

“ _Piccola_ ,” she coos, “I was wondering where you got to. We were about to send out a search party to find you.”

Mina huffs and puffs, but she’s not exactly willing to wriggle free of her mother’s arms. Instead, she turns back over her shoulder and nods her head at me, and I take it as my cue to step forward gingerly.

“I found Jean,” she says proudly, “He was trying to hide at the back.”

I scuff my shoe on the floor and dare to meet Anita’s eyes as she twists sharply to look up at me, her movement just too quick not to be unsettling.

But there’s no confusion in her face. No regret, no distress, no muddied feelings like mine. Her face lights up. And then she smiles like the fucking _sun_.

“Jean,” Anita breathes gladly, and my heart hammers just a little bit faster. She lifts Mina up from under her arms and deposits her onto the pew bench, before standing up surely and dragging me down into a suffocating hug. She wraps her arms around me tightly and I feel her nose press into my shoulder – I freeze up for a moment, too surprised to remember how social graces tend to work, until she leans back, her smile still broad as she raises both her hands to cup my cheeks affectionately. The solid mucous feeling of nerves and pitted anxiety, which stews and festers in my stomach, sublimes, lifting the weight that makes me err on the wrong side of queasy.  

“Thank you for coming, _caro_ ,” she says to me, and the wateriness in her smile is like a fine fishing line, threaded down my throat that suddenly tugs too abruptly on whatever gall it has hooked itself into, making my throat lurch dryly. “How are you keeping?”

“G-good,” I breathe stutteringly, “I’m, uh— I’m good. Good. You, uh, you look—”

 _Well_ , is what I would say, but I don’t know if that’s what I _should_ say, or whether it’s accurate. Maybe I never noticed before, but beneath the saturated sunlight seeping into the church through the high windows, her grey hairs stand out like spindles of fine silver against her dark hair, and the wrinkles in her face are more prominent with shadow.

She’s aged quickly – a few years in just the space of a few weeks, and the roundness in her pallor is more gaunt and more drawn than usual in her full face. Her dark skin is inked with undertones of old grey, not radiant and beautiful and sun-kissed so much as defined by the pouches of dark colour strung beneath her eyes like little bags to hold the feelings that spill freely from her expressive eyes.

She lets her hands fall from my cheeks, but her fond gaze keeps me rooted to the spot before her, quaking with words I’m not entirely sure how to say, and a deathbed sort of regret in wishing I had the sort of courage needed to express _my_ feelings or know how to comfort her without looking like a fool.

Over Anita’s shoulder, I see Mina slip from the pew and disappear off into the crowds, slinking through the pillars of black suits and lace dresses without turning a single head, them too caught up in conversation passing high in the space her height doesn’t reach. I catch only a glimpse of her escape, before Anita pets me gently on the arm, dragging me back to the ache in my core.

“Will you sit with us, _caro_?” she says softly with a little squeeze of her fingers on my arm. Her eyes plead, and I figure it’s less of a request, and more of something else – though for herself, or for Mina, or for _Marco_ , I do not know and cannot tell.

I nod solemnly.

“S-sure,” I mumble, “Sure, Anita.”

She smiles kindly and steps back, gesturing to the hard wooden bench; she sits, and I follow, perching on the very edge of the slat, keeping my feet firmly planted on the floor. I rest my hands in my lap, unsure of what to do with them, and if whether holding onto the edge of the pew with white knuckles betrays too much the turbulence in my flightpath, jostling me just enough to make me feel unsettled, but not quite sick enough to reach for a paper bag.

Would it be wrong to apologise to her now? Would she still be able to force that smile, despite the bubbles that blubber beneath her surface and threaten to pool in her dark eyes and roll down her cheeks as wet, fat, salty tears?

I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s probably wrong.

But I can’t stop myself thinking about it.

She surprises me once again when she loops an arm around my bony shoulders and draws me into her side; a wheezing squawk is pressed out of my lungs. Anita exhales heavily, somewhere reminiscent of a breathy laugh that would’ve been in any other situation.

“You face is longer than mine, _caro_. Chin up, hmm?”

She pets my hair, ruffling the strands as if I were her own son, before letting me go again; I sit up straight and twist to look at her, eyes wide and startled by her forward choice of words – and not for my own sake, but for hers only.

But maybe that’s her strength. Maybe that’s how she keeps it all at arm’s length and doesn’t let herself succumb to the ugly caress of grief; the thought of a prison sentence without parole; a tunnel with no light at the end, despite how many people might repeat the words: _it will get better with time_.

I suppose you _have_ to find that sort of strength that lets you wake up every morning and still love the world and hope for some glimmer to get you through the day, otherwise the wave of grief will really become that thing described as prostrate, inconsolable, and _crazy_.

“It’s the chance to say goodbye and celebrate a life,” comes a voice from Anita’s other side; the freckled woman from earlier peers around her side and my eyes meet hers. “A funeral only has to be sad if you want it to be.”

Anita’s lips twitch and she smiles sympathetically, nodding fondly at me.

It’s irrelevant that my sort of sadness isn’t so much a watery sadness, or a commiseratory sadness rued by the deceased – it’s drier and more convoluted and confusing, but it doesn’t matter so much. It would be too complicated to explain the manner in which I feel the blue and grey feelings that pulse in the air – and at the same time, far too simple and easy.

 _Marco_ is the reason. _Anita, Mina_ , they’re reasons also. Simple.

So I crack a smile that doesn’t reach my eyes, and make a low noise in agreement.

“You probably haven’t been introduced, have you, _caro_?” Anita then says, leaning back against the spine of the pew, and gesturing between me and the woman on her other side. “This is my sister, Elena, and her family. Elena, this is Jean.”

I tip my head politely and extend a hand to shake. Elena’s grip is firm and tight, and I feel in her the same boldness and exuberant warmth I’ve been greeted by in Anita before, who now only seems all the more reserved, solemn, and shrinking by comparison.

“Oh?” Elena quips brightly when she lets my hand go. She turns to her sister, her eyebrows raised expectantly. “So _this_ is the Jean who bought Marco that lovely suit, is it?”

I feel my face flare up and I bite hard on the inside of my cheek. Anita claps a hand back on my shoulder and squeezes me firmly, tugging me a little closer to her side. There’s tenderness in her voice when she speaks.

“I sincerely _hope_ he’s the same Jean,” she says. “He’s a good one.”

I have to glance away, training my eyes on the floor for a moment to school my expression and supress the twisting sensation that wrings my gut. I’m lucky, because Mina arrives back at that moment, her shoes sliding on the tiles with a squeak as she scoots in front of her mom, and I feel whatever feeling that was be extinguished by cool water.

“It’s about to start, mom,” she says, drawing Anita’s and her sister’s attention, “I saw Marco outside with Uncle Noah.”

Around us, I see people taking their seats and a quieter hush descends over the high-ceiling parish, dense and ubiquitous. I slide up on the pew as Mina tries to wriggle up onto the bench between me and her mom, and notice, over her head, Anita leaning into her sister’s side, and they exchange words I do not hear, and a handkerchief is pressed into Anita’s hands.

I gulp, and take a deep breath, twisting around in my seat to look back up the aisle towards the bright beam of sunlight streaming through the open doorway; I see Marco beyond, saturated in the white sunlight outside, everything around him lost in the contrast of the glare, until it is just him, and only him. My heart trembles.

Music reverberates through the air – not a traditional funeral march fuelled by the grim monotone of organ keys, but something quieter and more melodic that I do not recognise, melancholic like the whisper of the late summer we’re hanging onto the cattails of. I push myself to face forward, running my hands up and down my thighs firmly as the music builds, clenching and unclenching my fingers until Mina reaches onto my lap to grab my index and middle fingers in her smaller ones.

I glance down at her and she frowns up at me, shaking her head but saying nothing. She doesn’t hold onto my hand for long, letting it go when she’s decided I’ve stopped fidgeting.

Marco is one of the pallbearers, supporting the front of the coffin – strewn with luscious greenery and white lilies and rosebuds – on his right shoulder. On his left is a tall, thin man – his paternal uncle, perhaps, because I see the traces in the family resemblance, the sculpted jaw, the high cheekbones, and the expressive eyebrows, even if I’m only able to steal a glance as they pass us by.

The other two men sharing the weight of the coffin do not share the semblance, but their faces are just as grave, and bowed as they walk the aisle.

My eyes fix on Marco, and the strain that paints his face. It’s pained, but somehow, it’s noble too, and he seems to hold himself with a resolute pride that makes his shuffling walk gallant, and the tautness of his jaw poignantly beautiful.

He is also wearing the suit – _my suit_ – but it’s not what I look at.

I breathe in the floral waft of the lily garlands as the coffin is lowered respectively onto the raised table at the front, clothed in dark velvet and even more flowers. I don’t know what the lilies mean – if they’re common funeral flowers, or if there’s some greater significance upon the arrangement of white petals and green stalks atop the narrow wooden box – mom would know, seeing as she prides herself in that sort of thing; but even without knowing if the flowers represent souls or life or death or who knows what, there’s something heraldic about them. They look like little trumpets in full bloom.

There’s a song of languid silence when the procession music ends, and the four pallbearers linger in front of the casket, heads bowed in the paying of some private prayer. Marco’s strong shoulders are tense, and he holds himself rigidly still – like me, with the breath I hold in tersely for him – until his uncle claps him on the back, and he finally exhales, his shoulders sagging.

I barely notice what the minister looks like as he hobbles creakingly up to the lectern, folding open his script and nudging his spectacles up his nose – I follow Marco as his uncle whispers words in his ear and then gives him another reassuring pat on the back, before the disperse from the coffin, and Marco turns towards the pews, his eyes scanning momentarily across the faces in the conclave, before settling on his mom in the front row, and then sliding onto me.

His smile is warm and he bites his lip sadly as he quickly crosses the floor to us; I make space between myself and Mina, sliding to the far end of the bench. Marco drops himself down into it with a sharp breath, his hand immediately finding mine in my lap with a death-grip. I squeeze his fingers back just as tightly and move our entwined hands to bury them between our pressed-together thighs – he breathes deeply, screwing his eyes shut for just a second, and steadies himself. He reminds himself what it means to clad himself in armour and hear its clinks when the plates clank together, and I see him gather the strength he needs to weld his soldier heart, even if it is one that now holds an olive branch in one fist, and a white flag in the other.

I don’t listen much to what the minister says, unable to truly keep my mind on him – but the funeral itself is modest and understated. The prayers spoken are ones I haven’t heard in a long time, and the words tickle the edges of my subconscious in a way that makes me think that I should know them, but I find myself watching how Marco’s lips murmur, and matching mine to them. But the meanings are not lost of me, because the feeling of being present to a moment elegiacally personal is something I cannot shake, and it’s humbling.

I keep hold of Marco’s hand in mine and his grip doesn’t slacken, even when I try rubbing my thumb over his knuckles, working on kneading out some of the white tension in his joints, as if I am the oil to his creaking brass chainmail. His breaths remain shallow, and his eyes move back and forth between the minister and the casket, sometimes getting lost in the eaves of flower petals and leaves, tracing the dips of shadow and irregular sunlight in their bows.

His grandfather is the first to read a eulogy – Marco’s dad’s dad, who sports a bushy moustache and wisps of thick, white hair, and Marco’s sits to attention like the solider he has to be, his back ruler rigid and his jaw clenched as he watches his family members read words scrawled onto scraps of paper from the elevated stone lectern.

I look at Marco the entire time. Sometimes at his hands, especially when his second hand comes to clasp over our joined ones, holding my fingers tightly in his, as if he’s scared I might let go; but more often at his face, and I imagine dot-to-dots in his freckles like always, and I linger in the creases that line his brows and his lips, and I wish I knew whether I would prefer to cover his eyes and his ears with my hands and clog his head up with the dusters of happier thoughts and sweet kisses and make it so he doesn’t have to suffer anymore, or not.

 _Or not_ , because I want him to have this closure, and I want him to hear all the beautiful words spoken about his father, and I want him to remember who the man was before his illness, in the way I imagine how Matthias must’ve looked in the past, when I see his relatives stand to speak, or in the way I’m able to paint a picture of his character with the lull of their eulogies as they pass in one ear and out the other, just coating my hazy thoughts with the deep purple dust of funeral feeling.

I find myself anticipating the first tears, swiped away by a quick hand or stony expression, but it never happens. Marco swallows thickly and sometimes his breaths tremble and his jaw quivers, but he doesn’t cry. I would whisper to him if I could, and tell him that’s it’s okay if he wants to. I wouldn’t judge him if he did. I wouldn’t pity him.

I know that was what he was once afraid of.

It’s a lie to say that everything is better now. It’s just the chorus of a mind which has forgotten – or pushed aside, perhaps – the thoughts of the days when the only true relief was sleeping. And when closed eyes meant no sadness and no anger and no lonely melancholy.

Just because it doesn’t take sleeping to be rid of those things now, doesn’t mean they’re not still real and true.

Things _are_ better now. But not everything will ever be. 

And I think part of us growing up – of us coming to terms with how this death will weigh upon our shoulders differently, of us figuring out our clumsy footwork as we trip over each other’s lips and careful touches, of us learning which direction to point our toes and follow forth into the future – is knowing that fact. Not everything will be okay.

But that’s perfectly alright. It’s how it has to be.

It’s okay to feel all those things, and it’s okay to cry. I wish I could’ve told myself that a long time ago, and I wish I could tell Marco now, but I keep my mouth glued tightly shut, holding his hand and telling myself that there will be time later to wrap myself around him and press kisses to his temple and ask him how he feels.

I don’t know how he holds it together when Anita goes to speak, but he does. He holds it together, with one hand in mine, and the other wrapped around his little sister’s shoulders, when Anita starts to cry, fat tears dripping onto the piece of crumpled paper that shakes in her hands and blotting the black ink. Her words cripple and threaten to fall apart under the way her shuddering sobs make her hiccup and sniffle loudly, and the wet hitches in her breath echo loudly beneath the vaulted ceiling like the wail of a child would bounce around stone walls.

I feel for her – I really do. Whether it’s the weight of the moment, or the sudden dawning realisation that it’s not some elaborate reality TV show that she’s living, and people aren’t going to come walking in with cameras and slat boards and announce that it’s all some dumb hoax, because how can it be real – _how can it be real_ – or maybe it’s just the time and the place that her words are taken her back to that makes her weep. I couldn’t tell you, which seems to be a reoccurring thing at the moment. I wish I knew. I wish.

Marco shakes beside me, his shoulder pressed up against mine, but it’s not enough, not for me – and a lump rises in my own throat. My eyes begin to burn. I blink it back. I want to be closer to him, and I don’t know how to make it possible, because it’s a bizarre sort of wanderlust that swells inside me, and I know I would keep on walking over mountains and across rivers if it meant figuring out a way in which I could be more _with him_ , and not just leant against his side, searching for the home I’m missing from.

Anita speaks about how they met – her and her husband. About their romance, and of smiles, and of hugs and hands squeezed, and how he always knew how to make her laugh when she needed it. She speaks about her children, and Marco tenses when she rotes him by name – her greatest gift that she was given, she says, and the things she will hold onto now that he is gone.

“You … you will be their first thought in the morning, and their … their last thought at night, like you were and— and always are, to me,” she weeps, dabbing her handkerchief against her red eyes. The silence in the church is like a baited breath without the anticipation, for the way it makes my lungs begin to ache and burn the longer I go without sucking in or expelling air, as I continue to listen to her tearfully punctuated elegy. 

“I loved you to— to bits and pieces, and right now … right now, that’s never been more true, _cuore mio_. I’m in pieces, but I know— I’ll put myself back together like you did time and t-time again – for our darlings, for our children, and I promise, _amore mio_ , that I will find a way to live in a world without you, because I know— I know, I—”

She sobs loudly again, and around me I see people dabbing their own eyes, men shaking their heads gravely, and women patting their cheeks dry with the heels of their hands. I peer past Marco, to steal a glance at Mina – and how, God, she must be feeling to see her mom falling to pieces in front of her, because I know how fucking _terrifying_ it can be to see your parents, your foundations, your walls, your rock who was never meant to break, _crumble_ – and her face is stern and sullen, her lips a tight line and her fingers fisted in the skirts of her dress.

“ _Eri sempre la luce dei miei occhi_ ,” Anita continues, her words babbling over into incoherent Italian. “ _Sempre. Sempre, amore mio. Ti amo._ ”

I think it’s Marco’s uncle – the same man who strode beside him carrying the coffin – that jumps to his feet and strides up the shallow stairs to the pulpit, extending a hand to Anita as she tearfully folds her script up into a small square and squeezes her eyes shut. I watch as he supports her elbow, his other hand hovering around her back as he guides her back to her seat, and the silence in the church is palpable.

She thanks the man, and then turns to her sister, burying her face in a hug that squeezes a tear from the corner of my eye. I blink it back, but it rolls freely down the side of my face, dripping from my jaw and onto the lapels of my jacket. I don’t think Marco sees, and I’m glad of it, because it’s feeling does not pass quietly – more like the bristle of skin when one might rip off caution tape stuck to the hair on their arms, with a noise like a rip and a _feeling_ like a rip.

Marco reaches inside his jacket with the hand he doesn’t have wound with mine, and pulls out a folded piece of paper, scored with biro lines scarring through from the other side. He lays it on his lap and unfolds it, flattening out the creases with his fingers.

I read the first few words as the minister introduces Marco as the next person to speak, but I get no further than the second line, feeling Marco squeeze my fingers, and his eyes on me as he turns away from the front for a second. I glance up at him, and his beautiful eyes are glossy and wide and maybe a little bit scared, yet still flat like a calm sea, their dark colour muted and yellow-less, just at the wrong angle to catch the sun.

 _You can do it_ , I mouth silently to him; he forces a little smile, but it’s barely a twitch of his lips. His grip on my fingers becomes tighter. _You can do it, Marco_.

I suck in a short breath, and pull our entwined fingers up to my lips, pressing a curt kiss to his white knuckles, despite how my hand shakes and my heart thrums loudly enough that surely everyone in the rows behind us will hear. But I don’t shy away from his eyes once, not abandoning his gaze, even when I’m sure he feels my breath on the back of his fingers. I can’t. I say nothing else, and untangle our hands when I set them back in my lap.

The gesture resigns him, I think, and he squares his shoulders and summons strength from _somewhere_ to push into his legs and make himself stand, his silver armour creaking and clanking.

Marco is brave.

It’s not like I need the stiffness in my spine, or the way I dig my blunt fingernails into the fabric of my suit trousers, or how well an emblem of a lion, or a giant, appaloosa horse on the figment breast plate over his chest would suit him and the way he stands so gallantly and so graciously, to tell me that much.

It’s not like I need the fact that he makes the walk up to the pulpit in perfect silence with his head held high, to tell me that he is brave.

It’s about being able to stand tall beneath the rain and let the drops kiss his skin without shying away or falling fool to the thought that the storm could be romantic or poetic. He feels the rain for what it is, and it makes him strong – to me, at least.

His heart – warm – looks delicate, and maybe in a way, it is, but it is also so tightly and densely spun from threads of candlelight, which is exactly what you need when it is dark. And when he speaks, you would never want to quiet him; he would never be the person left on the outside of the circle, never the third friend walking behind the other two on the sidewalk; it’s not hard to see why people envy him and orbit him and love him like we do – _I do_. When he speaks, it’s captivating, because I don’t feel devastated, even if I feel the urge to be devastated.

His words start quiet, and he clears his throat a few times, coughing lightly behind his fist, starting over the first sentence on his note paper more than once – but he finds his way, in the end. I see how he tries to control the way his fingers tremble on the page, and he shifts from foot to foot behind the lectern, but it’s all to keep the quiver from finding root in his voice. His voice is _strong_. It fills the space like music.

“I remember one time, I asked my mother: _why does dad work so much_? When … when I was younger, it seemed as if five o’clock couldn’t come soon enough, and I would wait by the front window in our house in Jinae, and hope every thrum of an engine would be his car turning into the driveway. My dad … he was a hardworking man. He worked six days a week for many, many years, but all my mom would ever say to my sister and I … was that everyone’s dad worked hard.

I think it took me a few years before I realised the lesson that … that was supposed to be learned. My dad taught me the value of hard work, and I think – I think there’s very little better than that, he could’ve given me. He taught me what it means to work hard to support your family, and how to find worth in even the most trivial of tasks, in order to make them, well, fulfilling.

Dad— dad woke up every day, and pulled on his shoes, and went to work to provide for my family. And when he couldn’t … when he couldn’t, he knew that he’d instilled in me the— what I _needed_ in order to do what he would’ve done. He trusted me with that, and I hope— I really _hope_ that I made him proud. He always looked out for his family. He believed that if you worked hard, and cared for … for those around you, treated people _right_ , that God would give you a little luck, and you would live a good life.

He was always modest about it, of course. He would never own up to it, and he would always come in the front door with a weary smile and a kiss on my mom’s cheek and ruffle my hair, and pretend like working at an office all his life was enough for him, because it put bread on the table. He was kind, and I think everybody knew that about him.

He used to take my sister and I to catch fireflies out on the lake when we were small – he’d bundle her up, and pile me high with nets and a large, glass jar, and we’d creep … creep down to the water’s edge and watch the bugs dance along the surface, before we’d swoop in to scoop them all up, emptying them into our jar. He’d never let me tap on the glass … I remember that. He’d … he’d swat my fingers away, and ask me how— how _I’d_ like it. And we’d watch them for a little while – the fireflies – banging their heads against the glass now and again, whirling around like tiny, yellow bottle rockets, until my sister would start fidgeting, and mom would call us back to the house from far away.

And dad would always make sure we would let them go. Always. He was kind. He was … _kind_. He knew when enough was enough.”

Marco stops, and his chest rises with a heavy breath; I’m too far away to know for sure, but I’m almost certain I see the glimmer of a tear track slide down his cheek, and he winces.

The firefly story. It paints the same vivid image in my head as it did the first time I heard it, even if, this time, the reasons why I’m hurting are different. Far different.

Marco’s fingers flick across his cheek casually, swiping away the betraying tear like it’s nothing – or it _has to be nothing_. Next to me, Mina is still staring at her feet determinedly, her brows furrowed and her posture stiff, whilst Anita, on her other side, continues to stifle sniffles behind a handkerchief, her eyelashes glued together with salt water.

“He knew,” Marco continues then, and his voice now wavers distinctly, resonating at a higher pitch that tells me that he’s trying his hardest to hold on and not rust his armour. I try and catch his gaze, but it darts all over the crowd, straying in the vaulted ceilings, and focussing searingly on the paper before him. He doesn’t once try and look at me, or his sister, or his mom. Maybe he can’t. Maybe it will be too much to see his mom still crying.

“He knew when enough was enough … and I wish— G-God, I wish that I’d realised that sooner. I wish I’d— _he_ came to terms with his illness before anyone else. _He_ knew … knew what it meant. He came to terms with it when the rest of us … when we— when we couldn’t. When I couldn’t. I regret not coming to terms with _him_ coming to terms with it, and instead I— instead I was stuck in such a dark place in those last few months, and I should’ve … I should’ve—”

He wipes his face again, and his breath stutters with frustration, as if he’s angry at himself for letting the tears fall.

_It’s okay, Marco. No-one will think you’re weak. And it doesn’t matter if you are. It’s allowed. You’re allowed. No-one will judge you._

“I think I … I think even now I wish that he … I wish that he could’ve held on a little longer, for the sake of—”

Marco breathes deeply again, and screws his eyes shut for a second. When he opens them again, he’s looking directly at me.

“For the sake of the people he didn’t have a chance to properly meet yet. I wish I could’ve shared those … those things with him. I wanted to show him … to show him that I have a good life, because of what he gave to me, because of what he taught me, because of what a good _father_ he was.

I … I will leave this on something he once told me, and I think— I think it’s a good message to pass on to others. I cannot tell you when he told me this, or … or _why_ he told me, but I don’t think it should matter.

 _Do what you feel – what you believe is right. Follow your gut, your heart, treat those around you with love and kindness, and you cannot – will not – go wrong._ ”

The quiet is hushed again, but less grave, and more filled with some grand feeling of something I could never be able to describe in full, save for the way it inflates my chest and makes Anita dab faster and harder at her eyes.

Marco bows his head, and folds up his notes, before tucking them back into the breast of his jacket. Finally, in a quiet, fragile voice, he says,

“Thank you, dad. You were my motivation. I’m going to try to be the same.”

I almost feel like I should clap, and I think I sense that same confusion in the people around me – but no-one does. I don’t know if it’s acceptable to applaud a eulogy, so I supress the feeling by rubbing me hands up and down my legs firmly, wrinkling and smoothing the fabric in my suit pants repeatedly.

Marco hops down from the pulpit, and makes a beeline straight for his space on the pew between Mina and I, not glancing at any of the pitying, sorrowful faces that nod towards him and look at him with commiserations and the things I know he hates.

He’s shaking when he sits down, and it doesn’t stop when his mom leans over to him, over his sister’s head, and presses a palm to his cheek, and tells him that his words were beautiful. She’s still crying.

When she kisses him lovingly on the forehead, his hand wriggles onto my leg, and squeezes my knee tightly. He doesn’t need to look back at me for my own hand to cover his, and slide his fingers a little further up my leg; his grip is so tight that I wonder if it could bruise. Doesn’t matter. He squeezes my thigh, and I squeeze his hand in return.

The music starts for another hymn, so I wiggle the programme out from under Marco’s thigh as everyone stands. I open the leaflet with one hand, linking my fingers through Marco’s before tugging him gently to his feet, and hold the words in front of both of us.

I don’t sing loud enough to hear my own voice over the melody of others, and I keep my eyes focused on Marco’s face, watching him battle with forcing the lyrics out of his own lips, and not letting anything else spill out that might overflow from all the things he must be feeling.

He manages a few lines, but when I brush my thumb over his knuckles, and tell him, in my mind, _that it’s okay not to force himself_ , he clamps his mouth shut and concentrates on steadying his breathing as the music reaches a crescendo, and then the piano ultimately dies out.

 

* * *

 

At the end of the service, Marco drags himself off the pew again – and out of the grip I have on his hand – to support his corner of the wooden casket as it’s processed out of the church once more. He looks less proud this time, and he almost seems to sag beneath the weight of what he carries. I want to be able to help him, and it’s excruciating to know that I physically can’t, and I dawdle behind when Anita and the others rise to follow them out of the church and into the cemetery.

I’m not sure how many times in my life I’ve set foot in a graveyard. They’re not things you see very often when you grow up living in a city like Trost, and the only tombstones you’re ever likely to see are those displayed in the windows of funeral planners, all marbled and shiny, and not at all like those that crop up amidst the gently rolling slopes of the lawns behind the church and its picket fence.

My eyes wander over the names on those that we pass, as I shuffle behind Anita and her sister, whose arms are looped and whose heads are closely bowed together. Some of the engravings are too faded by weather to read, barely more than scratchings in the proud stone; but where I can make out the carvings, I find myself calculating the time spans between the dates listed of birth and death for each poor soul buried six feet under, and it’s a good enough distraction as any.

The plot they have for Mr Bodt is nothing special; a six-by-six-by-two foot hole in the ground, looked over by a simple, dome-shaped gravestone, and neighboured on both sides by tombstones that look exactly the same.

_In memory of  
Matthias Lowie Bodt_

_March 17 th, 1964 – August 14th 2014_

_Beloved father and husband_

The casket is set down beside the grave as everyone gathers around the hole in the ground, listening to the minister waffle over some prayers that probably go unheard, judging by how heavily Anita is leaning on Marco now, burying her face in the tissue in her hand, and letting her hair be smoothed down by her son.

I stand a little way back from the edge, shoulder to shoulder with two suits I don’t see the faces of, and don’t care to. The coffin is lowered into the ground – slowly downwards until it disappears below the lip of earth and I can’t see it any longer.

Marco encourages his mom to the edge, and hands her the stem of a lily silently; she presses her nose to the white petals and inhales the perfume, before tossing the flower into the grave.

I watch Marco do the same, barely pausing to decide which flower he wants to leave atop the casket, all too focussed on whispering things I cannot hear into his mom’s ear, comforting her. He has his arms around her shoulders and tries his hardest to draw her against his side, even if there’s little leeway to get any closer than they already are.

More people approach the graveside to throw flowers – Marco’s uncle and grandfather, and some others who look similar, amongst them – but my eyes wander.

Mina is missing.

And not just missing as in: hiding behind a crowd of people to avoid being fussed over by doting relatives who try to pinch her cheeks and kiss her face and ruffle her hair sympathetically. She’s _missing_ missing.

I crane my head to look over the shoulders of those around me, but I can’t see her anywhere. She’s not here.

Marco and his mom are too distracted to notice, and everyone else is looking down – not down where a kid might be, but down into the hollow of the earth, and the shovels of soil that are being scattered atop the casket now.

I slip away from the graveside without earning a second glance from anyone, and I don’t think Marco notices me go. I’m better for it, I decide, shoving my hands deep into the pockets of my suit pants, and picking up the pace as I stalk back across the cemetery, weaving in and out of tombstones weather-worn and tickled by grassy feathers and limp flowers left over by visitors long gone.

I vault over the picket fence, too lazy to walk the length of it to find the gate, and my feet land on the yellowing grass and dry earth of the other side, a far different colour that the sheets of healthy greenery kept well by sprinklers and gardeners within the confines of the graveyard.

My car is still in one piece, I notice, glancing briefly at it in the long line of other parked vehicles, as I round the side of the church. The shadows beneath the pillars of the front porch are darker now, and longer too, stretching across the flagstone steps and up the red-brick walls; but the sun seems yellower, warmer maybe.

Not brighter, though. The late afternoon is beginning to dim its glare as the light in the sky is slowly pushed towards the horizon hidden by trees.

Mina is sitting on the bottom step of the front porch, her knees drawn up to her chest as she pokes the earthy, dusty soil with a twig tightly clenched in her little fingers.

I find myself breathing a sigh of relief that I didn’t realise I was withholding. My shoulders drop and my pace slows as I approach her. She doesn’t startle when I reach her, and my silhouette casts a lean shadow over her face; her reaction is delayed, and she strikes a few more lines in the sandy dirt with her stick before she looks up at me, blinking lazily and _distantly_.

She makes a low noise, which I figure is a greeting, and then goes back to drawing incoherent lines and swirls at her feet.

I stare dumbly at her for a while, and the longer I do, the more she seems to curl in on herself and draw her legs closer to her chest until her chin is resting on her knees.

It’s hard – _knowing what to do_. Grief is unpredictable and irrational in any form, and I struggle enough with knowing what to say or how to act around Marco and his mom. Kids are different. Kids feel differently, and how the grief must manifest itself in her must be so confusing, and so _frustrating_.

And it must be pretty damn _lonely_.

( _But_ , I tell myself, _I know how loneliness feels_.)

“Are you … are you taking a break?” I ask tentatively, squeezing my fingers into fists inside my pockets when my voice doesn’t come out as _strong_ as I need it to.

She turns her head to look up at me again, but says nothing. I bite the inside of my cheek and press my lips into a flat line.

She seems really small. Like, yeah, I know that she’s a kid, and I know that she’s practically half my age, but she seems smaller than all that. Small like when you’re standing, looking down at your pet, or I guess, even your baby or child, and you realise just how much damage you could do to them with your five-foot-ten inches of height. They’re always at your mercy, and you were put here to look after them, because surely there can be no way that something so fragile and liable to your hands or feet can survive on its own.

I need her to be bigger, or I need to make myself smaller. Considering only one of those things is minutely possible, I shuffle up to her side and squat down onto the step next to her, perching my butt on the sun-baked stone.

She doesn’t react, not even stiffening when I stretch my legs out in front of us, and lean back on my elbows on the step above, making myself at home. She continues to draw as if I‘m not even there.

“You want … to go back?” I probe again, and this time her hand stills and she sets her drawing stick down against the step. She draws her hands up onto her knees, and presses her mouth into the backs of her fingers.

“No,” she says in a tiny voice, “I don’t.”

I run a hand through my hair, and wish I could speed dial my mom or Historia or anyone with more experience than me in talking to small children. Chemistry classes don’t prepare you in the slightest for how to be delicate, but hey, _as long as you know about the wavefunction of an electron_ , am I right?

“You, uh. You might, when you’re older … y’know, _regret it_ , not saying goodbye to your dad,” I stammer awkwardly, “Might be your last chance.”

“I already said goodbye,” she replies curtly.

I don’t understand her apathy, but not in a way that makes me believe that it is _wrong_ , or anything like that. It’s not wrong, because I think it’s probably pretty hard for any reaction to grief to be the wrong way of dealing with the pain.

I wonder if it’s a front for holding back the tears, though. When you’re that young, tears are scary. Hell, they’re still pretty scary _now_ , but there’s a particular sort of fear over crying when you’re younger. It always felt more significant, and more _world-ending_ , when you’re nine years old and don’t understand why you can’t stop your chest from hiccupping violently and your eyes from weeping.

I recognise the walls she’s put up around herself, because I’ve had to build similar ones for myself, in the past. Their bricks are the shame – the shame of being different, the shame of showing weakness – and the mortar is fear and powerlessness and guilt and regret, and when mixed together they become so stodgy and so gluey that when you sandwich two cinderblocks together, you’ll unlikely be able to jimmy them apart again without needing to find yourself a sledgehammer.

I don’t know exactly how to be _that_ , but maybe just knocking on one side of the wall is enough. It’s as much as I know how to do.

“’S alright to cry, y’know,” I mumble, scuffing my polished shoes in the dry dirt, “No-one will judge you for wanting to cry. No-one’s gonna … _think you're weak_ , or anything like that, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I know,” Mina says quickly, gritting her teeth, “I just … don’t feel like it.”

She reaches forward for her stick again, but doesn’t go back to sketching in the sand. Instead, she takes the twig between both hands, and snaps it down the middle with a brittle crack. The parched wood splinters, and she tips the shards from her palms and into the dirt carelessly.

“Dad said that Marco and mom would cry a lot when he died,” she then adds quietly, and I almost miss her words, lost to being muffled in where her mouth is pressed against her knees still. “He was right. Mom cried a lot. And Marco did when he thought I didn’t see. But I saw.”

“Was it scary?” I ask hesitantly, watching intently as she chews over her words and keeps her eyes focussed on the ground. “S-seeing them like that?”

“… A bit.”

I nod sagely, biting down on my lower lip a little too firmly – it stings.

“A bit,” I reaffirm, “A bit scary. Y’know … y’know, that’s _okay_ , right? It’s okay to be … to be scared sometimes. ‘S normal.”

_Took me a long while I realise that._

Mina huffs, her puff of breath flicking some of the stray hairs that have escaped from her ponytail and have fallen down around her face. Her shoulders rise and fall, and then she stretches her legs out, her shoes smudging through the tracks in the dirt, to mimic my posture. She doesn’t quite manage wanting to look up at me, but I think her head twitches, as if she were almost there.

“When was the last time you cried?” she asks me, and I’m surprised.

“Th-the last time I … _cried_?” I parrot back, blinking rapidly a few times.

“Yeah,” she says strictly, “Last time you cried.”

I could lie. I could tell her about some story as a kid – maybe the story of the neighbour’s dog pulling me into the river when I used to walk it, or some time or other about having been dragged to the hospital having sprained  or broken something on one of my escapades with Connie and Sasha.

I could lie, but it wouldn’t mean as much. I’ve shed my fair share of tears lately, and whilst they weren’t messy or blubbering or pillow-soaking in their hysteria, they count.

“Three days ago,” I say bluntly, and I think Mina is surprised, because her eyes flit up to mine for an honest moment or two. “Sunday night. Last time I cried.”

“R-really?”

“Yup,” I say, feeling a twitch in my fingers that makes me want to card my hand through my hair or scratch awkwardly at the back of my neck – but I suffocate it. I keep my hands firmly pressed flat against the concrete. “I said some shi— _bad things_ to my mom, and I finally grew-up enough to say sorry to her. I cried because I felt relieved, I guess. And also because I felt guilty for not acting like an adult and for making her feel _sad_ for so long, y’know?”

“… You’re dumb,” Mina tells me sternly, and I scoff lightly, rolling my eyes dramatically. She isn’t exactly _wrong_ , I’ll give her that.

“Yeah, I know. Real dumb.”

I move my gaze to the road before us – I haven’t seen a single car pass by since we’ve been sitting here, and it’s an almost eerie silence to hear no thrum or splutter of an engine, or no distant sirens, or no whir of city life. There’s bird song in the air, and if summer had a sound, that melody would be the only thing playing on the stereo – there isn’t even the lull of a wistful breeze to add sighing lyrics to the song.

It’s peaceful. And in a way, it almost makes me squirm.

“Do you want to stick around?” I say, disintegrating the quiet. Mina looks up at me curiously, quirking one of her thick eyebrows. “I can take you home, if y’don’t want to stay. I think we’ll probably be waiting around here for a while.”

She frowns and seems to tumble over my words for a while, quietly mulling over the possibility as I see her eyes roam from the cars parked on the roadside, to what we can still see of the white picket fence, probably imagining what must be going on behind it, out of sight.

“Can I … can I ride in the front?”

I can’t help but let my mouth quirk up into a smile.

“Sure, kid.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy folks! This is the first part of this week's double update! The next chapter will be arriving in a few days, so keep your eyes peeled. All the material was supposed to be in one chapter, but once the word count exceeded 55k, I decided that was dumb, and so split the chapter into two. The two parts don't need to be read as one chapter, but maybe the balance works best that way, I'm not sure. Still, this works fine as a stand alone.
> 
> Regardless, apologies for the delay on an update. I had university tying up, which kept me super busy with deadlines, and I also wrote a whole lot, which took a while naturally to polish up.
> 
> I've been wanting to use "Timshel" by Mumford & Sons as a chapter reference since the very beginning of the fic, so I was glad I made it this far. Timshel translates as "thou mayest" in Hebrew. Please check out the song and pay special attention to its lyrics, because they relate beautifully to Marco/his dad, to Céline, and to Jean.
> 
> The other song I was weighing up for this one was "Elastic Heart" by SIA, because it fits /so well/ for Céline and her situation, and it's a killa tune bruh.
> 
> Other than that: shout out to everyone for helping me reach the 100k hits mark since the last update! It was about a month ago, but it's still bloody crazy! Also thank you to those folks running Spanish and Italian translations for the earlier chapters of the fic. Super cool!
> 
> Please leave your feedback! Comments are tremendously appreciated and I read and enjoy each one! If you have specific comments or questions, my Tumblr inbox is also open, and I try hard to reply to as much as possible. Reminder that I follow the Tumblr tag "fic: droplets", and will always see anything tagged with that. You guys rock! Let me know how you like the dynamics of this chapter!
> 
> Next time has a lot more Jean and Mina dynamic, and a lot of fluff with Marco. Peace!


	22. Timshel (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But you are not alone in this  
> And you are not alone in this
> 
> \--"Timshel", Mumford & Sons

My parents never had a second child. I don’t know if they ever tried, nor if they even wanted one – or maybe things were too far gone between them by the time I was born for them to want to try again.

I imagine my dad was happy with his son. A healthy baby boy, with two legs, and two arms, and two eyes, and everything that made him perfect on the outside to the father that might have once cooed down at him, offering his baby son a finger to tug, or a rattle to batter around in his little fist.

Shame that not everything missing in a person can be seen on their skin; on the outside of their tiny, pink body. You can’t see how someone’s brain might be wired. You can’t see how big the capacity of their heart might be.

I think my mom always wanted a little girl. She dotes so hard on the small children of her friends – the girls in dresses with bows in their hair, and the babies swaddled up in flowery blankets, and the teenage daughters who she surely would have more in common with than me.

For a while, maybe I believed she had wanted for me to be a girl when I was born, just in the same way my dad had been glad for me to have been born a boy. I know, now, that’s not the truth on her part, but it doesn’t stop me wondering what things might have been like if I’d had a little sister in my life to look out for.

I wonder if it would have changed me. Changed how things turned out. Changed how much pressure was piled on my shoulders by my dad to follow in his footsteps. I wonder if he would have shared that burden between me and my sibling that never was, or I wonder if it still would’ve fallen squarely on me.

I wonder if I would have been braver. I wonder if I would’ve stood up to what my dad was doing to drive a wedge between the pillars of this family, in want of a better life for the people I felt it was in my duty to look out for. I wonder if I would’ve found the courage to do what I should’ve done for my mom alone, a long time ago.

I wonder if I might have found the courage to face my fear of water sooner. The desire to fit in does strange things, and possibly even stranger things when its flesh and blood you want to impress – flesh and blood that would look up to you, and see you as strong, dependable, a protector. I would’ve made a poor knight in shining armour if I could never have stepped ankle-deep into a tarp pool on the back lawn in the middle of a summer heatwave.

Braver, bolder, brasher. _Better_.

I wonder if I had a sister like Mina, could I have been all those things.  I wonder if I could’ve made a good brother, in my own sort of way.

Mina jumps to her feet from the sun-baked flagstones of the church steps, and her madhouse of curly hair, imprisoned in a tight ponytail, bounces, even if there is no bounce to see in her step.

She’s shorter. Scrawnier. Darker, bolder, harsher, maybe, than me, with her kid-like honesty that’s brutal enough to strip you of the veneer of adult social graces. Her legs and arms are skinny and gangly, but her face begs the heart-shape of her mom, and I figure she might grow into it, a far cry from me and my oval profile. Her eyes are a deep, dark molasses brown. Lighter than mine.

She’s not the sister I could’ve had. Not the sibling I could’ve jostled with in the hallways of the big, white house, or suffered dad’s second-hand guilt with, side-by-side.

She’s not that. She’s just a little girl, who knows nothing of what she could have been if she were my sister, and not Marco’s.

I suppose it doesn’t stop her from being sad. Whichever blood flows in her veins. You don’t compare sadness. Feeling blue and moody is not something that you can draw a line of on a running scale. Not something you get awarded rosettes for the intensity of the feeling. It’s just different. Sadness just manifests differently. It’s no competition.

I haul myself to my feet, digging for my car keys as I nod silently towards the road. Mina knows my car by sight, but she doesn’t start towards it until I gesture at its gleaming, black shell, hard and waxy like the coating of some sleeping beetle beneath the warm rays of the dozing sun.

She measures her steps, walking beside me carefully as we cut the corner across the yellow-grass lawn of the church, and the headlights of the Jaguar flash as I unlock the doors.

I realise in that moment, noting from the corner of my eye that she hangs her head and watches her feet scuff the dry ground, that if I’m with Marco, it doesn’t matter about my blood. Or about what could have been.

If I’m _with_ Marco, I think that kinda makes her my sister too. Y’know. By proxy. Or really, whatever it is that she _wants_ to be. Sister. Friend. Side-kick. It all works in the long run.

There are things she needs, and people she needs to be around who aren’t connected to her by what red strings flow in her veins. Maybe I can do something to help alleviate that swirling, tangling thread feeling I know too well is like a vortex within her chest – even if it’s just to offer an escape for a moment. Maybe she won’t realise that she needs it now.

But she will. She will. And I guess I hope that I’m still around when she comes to understand that.

I drop Marco a quick text as we jump into the car, telling him that we’re going on ahead and not to worry where we are; as I watch the message disappear from my outbox, I catch Mina marvelling at the inside of the Jaguar, noticing how she kicks her legs out long in the foot well and wiggles back into the plush leather of the passenger seat, prodding at the cushions with her fingers.

I don’t say anything, but I smile to myself as I slide my phone back into the pocket of my pants.

She says nothing as I drag the car around into a three-point turn, the engine growling at me over the state of the pot-holed asphalt, which is far from my fault. The tarmac seems to threaten to crumble beneath the tires, the rubber crackling over loose gravel and sandy flakes crisped by the sun’s glare. I look over at her once before I put my foot on the gas, making sure I see no regret in her eyes about leaving the church in wake of the dust that car already kicks up – but she has her attention focussed through the windshield on the road ahead of us, and not out the passenger window towards the tombs of stone we can see peering through the juniper and overhanging undergrowth.

I shrug to myself, and let the car leap forward with an exultant purr, watching as the trees either side of the road smear into green, indistinguishable blurs, and we leave behind the rows of car shells, the red brick building, and the graveside tears she clearly doesn’t want to see.

Mina is very quiet, eventually tipping her head to stare longingly out of her window, her eyes flickering as they try to keep up with the rate that trees and road signs and eventually houses pass us by. Even when I tap on the stereo a few times with my pointer finger, offering her control of the radio station, she says nothing and cares little for whatever music I have seeping out of the speakers in a low hum. Her only reaction is to draw her legs up and out of the foot well, and cram her feet on the very edge of the passenger seat, bringing her knees up to her chest. She wraps her arms around her legs, and keeps herself pulled together.

I wonder what it must’ve been like to only have known her father when he was sick. Imagine growing up and having a man who could barely lift himself out of his own chair, or feed himself his own food, or wash himself, or put himself to bed, as the _norm_.

What must the other kids’ fathers have looked like when they greeted their children at the end of a school day in the playground? What must it have felt like to see them get picked up and swung around, or to hang off their fathers arms and be lifted into the air, or scramble up onto their shoulders and find themselves six foot off the ground?

What must it have been like not to have any of that? What did she feel?

Frustration, I suppose. Confusion. Longing. Jealousy.

I woulda felt so _jealous_.

(I still do, in a way. Feel _jealous_. I cannot count the number of times I’ve looked at my friends’ fathers and wished for a relationship like that.)

Imagine living for ten years and having that hole in your heart that keeps you always at a hand’s span from connecting fully to everyone around you.

Well, maybe I don’t have to imagine.

When you’re a kid, being different can be _crippling_.

 

* * *

 

Mina seems to perk up the moment the roads start to become familiar to her, and she recognises the twisting labyrinth of her neighbourhood from its run-down wooden houses, and its rusting streetlamps, and its browning grass lawns. She sits a little straighter in her seat, sliding her feet from the leather once more, and pressing her hands against the dashboard so that she can crane her head higher, and see how the boys playing soccer in the road scatter when I toot the car horn at them.

She’s out of the car barely before I have time to kill the engine when I pull up against the curb outside her house, leaping out the passenger door and racing up the garden path overgrown with weeds. I practically fall out of the driver’s door, just about grabbing the keys from the ignition, before knocking the door closed behind me with my hip and stumbling after her, only remembering to lock the Jag over my shoulder.

Mina flies up the front porch steps, the wood creaking noisily even under her meagre weight, and sets about turning over the cracked and broken flowerpots by the front door, clearly searching for a spare key. She tips over loose soil and shards of terracotta all over the decking, the finer grains tumbling through the gaps in the wood slats, disappearing into the foundations of the house. She finds what she’s looking for by the time I catch up with her, and jams a clunky bronze key into the lock, leaving the door wide open behind her, clattering against the inside of the house.

I follow tentatively, remembering to slip off my dress shoes when I’m standing on the door mat. I nudge them into the pile with the other shoes abandoned in the hallway, and then push the door closed behind me, even it takes a few, hearty shoves to get the latch to click.

The house hasn’t changed since I was last here, but I don’t know why I expect it to be different. The hallway is dimly lit, with sunlight filtering hazily through the net curtains over the window at the end of the corridor, and through the frosted glass window on the front door. The walls, faded, sunny-yellow in colour, are still cluttered with family photographs and cross-stich flowers, all slightly jaunty to one another, the mismatched frames blanketed with snowy dust that makes me rub beneath my nose involuntarily. I have to watch my feet as I pad towards the stairs, careful not to trip over mistrewn bags or a rogue vacuum cleaner not put away. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t moved, from where it’s propped up against the wall, since the last time I shuffled over the _welcome home_ mat.  

Maybe I expect the house to feel sadder, more sombre, as if it’s yellow or periwinkle walls would not be as chipper or as happy, and have somehow changed to grey. The shadows might be long across the walls, but the happy-clappy sayings, stitched into canvas hemp, framed on the walls, haven’t twisted into different words. It’s not like the photos have been scratched out of Matthias’ face. I squint at them as I pass, swiping my finger across the glass of one or two, where they could probably use a bit of a dust – my finger comes away speckled with fuzzy, grey particles, and I have to resist the temptation to wipe it on my suit pants.

What I do notice, which I guess is a little out of place in all the clutter of the hallway, is how many vases of flowers are propped up on the old dressing table – there are five bouquets, some more wilted than others. The flowers most dried and brown, petals scattered on the wood, hang limply over the edges of colourful, swirly-patterned vases – the sort you’d buy hand-made from an old lady at a craft fair, maybe pretending that the garish blues and yellows and oranges of the glazed paint aren’t the most fucking garish thing you’ve ever seen. The newer flowers – a bunch of proud, white lilies in full bloom – stand proudly in what only looks to be an empty jam jar, missing its lid.

I look along the row of vases – two of the gaudy, hand-glazed monstrosities, one crystalline glass, and the other clearly fashioned out of an old flower pot, and I figure Anita must’ve run out of things to keep her flowers in. I reach out and pinch one of the dried-up petals scattered on the wood-top, but it snaps in my palm, too brittle to be held. I couldn’t even tell you what sort of flower it used to be. I sprinkle the fragments onto the dressing table, and sweep them into a pile with the other fallen petals with the side of my hand, but seeing not trash bin to push them into, I decide to leave them be. If Anita wanted the dying flowers gone, I figure she would’ve moved them by now.

All the doors in the hallway are closed except one, and judging by the sound of bustling clutter, I figure that’s where Mina’s gone. I glance sideways at the only door I’ve actually ever been through in this house, bar the front door itself – and I wonder if sitting in the living room alone for the rest of the afternoon would be okay. Or I could sit in Marco’s room, I suppose – but whether that errs on the wrong side of creepy yet, I don’t exactly know. I end up dawdling at the bottom of the stairs, my eyes flitting between the living room, and the landing upstairs, getting as far as shuffling my weight from one foot to the other in making a decision.

Mina saves me the trouble, thankfully, and pokes her head back out the open door with a scowl on her face, just as I’m deciding whether or not it is reasonably to resign myself to standing awkwardly in the hallway until someone else comes home.

“Come on,” she says, hanging from the door frame. “This is my room.”

I hobble over to her awkwardly and she turns away into her room, leaving the door wide open for me.

Her room is small – maybe half the size of mine at home, and chaotic with so much _stuff_ that it seems smaller still. Her walls are a warm, light fuchsia-purple where they peek through all the scraps of paper and posters tacked to the paint, but with the mess of throw pillows and quilts on her bed, and the army of stuffed animals lined up on every square inch of shelving drilled into the walls, it’s more like I’ve just walked into an explosion in a paint factory.

She jumps onto her bed, pushed against the wall, and begins piling pillows into her arms as I take a few steps over the threshold, gawking at the _mayhem_ that is her desk. It’s littered with art supplies – half tipped-over pots of pens and pencils, eraser shavings, leafs and leafs of cheap sketch paper, some screwed up into balls, others creased and dog-eared in the corners – but most full of half-finished drawings of smudged graphite.

Mina dumps her armful of pillows onto the floor – what little floor space she _has_ , amidst discarded books and clothes and toys that have clearly taken a tumble from her shelves – whilst I stride over to see her desk more closely, resting my hand on the back of her chair as my eyes flit over her array of colourful pictures abandoned all across the surface, as well as tacked most of the way up the wall over her study space.

Marco mentioned before that she likes to draw – but I figured he meant like any little kid enjoys scribbling with a pencil before they realise whether they’re good or bad or not.

Mina is good. I mean, _for a ten year old_ – but hell, when I was ten, I wasn’t even close to being this good. I was still drawing stick figures and ten-legged animals.

I brush aside some of the sheets of paper to pull out a pencil drawing from the pile that catches my eye. The colouring is a little thick and clunky, but she’s unmistakably drawn her house as seen from the front lawn, the proportions immaculate and the perspectives enviable. I recognise the large windows, framed by colourful, unruly plant boxes, and all the flowers in the flower bed that need pruning, and the doors of the wooden garage peeling away from their hinges – and even Mina’s red bicycle, still laying in the grass, as I guess it has been all summer, judging by how the brown-yellow grass has grown around its spokes. I feel my eyebrows rise into my hairline, and I turn back towards Mina, with the piece of paper still in my hand.

“You drew these?” I ask dumbly, as if the answer isn’t entirely obvious. “I, _uh_. I mean, uh, these are really _good_ , y’know. You’re good.”

Mina blinks up at me from where she’s pulling her duvet off her bed to build a nest with the cushions on the floor. She doesn’t seem particularly fussed about me looking at her stuff, and she barely gives me the time of day before crawling over to her bed, and extracting a sketchpad and a pencil case from the dark depths underneath it.

( _Well, I guess that’s a habit we share_ , I muse.)

“Yeah,” she shrugs coolly, gesturing for me to hand her the drawing. I do as instructed, and she lays the piece of paper down on top her sketchbook, flattening out the dog-eared corners with her fingers. “… Thanks.”

She unzips her pencil case without saying anything, and flops down onto her front in her pile of cushions and blankets, immediately getting to work with her coloured pencils to work more on the red-brown colour of the roof. I stand awkwardly for a minute or two in the middle of her room, watching how she scribbles with uniform messiness, before figuring how uncomfortable I must look to her, my shoulders hunched and my hands deep in my pockets.

“You, uh … you mind if I join you?” I ask tentatively, slowly kneeling down across from her. She looks up at me sceptically, but shrugs. I chew on my lip as I slip off my suit jacket and toss it onto the post of her bed, before settling myself down onto my front, mimicking her posture on the floor. “And, uh … can I borrow a pencil?”

She huffs lightly and sets her own pencil down on her drawing, turning to rummage through her selection and hand me one that’s slightly chewed. As I inspect it, she rips out a sheet of blank paper from her book and slides it my way as well, before offering me a cushion too.

“Thanks,” I murmur, propping the cushion under my chest to give me a little bit of leverage. Mina says nothing, diving back into her drawing, and swapping her colouring for a regular lead pencil, beginning to add figures to the foreground of the scene she’s creating. I swallow thickly and frown down at my blank sheet, before pressing the lead against the paper. It’s softer than I’m used to, and the heel of my hand smudges the graphite when I sweep my lines across the page, smearing particulated grey onto my shirt cuff. I bite the inside of my cheek, and adjust my finger on the pencil, trying to keep my wrist away from the page as I let the lines of lead from my fingertips do what they want to do and drift where they want to drift.

It’s easy to see that Mina’s drawing her family, and it stings a little inside my chest to see the absence of her father there, in the three people that she draws: one woman, one boy, and one small girl – _her_ – holding hands with both of them. She stipples freckles onto the faces of the girl and the boy, and she gives me a run for my money in drawing Marco – the smile she gives him would melt hearts, I can tell you that much. (I bite back the thought of telling her how much she’s captured the likeness of his dazzling grin.)

My eyes keep flicking over to her paper, absorbed more in how she’s coming along, and what clothes she’s giving her family members, and what expressions they’re all wearing, than in my own doodles – but at the end of the day, they all come out looking like Marco too.

It’s not like it’s a surprise. Drawing Marco comes as easily as breathing these days, even if it has been a good few weeks since I last picked up a pencil. The parting of his hair, the arch of his eyebrows, the happy creases around his eyes and lips, his freckles …

I’m dotting away at his cheeks when I realise Mina has set down her pencil and is watching me warily. I glance up at her openly, and still the stipple of my lead across the page, tipping my pencil towards her candidly to attract her attention away from squinting at my doodles. It doesn’t work so well, and her eyes stay trained on my paper for a moment longer as she muses over words she seems to be unsure of how to ask.

“You … _you’re_ the one who drew the pictures in Marco’s room,” she says accusatorily, narrowing her eyes. I feel strangely guilty for something I’m not sure I’m ashamed of.

“I … I dunno,” I reply, “Maybe. I’ve, uh … never been to Marco’s room.”

She makes a gruff noise and hops to her feet, still a flurry of black skirts and petticoats, and leaps over my legs to get to the door; I hear her thunder up the stairs, and then the creak of floorboards above my head. It takes barely seconds before she’s clomping back down the stairs, and peering over my shoulder at her, I see she has a few sheets of stiff paper clamped in her hands.

She nudges the door closed behind her with her shoulder, her eyes intent on looking at whatever it is she holds in her hands – though I can take a good guess at what drawings she’s referring to – and clambers back over my feet to lay down on the floor again.

“These ones,” she says, sliding them across the carpet to me, face-up, and positioning them against my page of doodles so that she can compare how the eyes match and how the smiles _definitely_ match. Her eyes flit between the sleeves of paper, matching the curves of the lines and the pressure of my penmanship in each, even counting the footprints of four freckles that make a track across the bridge of Marco’s nose, something I know for a fact I was careful not to miss when I first drew these. (Nowadays, I don’t have to think about it. I draw those freckles automatically, as if they’re just as vital to his expression as giving him a nose, or two eyes.)  

“Huh,” I murmur, tugging the top sheet closer to me for a better look. “I haven’t seen these in a real long time.”

Since the beginning of June, actually. Since I packed them up in a brown paper envelope and gave them to Marco after we got back from our first trip to the outlook.

And I’d told him not to open them in front of me, but he’d still peaked at them whilst his van was parked on the other side of the hedge. I remember. The thought makes my throat feel a little tight, and I find myself running a hand over my mouth, feeling a touch _embarrassed_ , if I’m honest.

They look so rough compared to what I’m drawing now, even if what I have in front of me are little more than meaningless scribbles of his face from different versions of a three-quarter angle, most smudged into the paper with the clumsiness of my hand with a foreign pencil. But they feel more real, more honest, more truthful to who he is as a person, when you compare the ease of the smile in both drawings, separated in time by only three months. Three months ago, I didn’t know the _real_ him. And I think it shows.

“Marco never said it was you who drew them,” Mina says quietly, something distinguishably different in her tone of voice. (Dare I suggest that it’s some new found admiration, I don’t know – but it’s _something_.) She pushes her sketchpad to the side and sits up, crossing her legs underneath herself and leaning forward attentively. “Draw _me_.”

“Draw _you_?” I chuckle lightly, twiddling my pencil between my thumb and forefinger. She nods furiously and sits up straighter, lifting her chin towards the ceiling and remaining very still. I stifle my laugh as a snigger. “I can draw you as you work, y’know. You don’t have to sit still if you don’t want to.”

Mina pouts, but it’s the most normal expression I’ve seen her wear today, unfiltered by whatever web it is that has been strung up and looped around every corner of her thoughts and feelings, sticky and sinuous. For a moment, I see _her_ – the person that I know, who crunches _Spongebob’s_ eyeballs between her teeth mercilessly, and teases me unrelentingly about my hair. I see a kid.

She rearranges her duvet into a mound and flops forward on it, and then struggles to pull her scrunchie out of her hair, letting her tangled mane fall limply onto her shoulders. She picks up her pencil and looks at me pensively – I nod.

We both settle down into drawing, and whilst I notice her movements stiff and self-aware to start with, still conscious of keeping her chin tilted up and making sure I can see what she is clearly deeming her _best angle_ , she eventually settles into what she’s creating, lost once more to lines on the page. I chuckle breathily to myself and shake my head, returning to sketching out the constantly-moving lines of her wild, messy hair.

It’s amazing what an hour or so with a sketchpad does to her mood – and mine too, I figure. Her effortless hatches make me think that the scribbles she makes with her 2B pencil are going to save her years of worry lines in the future, as if the wrinkles and dark lines she makes on the page are the ones that would’ve one day appeared on her face had she not picked up a pencil, and I watch as the wear seems to erase from her expression, leaving her baby-faced and clear-skinned, her tongue poking out from the corner of her mouth in concentration.

She’s like me, in that sense. Drawing can be an escape. It’s the thought that all those sheets in the pad, the one hundred pieces of paper that she leans on, the clean block of dimensionless planes, represent simply all the _possible_ drawings, paintings, sketches, scribbles, all of the questions and their answers, all of the problems that could be solved in that space – and that in its essence is therapeutic. Drawing can take you anywhere – it can be any _thing_. Whatever it is that you need it to be. I feel that.

She works hard on capturing the likeness of her family members, pondering over which colours in her armada of crayons match their skin tone, and then blending the colours onto the page with tightrope delicacy, as if one footstep over the graphite boundary line would truly be as bad as a plummet towards the floor below.

I find, as _I_ draw, that Mina and Marco share a lot of similarities – their eyes, for starters, are much the same, as if they’ve been copy-pasted from one to another, colour and all – but the closer I study Mina’s face, the more differences I find too. Her face is thin and angular, but not because of what she’s gained from her father, which Marco definitely inherited. The leanness in her portrait is more because of her age, I decide, because I see softness in her cheeks, and a smooth slope in her button nose, undoubtedly borrowed from her mother. I imagine she’ll look like Anita a lot when she’s older.

It’s tricky at first, trying to find the right balance, because I’ve grown so used to drawing her brother – the first few doodles I attempt look far too much like I’ve based her off him, and that’s far from the truth.

Clearing Marco from my head is a tall order, but I think I can just about clear him from my _hands_ , and I force myself into a blank slate when I start again, divvying up Mina’s face into smooth lines and curves, distancing myself from who it is I’m drawing, until I have the outlines of something better and something truthful.

I start afresh every time she shifts noticeably, moving my pencil across the page before I’ve even finished a line or given her all her facial features, but it means I manage to capture some sort of life on the page, as if each portrait reflects one facet of an unpolished gemstone, which reflects your expression back slightly differently depending on which angle you might look at it, or which angle light might scatter throughout it into a myriad of spectral colours.

Mina has a lot of colours – and they’re not just because of the different shades of light, dyed by the fabric of her curtains, that sprinkle her face or her clothes. At some angles, she looks older – as if the shadows in the hollows of her cheeks become darker, and her concentrating frown becomes more severe with the furrow of her eyebrows. I would call that colour brown, or a deep purple maybe – something that reminds me of bulbous weight or shadow or fatigue. A colour that feels tired and well-worn. At other angles, the sunlight catches her eyes, and makes them glimmer – reminding me of Marco in how they dapple with flaxen yellows – and she is young again. Those are the oranges and yellows, and sprightly greens – things with life, and things that grow, as if no roof has been given them. Particularly not a church roof.

She flicks between the two a lot, and I’m not sure if it’s a trick of the light, or her herself – and if it _is_ her, and it’s a battlefield in her expression that I’m watching, I find myself wondering which side of the line does a blood-red colour fall.

I try to pretend that I don’t notice when she peeks up and cranes her head to look at my progress; I keep my eyes focussed on the page, and ignore the surge of pride in my chest when I think she might be biting back a pleased sort of smile at her own eyes looking back at her.

I don’t know exactly how long we lie on the floor for, but it’s long enough for my phone to start digging into my thigh uncomfortably through my pants’ pocket, and for me to have to request a few more sheets of paper ripped out from her sketchbook.

The light through her bedroom window is gold by the time we hear the thrum of many engines pulling up at the front of the house, followed shortly after by the clatter of the front door, and lots of voices enter the house. I expect for Mina to call it a day and greet them, but she doesn’t budge, only bowing her head and diving deeper into what she’s drawing, her shoulders tense when I hear footsteps outside her bedroom door – but they pass, like all the rest that go back and forth, along with polite conversation and the clutter of plates and glasses being set down in other rooms. Mina sighs deeply, but says nothing. She doesn’t have to. What goes unspoken between us is just as loud as what sneaks into our solitude from the hallway.

I hear Anita and Marco a few times beyond the door, caught up in condolences passed from other members of their family, or friends of Marco’s father, and it makes me wonder just how many times you can listen to someone tell you that they’re _sorry_ before it loses all its apologetic meaning and sympathy, and just becomes another word as you’re swept up by the ocean like a seashell, to be buffeted by the waves until your edges and your contours lose all definition.

I wonder if it makes it harder to close the doors that might need closing by now, or if it makes it harder to find strength to move on.

But then again, it’s a memorial – you’re _supposed_ to be remembering the deceased, aren’t you? I don’t know if I like that idea or not. Having to have the same conversation over and over again must open up so many wounds. I would rather just go home and dive into bed, and not have to think about it all, if I were in their position. I wouldn’t have the patience to host guests as they traipse in and out of the house, offering meaningless words and a symphony of “call us if you need anything”.

I don’t think they could ever provide the things that are _needed_.

The smell of cooking food drifts in from under the crack in Mina’s door, wafting around the corner from the kitchen, where I hear voices through the wall, louder than those interspersed throughout the rest of the house. I’m kinda glad I managed to escape when we did, because the thought of having to make polite conversation with all these people I’ve never met and have little in common with, makes me twitch. Mina must be the same. I reckon she and I are _both_ glad that no-one tries to come looking for her and see how she’s faring.

I hear Anita outside the door again, roped into hushed conversation with someone I don’t know, and I think nothing of it, trying to block out my ears to how strained she might sound when she has to accept even more condolences.

Mina is evidently listening, and trying to forget about it too, and I stop drawing when I notice how her fingers tense around her pencil when the person talking to Anita asks a question.

“And how are the kids coping? Your poor little girl must be taking this so _hard_.”

Listening to someone talk about you when you’re in earshot is never great, even on the best of days. And this is far, _far_ from the best of days.

I look over at Mina; she sucks her bottom lip into her mouth and bites down on it hard, blinking heavily as if she’s trying to dry her eyes from betraying salt water. Her jaw tenses and she sniffs loudly, and it’s _unmistakable_ that she’s searching for the armour her brother wears so proudly, yet finding none that fits her. It’s all rusted. I imagine the smell of orange-iron in the air.

“She’s … she’s withdrawn a lot,” I hear Anita sigh wistfully, “I’m worried that she’s trying to cover up how she feels, and— you know how kids are at that age. She wants to be normal, but she’s been having a lot of bad dreams, and … c-crying at night. Getting her to settle is hard. I’m worried about her for when she has to back to school next week, if I’m honest—”

I don’t want to hear the rest of what has to be said, because I doubt it helps Mina when she knows I’m listening too, and am aware of all the cracks in the metal plates she tries to hold up against herself, to protect and hide her damaged heart. It’s not like I can hide the contortion in my face, and my throat and chest feel tight. I don’t want her to feel ashamed.

 _I would cry at night too_ , I think. It’s hard to escape that sort of night-time honesty with yourself – even if you might only be ten years old and the whole grand scheme of things seems damn confusing – because when you’re lying under the duvet at night, alone with your thoughts, you are acutely aware of who you are and what you are.

For her, that’s _fatherless_ , now. I would cry too.

But I don’t tell her that, because I doubt it would make it better, or lessen the attrition in her expression and the intensity of her scowl. I doubt it would smith her any sort of armour.

Instead, I lay my pencil down, brush the eraser shavings from my page, and push my drawings of her across the gap between us.

“What d’ya think?” I ask plainly, nudging them closer to her, and then grabbing the ones of Marco, stolen from his room, and aligning them side by side for comparison.

Mina sniffles, and wipes the back of her hand across her nose as she leans in closer to inspect what I’ve done. I hope it’s a good enough distraction. The voices from beyond her door seem to have died away as it is.

She doesn’t say anything for a while, her eyes roaming across the paper as she chews thoughtfully on her lip. Her eyes look less wet; less threatening with tears. Good.

What she eventually chooses to say, however, is not exactly what I expect. It throws me a little.

“Are you … are you going to be around a lot now?”

“M-maybe?” I garble, shrugging my shoulders awkwardly. _Hopefully_ , is the answer inside my head. _I hope to be around a lot now. If Marco will have me. If Marco wants to be my—_

“Why … why do you ask?” I stutter, forcing myself to try and catch her eye. Mina avoids my gaze, and shrugs it off, sliding my drawings back to me carefully. “Would you— do you want … _that_?”

“I dunno,” she says curtly, “Doesn’t matter.”

The conversation ends there as she buries her head back into her picture, swapping out her colours once more for another pencil, starting on the outlines of someone else next to the Marco figure in her drawing.

I’m not exactly stupid, and I realise quickly that it’s not her father she’s drawing – not some tragic eulogy or some morbid ghost – the stick-like figure is far too twiggy to be him. But I don’t get my hopes up, even when she begins to dress the man in a baggy t-shirt and drainpipe jeans, decorating his wrists with spikey bracelets. (I’m not sure if I‘ve ever own spikey bracelets, but that’s not the point.)

She draws the man holding hands with her brother, and it makes me _think_. About Marco and I. Stumbling around each other in a giddy mess is great and all – ( _debatable_ ) – but there’s more than just figuring out what each lurch of my heart means when it comes to him.

I think it’s a far harder mountain to climb when you’re thinking about how to tell your mother or your father or _whoever_ , that you’re stupidly and desperately in love with the boy who cleans your pool.

But maybe little sisters are different.

_I wonder how she would feel if I told her about me and Marco? Would that be okay?_

“H-hey,” I start, my voice a little squeaky. I swallow thickly and clear my throat, before trying again. “Hey, uh, I was just … just wondering, but, uh – has Marco ever brought a _girlfriend_ home or anything?”

Mina’s head snaps up, and she squints at me.

“Marco likes _boys_ ,” she says bluntly. I recoil as if I’ve just been flicked squarely between the eyes.

“O-oh,” I stammer, running nervous fingers through my hair, and dragging it up on end. “I mean, uh, _yeah_. I knew that.” I gulp, and continue carefully. “Has, uh – has he ever brought a b-boyfriend home, then?”

Mina huffs a little, and lies her pencil down beside her drawing, brushing off the graphite dust from the paper, before looking up at me more pointedly, realising that I’m stumbling over what is meant to be a serious conversation.  I should give her more credit.

“No,” she says, “Marco doesn’t go on dates because he’s too busy with his jobs.”

That’s barely surprising. He didn’t think he had the time for school – which I _know_ how important it was to him – so why would he have prioritised something like _seeing someone_ over looking out for his family.

Not that it should’ve stopped people from keeling over at his feet – I mean, have you seen him, he’s—

Well, he’s gorgeous. More than that. Like sunshine on the tip of my tongue whilst the ocean beats at my back. He doesn’t let me forget, but he makes me warm enough that I don’t feel like I ever need to – all whilst he’s battling the rainwater that drips through the gaps of twining leaves as stolen kisses or starry smiles. You know how it is – _as golden as they come_.

And maybe I want to be the one – _the only one_ – to tell him that.

“And, uh, how would you feel if, uh—” I wince. “If Marco, maybe … started dating someone _now_?”

Mina scrunches up her lips into a pucker and thinks quietly for a moment. I feel my heartbeat clammer in my ears, matching the thought of those raindrops beating against a forest floor.

“I think that would be … okay,” she says slowly, “If they made Marco happy, I think it would be good.”

“ _G-good_ ,” I reiterate softly, sounding out the word in my head a few times more. Good. _Good_. I think it could be more than just good. That thought gives me some sort of crystalline courage. “A-and, uh, how would you feel if … if Marco wanted to, uh … date … _me_?”

Mina straight up _deadpans_ me. One of her eyebrows twitches, and I feel like all the blood in my body rockets towards my feet and _good_ becomes a shrivelling feeling that tells me that I shouldn’t have said that; I shouldn’t have said that so soon.

_S-shit, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea—_

“You’re not _so_ bad, I guess,” she snarks, and I choke, coughing into my fist a few times, and then pounding on my sternum to remind myself how to breathe.

“N-not … so bad?” I mimic weakly, causing Mina to roll her eyes dramatically. She is _not_ impressed by what a disaster I am, pressing her mouth into a flat line.

“So … _are you_ Marco’s boyfriend now, or not?” she says frankly, pushing herself upright on her arms to match eye-level with me. For an almost-ten-year-old, she has mastered a _seriously_ good integratory glare, and I can barely force myself to look her in the eye, feeling like I might break out into sweats at any second. Hell, it’s probably too-fucking-late for that _already_.

“I … I don’t exactly … _know_?” I squeak out, embarrassingly. It earns a scowl. _Ouch_.

“What do you mean you don’t _know_?” Mina admonishes, sitting up properly now, and folding her arms crossly across her chest. “He’s either asked you to be his boyfriend or he hasn’t. Which one is it?”

“W-well, uh … I guess, not in so many words, but mayb—”

“So that means you’re _not_ his boyfriend,” Mina concludes, before I’ve even finished reasoning with myself over whether the kisses I’ve shared with Marco are excuse enough to call this a relationship or not. I wish I knew. I have nothing to compare it to – I don’t know how this _boyfriend thing_ works. “But you _want_ to be his boyfriend, right?”

I can’t believe I’m getting love counselling from a _grade schooler_.

I grit my teeth and swallow forcibly the lump in my throat, rubbing my hands across my face with a creaking groan directed at myself.

“Y-yeah,” I admit shyly, “Yeah, I really do.”

Mina hums to herself and scrabbles out of her nest of pillows and blankets, crawling over to her bed. She reaches blindly underneath it, feeling around for something until I hear her clunk against something plastic and she lets slip a soft, “aha!”

She drags out a pile of DVDs, all brightly-coloured plastic and emboldened with bright titles, and I’m sure not the usual stuff I choose to watch in my spare time. She slides the stack towards me, and I grab the first DVD from the top.

“ _Tangled_?” I question warily, flipping the cover over in my hands to look at the synopsis. The rest of the DVDs in her selection are also Disney sugar-fests. “I, uh … haven’t seen it.”

“Yup,” she says happily, “That’s Marco’s _favourite_ when we watch Disney movies. He always gushes over Flynn Rider, and then mom laughs at him because can’t _marry a TV character_. You should watch it and like … take notes. Then _you_ can ask him out!”

I squint down at the cover of the film in my hand, and at the CGI prince on the front, with his perfectly coifed brown hair, wielding a frying pan. I grit my teeth and frown.

_So this is my rival, huh? ‘Spose I should be glad that he’s fictional._

“Maybe you should take a few of them, actually,” Mina muses, picking out a few more DVDs and shoving them unceremoniously into my hands: _Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Princess and the … Frog_? I’ve not even heard of that last one. I don’t want to be taking notes from a talking frog about how to woo Marco. (But that’s the impression I’m getting.) “You’re going to need all the help you can get.”

“O-ouch, kid,” I quip, grimacing as she picks out one last film and shoves it into my hands, causing me to drop the rest. “That stings.”

“It’s the only way,” she says determinedly, nose in the air. “Do you _want_ to be his boyfriend or not?”

I grumble to myself, stacking up my designated watching into a neat pile beside me, feeling Mina glaring at me all the while. When she’s happy that she’s got her way, and I just about settle down onto my front again, sure that I’ve been grilled _enough_ for one day, she continues.

“My mom will be happy, you know. If you ask Marco to be your boyfriend.”

_If steam could come out my ears—_

“W-what?!” I wheeze dramatically. Mina rolls her eyes.

“Mom will be _happy_ ,” she spells out again, stressing each word. “She’s always pestering Marco about it. They try not to talk about it around me, but they whisper really _loudly_ , so I hear them anyway, even when they shut the kitchen door on me.”

I groan loudly, rubbing my hand down my face again, feeling how my cheeks are burning.

“Your mom … _knows_?” I croak. “A-about—?”

“Uh-huh. Whenever Marco comes home from your house, she’s always like—” Mina sits up straight and mimes pulling spectacles down onto her nose, attempting to mimic her mom’s voice. “—“ _Marco, have you asked that boy out yet? He won’t wait around forever, blah blah blah_ ,” but like, I don’t understand, because I don’t think you’re _that_ great—”

“Thanks, sport,” I mumble weakly, letting my head flop and rest face-down on the floor, and I stare hard at the weave in the carpet as I hear Mina snort exasperatedly. I squeeze my eyes shut and groan feebly again, my ears tingling with the blaring heat in my face. 

We both start when there’s a soft knock on the door, and the door handle creaks as it’s turned. Mina stiffens, her teasing expression dissolving in a moment, but the redness in my face just seems to flare up hotter.

It doesn’t help _at all_ that it’s Marco who pokes his head around the door, with a gentle, subdued smile that skewers me straight through the heart.

“So, _this_ is where you two have been hiding,” he smiles, slipping through the gap and pressing it quietly closed behind him. I only manage a fleeting glance over my shoulder at him, more concerned in keeping my fiercely blushing face hidden in my arms. “I was _wondering_ where you vanished to.”

“Jean’s been drawing me!” Mina chirps, and at least _she’s_ able to change her tune. She swipes my sketches out from underneath my nose and holds them up to Marco as he approaches, and I feel like squirming.

“Really?” Marco says keenly, stepping carefully over my legs and then dropping onto his knees next to me. He holds out one hand to receive the sketches from his sister, but his other hand grazes breezily up my back, making me shiver. I keep my head buried in the graphite-laden paper under my nose, even when his fingers brush against the nape of my neck. _Does he even know what he’s—_ “Oh, aren’t these great? They look just like you! Have you been drawing anything? I’m sure they’re _just_ as amazing.” I hear the rustle of Mina scrabbling for her own drawings and glance up to see her nodding eagerly. I hear Marco’s smile in his tone, painting his words sunny and precious. “Can I see them?”

Mina puffs out her chest proudly and grins when she hands Marco what she’s been working hard on – Marco makes a delighted noise and gushes over her drawing, and even though his voice sounds hoarse and tired, he is nothing less than genuine, praising his sister until he has her giggling.

I sneak a peek up at Marco, watching him sideways from the safety of my folded arms as he pours over his sister’s artwork, holding it up in one hand to the stream of late afternoon sunlight through her window, so that all the colours on the page seem to bleed saturation.

His fingers don’t leave the back of my neck, fiddling with the finer hairs of my undercut. It shouldn’t make my insides spark like they do – not now, not after we’ve got past all the stupid _pining_ – but it does, and it’s like God damn Roman candles _crackling_ beneath my skin, all flares of yellow and red-hot gold.

I bite back the _hum_ that tries to sneak its way through my tightly clamped lips, clinging onto the last shreds of my dignity, and not wanting to give Mina any more reasons to mercilessly tease me and go report to her mother how I act when I’m around Marco.

_How I act when I’m around Marco._

He gives me fucking _palpitations_ , that’s what.

Gruffly, I grab for my pencil and tug another sheet of blank paper in front of me, and start scratching out lines with probably more force that necessary, threatening to rip and wrinkle the paper with each strike of lead I make. My scratching attracts Marco’s attention, and he gently lowers Mina’s drawing onto his lap – I feel his eyes on me, but I don’t dare to search for them. I know I’m already burning up a fucking _fever_.

“Do you mind if I join you two?” Marco asks kindly, directed mainly at his sister, but his fingers still tremble momentarily in my hair. “I think I’ve used up _all_ my energy trying to talk to grandma.”

“You can’t even _draw_ ,” Mina huffs, as if that’s the deciding factor as to whether her brother is allowed to stay in her room. But I feel her scowl fall on me, even with my head ducked as I scrawl away, hoping to hide the pervasive redness in my cheeks. She seems to make up her mind. “Ugh, _fine_. You can stay, I _suppose_.”

Marco chuckles breathily and Mina rolls her eyes, shaking her head tiresomely as she takes her drawing back from her brother, and smoothes it out on the floor again to finish. Marco shifts beside me, and I lose his touch as he slides off his knees and rolls himself over onto his front, lying down on the floor beside me. He lays flat, resting his head in his arms at such an angle that he can watch me as I draw; his gaze is fond, and maybe his cheeks are just a little flushed pink by the sunset.

His shoulder is squished right up against mine, and his hip against my hip too, and I can tell that the pressure – the need for contact – has tumbled just over the edge of being normal. He needs it. He wants it.

Gingerly, and hoping not to attract attention, I twine my socked-foot with his, tangling my legs with his without looking up from my doodles. I hear him sigh quietly, but it’s far from wistful or sorrowful.

My strokes on my paper are still too heavy, and I snap the lead of my pencil twice under the soft intensity of his tender stare. I hear him breeze over an airy chuckle, the low sounds tickling raspingly in his throat as he offers me the sharpener from Mina’s pencil case both times without saying a word. I glower at him, wrinkling my nose as I scatter flaky peelings of my pencil all over my work, and he buffs me gently in the shoulder with his, rocking us both.

I quirk an eyebrow, nudging him back as I snatch him a spare pen, and scoot some fresh paper under his nose.

He looks at me quizzically when I manhandle the pen into his hands, my fingers brushing roughly against his.

“You gotta draw if you want to be in this crew,” I mumble, surprised that I manage to spit out any words at all, considering the tightness of my throat and the erratic, rhythmless drumbeat of my tittering heart. My ears buzz with white-noise brought on by too much blood rushing to my face, and I feel a little light-headed.

I determinedly reach out and wrap his fingers tighter around the pen I’ve given him, but I figure the way I shiver when I touch him more tenderly on the backs of his knuckles gives me away. He smiles bashfully, and ducks his gaze with an expulsion of air pressed through his lips as he nibbles on them candidly, branding his lower lip with the pretty, red marks of his teeth.

I turn back to sketching, feeling more flustered that I already did, and the coil of spring-loaded tension is my gut just begging to bounce back hard against my ribcage at any moment. From the corner of my eye, I see Marco click the nib of his pen and begin doodling, his clumsy markings on the page incoherent and messy.

He draws these ghastly little caricatures of cats or dogs – or _some_ sort of animal with bug eyes, I can’t exactly tell – and after I’ve seen him draw a few of them in a row in the centre of his paper, I reach over with my pencil and add angry eyebrows to all of them. Marco scoffs, and draws another beyond my reach, making sure to give it eyebrows that make it look tremendously sad.

I snort, causing Mina to look up and glare at the pair of us disapprovingly. I wince apologetically, leaving myself open to Marco stealing my hand and plucking my pencil out of my fingers. He lays my fingers flat on his piece of paper and presses the nib of his pen to my skin, cold at first, swirling ink up and over my knuckles.

I glance over at him questioningly, but he stays focussed on the mess he’s making of the back of my hand, his tongue peeking through his lips in concentration – a habit, I guess, that he and his sister share.

I blush when his nimble fingers fiddle with the button on my shirt cuff, undoing my sleeve and pushing it up my arm, bunching it at my forearm. Marco stills for a second, and – and it’s just my arm, it’s not like it’s … like it’s _anything else_ , y’know – but it would be a disservice to him to say he didn’t worship every square inch of my bare skin. I don’t know if _embarrassing_ is the right word to use, but it makes me feel warm, and makes my breathing a little but more laboured when he fingers gloss against my wrist, and then wrap firmly around my arm to hold it still against the carpet as he draws across my white, prickling skin. 

I know he remembers the last time this happened – save it was me with the marker pen, connecting his freckles in the dark. He told me that it felt good; that he liked that sort of intimacy.

Well, the feeling is mutual, believe me. There are some pretty warm _feelings_ twitching in my abdomen, telling me that him drawing on my skin is a tad more than just me _liking it_.

I have few freckles to speak of, but Marco finds the three or four that I do have on my arm, connecting them together clumsily, forming a wonky parallelogram on my skin. My mouth feels dry, and I tell myself not to throw myself in the deep end by looking at his lips.

 _Later. Not now – it isn’t fair. Later_.

(You _know_ that I look anyway. They’re parted softly in concentration. I just about manage to suffocate the pained sort of noise that gurgles in my throat. _Control, Jean. Learn some_.)

“I’m gonna get ink poisoning if you keep drawing on me like that,” I whisper raspingly, as Marco continues to create spirals and concentric circles on my forearm. The faint trace of the nib of the pen is like a pleasant itch I can’t scratch, and it makes every follicle in my skin prickle to attention. Marco hums softly, but doesn’t stop drawing, gently nudging my arm over to expose the veins at my wrist. He inks little stars there, the sort you draw when you’re six years old, with five points all different sized and wobbly – but I still have to stifle the sharpness of the breath I suck in when the nib tickles against the blood that rushes to my fingers in that moment, the base of my palm tingling when the pen strays towards the fortune lines that score my hand. I wonder which line that stretches the span of my palm tells the story of this – me twitching like I’m being electrocuted every time Marco touches me sparingly. I wonder if each break in the line reflects the moments when I’m more than _positive_ my heart stops for longer than the beat it flounders over when my nerves burn haywire.  

“You can’t get ink poisoning like that,” Mina bemoans, making me practically _jump_ out of my fucking _skin_. “Marco said that was a lie!”

Marco laughs warmly and affectionately, but he sets the pen down on his paper, relinquishing ownership of my hand. I curl my fingers into my palm and squeeze my fist tightly, watching how the tension in the arm makes the doodles contort and stretch.

“Very true,” Marco chuckles lightly, brushing his fingers over my whitening knuckles. I unfurl my fingers at his touch, presenting him with my palm curiously; he smiles softly to himself and traces his pinkie finger over the grooves and creases in my palm print, before linking his finger with my thumb. “Very true.”

I make the mistake of glancing cagily up at Mina, on edge over Marco touching me unreservedly, and her watching it all, but all I’m greeted with is raised eyebrows and unimpressed expression, boasting a face that says: _and you’re waiting for what, exactly_? _You’re acting so gooey that I’m gonna be sick_.

Judging by the way my stomach turns, I think I might beat her to it.

I manage to pry my hand away from Marco’s roaming touches eventually, stealing back my pencil and diving back into drawing. He settles down again, lying flat on the floor with his head cradled on the pillow he wriggles out from underneath my chest, watching me warmly as he knows that it’s him I end up sketching. He starts with a smile, small and natural, as if he’s not even aware of it there, but it fades as the minutes pass and his mind begins to drift away and beyond the closed door of his sister’s bedroom, to the things he’s escaped from the other side.

When his eyes seem to gloss over, and he wonders just a little too far, I shift my foot that’s tangled in his legs, rubbing my toes up and down his calf until he slips back into reality with a beam that seems more apologetic than anything.

The atmosphere in the room is gentle and quiet, if a little sombre. Sombre, because I know that the scowl Mina draws with is her escape, and the soft sighs that sift periodically from Marco’s lips are him wanting for _more_ of an escape.

The late afternoon wears on into early evening, the gold light of the dousing sun growing fainter – more orange first, and then bluer, bathing into dozy lilacs and sleepy purples that bruise the sky, and the shadows in Mina’s room become hazier, the lines of dark contrast beneath her brightly coloured furniture less defined against the carpet soaked in the light of a sunset.

I’m not sure if Marco falls asleep, but he at least lets his eyes rest, his head lolling all the way forward into his folded arms. His cheek smooshes against his forearm, and every so often I catch a twitch or a flutter in his eyelids on the peripheral of my vision that reminds me of the feathery wings of a little bird-boy who needs to soar away into that sunset sky and forget about the chaos that he leaves behind in his home. I let him sleep, because I imagine that bird flying high over blue glass seas and towards skies of diamond light, and I figure letting him dream about swooping towards the stars blooming beyond the window like flowers, for a little while longer, saves him the heartache of having the relive the Icarus tale of thundering towards the earth with a dawning reality. It can’t be about saving him – not when you know the outcome of wax wings in front of the sun – but maybe I can protect him by letting him sleep. I lift my pencil from the page, and use it to flick some of the hair the falls across his brow away from his forehead, even if it just slides back across his sun-kissed skin moments later. I find myself smiling gently, and I know it saturates whatever feathery, downy feeling clogs the arteries leading away from my heart, forcing the blood in my body to pool in the centre-right of my chest.

And, by letting him sleep, it means Mina and I can keep on drawing, undeterred.

(I can look out for both of them at once.)

The extra figure she’s added to the drawing of her family in front of her house is unquestionable now. It’s me. I could recognise her attempt at the logo of my _Ramones_ shirt anywhere. She colours diligently, frowning at the two-tones of my hair, but I’m more interested in the way the stick-figure-me has his hand firmly clasped with Marco’s, and a broad, lop-sided smile on his face. But I don’t mention it.

The commotion in the house fades out with the sun, and I hear the front door open and close more than a few times, accompanied by hushed farewells and the hum of engines pulling away from the curb out front.

Anita pads around the house – I hear her footsteps pass by the door, back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, and the clatter of pots and pans and a whistling kettle through the wall of Mina’s bedroom.

I wonder if I should offer help; if I should steal away whilst Marco’s head nods and he catches a few of the winks I’m sure he desperately needs; if I should take the opportunity to grab Anita by herself and apologise for not doing better when she asked it of me.

I shuffle upright, hauling myself up on my arms, and Marco stirs beside me, murmuring something I don’t quite make out as he cracks open an eye to look up at me blearily. He reaches out to pinch the untucked tails of my shirt and tugs weakly on the white cotton.

“Are you going?” he asks quietly. I frown.

“No,” I say delicately, “Not yet.”

He settles with a soft puff of breath, and his fingers brush against my hip before he lets his arm drop to the floor, hitting the carpet with a dull thump – but it isn’t a lament in his eyes that makes his expression seem sad. He’s not _sad_ that I’m staying, I don’t think. There are other reasons for why he looks rueful, and maybe the principal one is that he still thinks I mistake pity for compassion. He is wrong. I do not pity him. I am not _pitying_ him by staying here. Not when I reckon that I’m still wanted.

I sit back on my heels and press my palms flat against my thighs, searching his body language for a confirmation of what I believe, and a baptism for myself; he tilts his head and rests his ear and cheek against his folded arms, watching me lazily as I squint and wonder if he thinks I would see him differently if I were to pity him.

It’s a question posed to myself that I don’t know how to answer, but maybe that truthfulness in itself is what tells me that I’m allowed the reach out and rub my hand over his shoulder, yielding my fingers into the tense muscle in his back until he relinquishes a sigh and his lips twitch up at me, if sadly.

It’s easy to forget about anyone else in the room, and in that moment when my fingers curl a little tighter into the folds of his shirt, and nightfall spirals across the carpet like rushes of waterfall colour, I almost duck my head down to seek his lips. I feel myself shift towards his gravity as he balances on a breath, but I don’t quite make the journey.

Both of us turn our heads when Mina’s door creaks open with a sweeping sound across the floor. I peel away on a trajectory that has me rocking back on my heels again, sucking in a caught breath, as Marco blinks away a starry stupor and drags himself upright when his mom peers around the doorframe.

Her smile is the same as Marco’s – that’s what I notice first. It’s broad and it’s welcoming, cheerful to an extent, but tartly solemn, as if spindled with all sort of hairline cracks that might shatter and fragment with just a touch or a misplaced word. It tastes like biting into a lemon – because it’s sweet at first, but then it makes your cheeks pucker when you realise that’s a smile that reflects a taste you do not want stinging your tongue and making your eyes prick with water.

Maybe it’s the sort of façade that’s worked for all _three_ of them, with everyone else who might come and go in their lives, and maybe it worked on me once upon a time, when I was too blind to see past the allusion of sunny happiness – but I recognise it now and the wool can no longer be pulled over my eyes.

I put it down to how well I know Marco – and how well I can read him. It’s something that would make me proud in any other situation, but the feeling is dilute. Knowing that a smile is faked or forced does not fill me with any feelings of grandeur or self-worth; just the thought that the spinning of a fairytale is not our truth, and probably never will be.

(You still wonder, though, one-hundred-and-fifty million steps from the sun, why one even _bothers_ continuing to spin. I guess it’s a testament to human endurance. It’s not like the lack of happy “ending” is going to make the world tilt upside down and break a part. It doesn’t care enough for that.)

Marco pulls himself in to a sitting position beside me, swivelling round to face his mom as she slips into the room. She has a tray in one hand, balanced against her hip, piled high with plates and covered dishes. I’m reminded of my own mom again.

Anita says nothing to us – or to me, at least, because there seems to be some sort of wordless conversation between her and Marco as they look at each other, and he asks her with just a tilt of his head how she’s faring. My hands – or my _eyes_ , in this case – are too clumsy for sign language. I’m not sure I understand what Anita’s answer is.

(I _can_ tell you that the skin around her eyes is still a little bit puffy, and a little bit red.)

“Do you kids want something to eat?” she chimes brightly despite, and I can’t help but snort when Mina’s head snaps up, her wide eyes reflecting her stomach. Marco rolls his eyes, but climbs to his feet, taking the tray from his mom with a nod of his head that speaks silent volumes.

I help Mina tidy away our drawings, pushing our scraps of paper and discarded pencils to the side as Marco sets down the tray of food on the floor, and Anita joins us in our small circle – our little alcove of peace, hidden away from all the things that lay beyond that bedroom door, be they things that we can physically block out by not being able to see them, or things that we’re able to push to the back of our minds for just one, tonic moment.

Anita’s cooked up some finger food – the sort of stuff you would eat at your birthday party when you were a kid, or at a school carnival, or stolen from a buffet table at a work party – you know the stuff. Food is food to Mina, and she immediately grabs a handful of chips, smooshing them into her face and crunching furiously as cheesy chip dust tickles her nose.

Marco remains close to my side, his shoulder flush to mine, and the knowledge of his fingers on the floor being near to my own hand weighs acutely on my mind. He picks at his food, eating little as he’s more focussed on his mom teasing his little sister in a sombre playfulness that’s more than palpable, even to me.

The conversation doesn’t take long to turn to the fringes of the funeral – Anita and Marco gloss over the hands that tug at the strings wrapped around their hearts, even though it’s those very hands guiding them like wooden puppets – they make small talk about relatives I don’t know by name, talking about grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles and all things about them that wouldn’t even matter on a normal day – wouldn’t even be _interesting_ on a normal day.

But Marco nods along intently, and Anita seems to care, and I stay quiet, inching my fingers closer to Marco’s across the carpet, but not quite daring to breech the final gap to touch.

Mina doesn’t care for the trivialities in the lives of grandma _this_ and uncle _that_ – and nor does she understand the reasons why her brother and her mom have to talk about them to feel normal – and once she’s had her fill of food, she wipes her fingers on her legs, and grabs some of our drawings from the pile and shows them to her mom eagerly.

Anita is too much like Marco to discern between them, if you were to only judge by their words and nothing else – she douses Mina in sparkling praise, gushing over the piece of paper pushed into her hands with eager glee. She studies the drawing of their family holding hands in front of their red-roofed house, with Mina stabbing her fingers onto the paper to point out special details she’s proud of, until I know her eyes cast over the skinny extension to their family, holding hands with the image of Marco. I know, because Anita’s gaze flashes up, not angry, not surprised, not anything that really justifies the way I forget to breathe for just a moment, and she meets the way I must look like a fucking deer in headlights. Her lips twitch, quirking up at the corners in a way that doesn’t strike me as something as fallible as fractured glass, and it’s like a squeezing feeling inside my chest. She says nothing. I hear more, but it’s garbled. Or in a language I don’t understand, but feel like I should – as if the words I hear through the look in her eyes sound familiar, and the vowels could be almost things I know, and the strings of consonants almost tangible.

Marco says nothing either, but from the corner of my eye I notice the slight turn of his head as he realises how close my fingers have edged to his – he spreads his hand out on the floor on instinct, stretching out his pinkie finger until there’s barely centimetres of telling space between our hands.

There’s a magnetic pull between his hand and mine, some gravity that reminds me of the feeling that comes when skin brushes skin and tiny universes are born and all that _cosmic crap_ that I never really understood until I met him. I want to touch him, and it’s the clandestine filament that burns brightly in place of the electricity of an accidental caress that makes me want it more and more, the longer I find myself thinking about it.

I want to touch him properly – because until now, I’ve tasted just a sip of it, just a hasty gulp that I’ve swallowed down thirstily. I’ve hugged him desperately in the sand, but I want … I want something more than that. I want something quiet, and I want something less fuelled by a rush to recover everything that was lost in wasting time. I want to lose my bottom lip to my teeth whilst thinking about his.

I want something more tender that the rasping burn of pulsating kisses, or the sweaty nervousness of hand holds, or the weight of him leaning on my chest and watching expressions rise and fall in my face. I want to absorb his sad and melancholy feelings and walk around with him encased in my skin for the rest of days, as a reminder of the thought that without a gentle touch, I might die.

I think I want to steal him away and hold him – because I haven’t had more than his fingers in my hand all day, and I realise intrinsically that I’ve reached the end of my selfish tether, and need more. I need the feeling of my nose pressed into his hair, tickling my skin as I memorise the rhythm to which he breathes as he lies, curled up, against me, within what safety I can tell myself I can give him within the circle of my arms. I want my fingers to learn the notches in his back, or how his wrist feels in the o-shape formed by my thumb and forefinger, especially after I kiss the blue veins there.

I don’t think it’s possible to tell him all those things with just a twitch of my finger – but twitch my finger does.

It’s long dark beyond the threshold of the window, the creeping night a prevalence of blues and blacks, and in the suburbs, less polluted with the orange glow of streetlamps seeping in through the glass. Beyond, I can see the shadowy outline of trees and undergrowth, and the little, yellow oblongs of light from the windows of the neighbouring house; car headlights roam like lighthouse strobe across the brown grass between, fading into obscurity as whoever it is drives past into the dark.

Mina rubs her eyes, scouring the heels of her palms in tight circles into her skin as she tries to hide a yawn, but her mom is not fooled. It’s been a long day for everyone. It’s been _longer_ than a day for everyone.

“That sounds like the signal for bed time, _piccola_ ,” Anita soothes with a knowing and tender look in her eyes. Mina scrunches up her nose and scowls, but doesn’t protest. “Let’s tidy up and then you can go get your pyjamas on, hmm? I’ll make you some chocolate milk before you brush your teeth.”

I feel a yawn coming on too, infectious as is from seeing Mina cover her mouth and stretch out wide, and as I press the back of my hand to my mouth and my eyelids blinker, I hear Marco and Anita both chuckle lightly in unison, and I know I blush.

I help Mina gather up her drawings as Marco and his mom disappear into the kitchen to tidy away the leftovers from dinner; I make sure to grab the drawings of mine that I gave to Marco all that time ago, as well as a few of the sheets I’ve scribbled on today, but I leave with Mina the portraits I did of her, propping them neatly upright on her desk so that she can see them.

“Sleep well, squirt,” I tell her candidly as she sidles up to my side, clutching her sketchpad and pencil case. “I’ll see you around, yeah?”

Mina purses her mouth as she shoves her pencils back into the draws of her desk, glancing up at me pointedly. She says nothing for a moment, squinting at me as she considers me – but then she shrugs.

“Bring some paints next time, okay?”

I can’t help but grin, reaching out to ruffle her hair.

“You got it.”

 

* * *

 

I pass Anita as I slip out of the room, my discarded jacket slung over my shoulder, and she offers me a parting smile and a quick pap on the cheek with her hand in place of a farewell kiss or hug. I nod my head bashfully nonetheless, and tell her goodnight, any other words remaining sticky in my throat.

Marco is waiting at the bottom of the stairs in the hallway, leaning against the bannister. He’s looking at the floor, but his gaze flicks up from beneath his eyelashes when I stop just a pace or two away from him, erring on the edge of caution about how close I can get, even when Mina’s bedroom door clicks shut behind me. There’s something retiring about the way he holds himself, his shoulders slouched and a limpness in his frame as if all the air in his body has finally been used up, and he’s feeling the fatigue of the day.

I scratch my fingers through the shallow hairs of my undercut before I speak.

“I, _uh_. I guess I better get going too,” I say awkwardly, “Before it gets too … too late.” I raise my thumb towards the front door, but Marco shakes his head and takes a step towards me. There’s no usual smell of camomile laundry detergent, because it’s replaced with the sharp, leathery musk of _new suit_ , and it dominates anything else I might breathe in when he steps so close to me. I raise my hand, as if to press it against his chest – his heart – but I let my fingers drop with a tremble. I bite my lip and meet his gaze.

“ _Stay_ ,” he says simply and softly, his lips barely moving. He doesn’t repeat himself, only looking at me pleadingly. His fingers whisper along the ridge of my knuckles, before twining around my palm and squeezing tightly.

It’s not a request – not really. It’s a promise, which _I_ can make. That I’ve _already_ made, be it through things I’ve said or things I’ve done; and it’s a promise that I will continue to make as I curl my hand around his and bite my lip shyly. I only have to look at him once to make my mind up.

“Okay.”

He smiles weakly; but it’s grateful as he tugs on my hand and turns towards the stairs, leading the way. I am more than willing to blindly follow, his palm in my palm, and my eyes trained on his strong back beneath the slim lines of his suit in front of me. My feet are clumsy on the stairs but I manage not to fall flat on my face – _just_.

The first floor is really just something like a loft conversion – the ceiling slopes away with the rafters of the roof, and there are only two doors leading off the landing that he draws me up to; a sky light paints a peep hole in the roof to the endless sea of night sky above, our own square metre of pitted stars, half a constellation here, and another half there, barely a square metre of canvas of diamond dotted mural. I catch a glimpse of the star-kissed twinkling as I look up, still expecting somehow to see wisps of purple cloud to verify the things felt today. The sky, even dark, is still clear.

There are paintings of the seaside strung up on the sunny yellow walls – the Jinae coast, as I recognise it, because the limestone cliffs look too chalkily familiar to be anything else. The watercolours are faint and non-assuming, delicate and unobtrusive – the sort of painting that would really offend nobody, but give no-one anything to talk about either, its faded blues and muddy greens too non-descript for anyone really to get lost in the painting as a prologue to an epic. It makes you think that whatever world the painter was painting must have been a pretty bland reality, devoid of what colour really makes an ocean rumble or sunbeams reflect in sea salt.

Still – I’m sure it was painted with care. I suppose that’s what matters.

I have little time to look closer as Marco leads me towards one of the doors, pressing down on the handle until the latch clicks – he pushes on the wood with his shoulder, looking back at me with an unreadable expression, or, at least: a clouded expression. I figure that’s where the overcast skies ended up, rather than above our heads. They just ended up _in_ his.

His room is bathed in the sentient glow of the night beyond his windows before he finds the light switch – all blues and purples and fuzzy grey outlines, highlighted by chalk smearings of orange. When he flicks the switch, his fingers clumsy in the dark despite it being his own room, everything is plunged into artificial yellow-white.

Marco’s bedroom is sparsely furnished: little more than his bed pushed against one wall, and a wardrobe and a desk against the opposite. Saying that, for so little furniture, it’s surprisingly _messy_ , and I don’t think I ever pinned him to be more of a cleaning disaster than me. There is a mound of clothes heaped over the back of his desk chair, and a knocked-over pile of heavy duty textbooks at the foot of his bed. His desk is piled high with open mail and discarded letters, concealing what looks to be a kitsch-looking CD player straight out of the early noughties.

His walls are painted pale yellow like the rest of the house, and decorated with the odd band poster or obscure movie reference that I’m sure he’d scold me for not having seen, and my eyes are drawn immediately to the faint marks of blue tack and sun-faded paint above his bed, where I figure something has been recently peeled off the paintwork. The drawings. Right.

There are photos taped to his walls too, and some propped up on his desk, on top of his wardrobe, on his bedside table – I spot his mom and his sister in a few of them, and Reiner and Bert too, and even his dad. Shoes litter the floor around his desk and his wardrobe, as well as discarded DVDs, and a moth-eaten looking jumper, clearly trampled on more than a few times.

It doesn’t so much as surprise me, considering the busyness of the rest of the house, and how every other shelf or surface seems to be overflowing with junk collected over the years – I think particularly of the mantelpiece in the living room crowded with Jesus figurines – but I suppose what strikes me is that even something as simple as laying a bit of order to his room has been something swept under the rug by all the other things in his life. It’s such a simple thing.

(And here _I_ am, the one with the God damn _housekeeper_ when I don’t even need the help.)

I don’t realise until I hear the door click shut behind me that I’ve taken a few steps into Marco’s room, and lost his hand along the way. I turn back, wide eyed and searching, to see him pressed up against the door, his hands behind his back, and a deep, _deep_ sigh wallowing his shoulders and whistling from his lungs. His eyes are closed. I give him space to breathe.

I’m attracted to his desk first, intrigued by the stereo hidden under all that paper; I lift up the corners of his abandoned mail between my thumb and forefinger, carefully moving each envelope to the side with barely a rustle, until my eyes pause on something shiny beneath the stack. I toss my suit jacket over the back of his desk chair, and step forward to take a closer look. It’s a CD case, and I recognise it, because it has my dumb drawings all over its cover. I pick it up and flip it over in my hands, seeing the track list still slotted into the sleeve, but the mixtape itself missing.

I poke gingerly at the eject button on the half-hidden CD player, and its lid pops open, revealing the disc on the inside, my writing in Sharpie around its rim.

“You weren’t joking, were you?” I hum to myself, satiated smile forming in my lips as I press the player close again with a satisfying click. I recall what he’d said in the parking lot of the mall yesterday, moaning over the suit. “Play it regularly, huh?”

Marco doesn’t reply, but I hear him push away from the door, and his heavy footsteps creak the floorboards beneath the beige carpet. His arms loop around my waist from behind before I feel his breath warm against the side of my throat as he buries his face in the crook of my neck with an incoherent mumble.

I can’t help the way I tense up – it’s a reflex, but I’m working on it. It only takes a second to expel the taut air from my lips as a rasping whistle, and splay my fingers over the backs of his hands, leaning back into his embrace with a wistful murmur of my own. I loll my head back against his shoulder, opening up the column of my throat, and he only nuzzles against my skin further. His nose tickles, and his _lips_ tickle.

_Deep breaths. This is normal. Touching like this … this is normal now. This is what I want._

_(Doesn’t stop it from doping my heart with a fit of adrenaline though, does it?)_

Marco words breathed against my prickling skin are their own form of opiate.

“Thank you for coming today,” he mumbles, and his arms constrict around my stomach a little tighter, his fingers knotting in my dress shirt. “It really meant a lot.”

“’S alright,” I shiver, tentatively raising one hand to card through his thick hair as he leans over my shoulder. I glide my fingers through the strands and he seems to let out a breath, drawing me in closer to his chest and moulding himself to the rigidity in my stiff spine. “It’s … it’s no problem, y’know? I was g-glad to come. It was, uh … your dad woulda been … it was really _good_. It was good. It was a good memorial for him. I’m … I’m glad you had the chance to say goodbye.”

Marco pulls away from the hollow of my neck, resting his chin on my shoulder. I crane my head back, and I can just about see the glimmer in his eyes from the corner of my peripheral. I keep my hand curled in his hair, and the other one I use to begin to trace small circles on the back of his knuckles, where he has a claw on my shirt.

“I … I wanted to cry so many times today,” he says, in a small voice.

I think of the tear that had slid down his cheek during his eulogy, and how he had so casually brushed it to the wind. I think of his mom’s tears, and I think of his sister’s lack thereof. I think of a million metaphors, and how water manages to seep back into every one of them.

“It’s … it’s okay,” I wobble. “It’s okay if you want to cry. It’s okay to cry if you feel like it.”

I think the more times you say something, the more you begin to believe it. This is no exception, and whilst I’m telling this to him now, and whilst I told it to his sister not hours ago, there’s a part of me that will always be telling it to _myself_ , of the past, of the future, and of the present, and now I find myself believing it to be true. It’s okay to cry. It’s not weak. It’s not _weak_. You weather so many storms and you sail as far as the world’s end, but you are not as immortal – not as _invincible_ as you think you are. For spending so long at sea, being buffeted by the to and fro, you might think that saltwater would not be a thing of significance. Needing to cry is not weak.

“N-no, I … I want to be – I _wanted_ to be strong for … for mom, and for Mina, I—” He sniffles, and I know the wet hitch in his breath is beyond his control, because he groans immediately after in frustration at himself. I tug gently at his roots, making sure he doesn’t try to hide his face in my shirt. He continues, in a whisper, “I needed to be strong for them.”

 _But you don’t have to be_ , is all I can think. _Just be strong for you. You’ve done enough. They know how you feel, and they’ll be okay with that. Trust me._

Marco squeezes me tighter, and it almost begs a wheeze – a wheeze that makes heat prick behind my eyes, and the threat of my unneeded and _unwarranted_ tears raise their ugly head. It’s not my story. Not my fairytale ending that’s been lost. Not my realisation that dragons and villains aren’t always things with scales – or aren’t even clear cut at all. Not my understanding that you don’t always get a sword to beat things back with, nor armour that you can touch, or see, or feel.

Not my place to cry. It would feel too selfish of me.

“You’re always strong,” I choke out, and I can’t hold Marco back from pressing his face against my neck once more, his hair tickling my nose as I try to turn my head to plant my lips against any part of him I might find – the crown of his dark hair suffices enough. “I see it. I see how strong you are.”

He heaves another sigh and I feel myself rise with it, before he elicits a whisper against my throat that makes my heart lurch in slow motion – not because of any dumb butterflies, or the feeling of my internal organs somersaulting – but simply due to an immeasurable and inconsolable ache that happens because I’ve willingly let him curl his fingers around my heart, and given him the reigns over how much blood goes pumping into that lump of muscle that keeps me standing.

“You make me strong, Jean. _You_. You do.”

The air between my lips crackles like it might after a thunderclap or a rain shower, and it makes me feel like there’s more to this tragic sort of play than just _surviving_. Marco wants more than to just _get through this_.

“Marco …”

He looks up, and I catch his dark eyes glistening; I keep my fingers twined messily in his hair as I crane my head back, and clumsily squish my lips against the corner of his mouth. He exhales loudly through his nose and I feel the puff of breath stutter against my cheek, warm and humid as he murmurs something low and rasping.

I chase his lips across the barest gap, trying to lean back further into his chest and tilt my head to reach all of him, but my kisses are still sloppy and blind and feather-light as I tug on his lower lip with my teeth and the faintest pressure.

His hand on my waist sweeps up and over my ribs, rubbing firmly across my chest as his fingers dig gently into my heavily rising and falling pectorals. The booming, patriotic march of my heartbeat no doubt reverberates between my skin and his touch, a pounding bass where his fingers glide in circles over my dress shirt, a thin, flimsy layer of cotton that feels almost rough compared to the smoothness of his lips as he licks gently into my mouth.

I’m hesitant at first, feeling his tongue moving against mine, strange and warm and strong as he probes softly at the muscle and then glides slickly across my own lips. His nose buffs against mine and one of his hands creeps higher, sliding up over my sternum and my neck, to where he cups my jaw and tips my head back further, kissing me more resolutely.

I try my luck, and slip my tongue between his lips – Marco whimpers, but pulls away, just enough for me to see him blinking owlishly at me, his cheeks flushed prettily in a way that reminds me of the stainless side of the summer we’ve both swallowed, full of late city lights, and lemonade, and fingertip fireflies, and the taste of words we waited too long to say, still sweet like honeydew.

“Is … is this okay?” I stammer, letting my fingers slacken in his hair and my breath tumble out nervously as it falters inside my airway.  I resent having to lose the contact of being pressed up against him, my back against his chest, but it’s worth it to twist around in his arms, and face him properly with my hands resting shyly over his collarbones. He keeps his wrapped around the small of my back, holding me close. He breathes deeply through his slightly parted lips, pink and near swollen and more than magnetic enough for me have to consciously force myself to look at his eyes instead.

“It’s more than okay,” he breathes frailly onto my face, his eyes flickering closed as he leans forward to rest his forehead against mine. His skin feels cold to the touch, almost clammy. I nudge him tenderly with my nose, ghosting a light kiss over his upper lip, and he sighs forlornly.

“Should sleep,” I murmur, smoothing my hands beneath the lapels of his suit jacket and wriggling my fingers, edging the jacket away from his shoulders. He relaxes a little, letting me slip the thing off, and I toss it haphazardly behind us, hoping that it finds his desk chair. I’ll hang it up for him in the morning. “’S been a long day.”

Marco’s shirt is taut across his broad chest. With my forehead against his, I can glance down at the shadows of the hollows of his beautiful collarbones through the strained, white fabric, and I gulp solidly. My fingers stray to his tie too quickly, fiddling clumsily with the knot at his throat as I make a pig’s ear of untying it with my unsure touches.

“But you’ll stay over?” he whispers against me, as I manage to unravel the grey silk from his neck finally, tugging the tie out from his shirt collar, and discarding it behind us somewhere.

I would compare myself to a man walking alone in a desert, for how long I’ve been parched and liable to the sun, all my life – but finding water in the oasis that is him and the way he touches his lips against mine softly again, chaste and unassuming, only reminds me the extent of what I was ever missing, and it seems to suck all the moisture from my mouth, without replenishing it. My throat feels dry, and my hands feel like they must be sandpaper where I fumble with the top button on his shirt, the pads of my fingers moving far too roughly for the way he holds me like I’m breakable.

I want to touch him as carefully as he touches me, but it’s hard. I don’t know how to do it; I don’t know how to not _question myself_ over whether or not the way I move around him is too blocky and too rigid and too insensitive. I’m not sure if lip biting and wringing out little gasps from his throat is appropriate on a day like this, even if he says it’s okay.

“If that’s what … what you want,” I reply bashfully, feeling my cheeks soaked and saturated with a pinkened warmth that strays on one side too greedy, and on the other side too vestal. 

Marco’s hands on my back try to find finger holds where I have no muscle or fat to grip onto; so his fingers drift to my hips where he can find something to squeeze, finding the hewed lines of my pelvis through my suit pants.

“You’ll stay,” he repeats, “Stay over? And … sleep in my bed? W-with me?”

“I-if that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

I huff loudly, embarrassed, and school my expression into a concentrated scowl as I work on undoing the top two or three buttons of Marco’s shirt. He lets me do it without saying a word, his eyes still closed as he maintains contact between our foreheads, his nose brushing mine every time he breathes out.

The prickling feeling starts from my fingers toying with his tiny shirt buttons, and wriggles all the way down to my toes,  squirming within my socks – but at least it’s better that letting my legs jitter like they want to, or allowing my breathing to betray how each subtle sucking-in of air hitches excruciatingly half-way down my throat.

“You got pyjamas?” I ask him tentatively; he nods with a hum, eyes cast down as he focuses on keeping my hips locked against his.

“Under my pillow,” he says.  I can’t help but chuckle breathily, deciding to keep comments about what an _old man_ he is to myself. “W-what?”

“Nothing,” I smirk, leaning away from him to see how he pouts his lips and furrows his eyebrows. I catch his hands as they roam up my sides, straying flush against my ribs through my shirt, and tug his fingers away from where he tries to grab at the white fabric. I squeeze his fingers tight in my palms, and shoot him a pointed look that I know is ruined by the way my lips quirk and I bite back a smirk. “C’mon. Get changed. You got anything I can wear?”

Marco points me gingerly towards his wardrobe, his cheeks blooming red as he feels the need to duck his gaze away from me, clearly flustered. I turn my back to him, and by the sounds of it, he does the same, as I hear the rustling of his checkered duvet and his pillows as he fishes out his pyjamas, and finishes undressing himself where I’d started. I slink over to his wardrobe, opening the doors with a creak; I grab the first pair of jersey sweatpants I spot, the fabric soft and grey, and I smooth my thumb across it as I hold the pants in my fist, searching for a t-shirt I can throw over the top.

I pick out something plain and white and clearly two sizes too big for me, and then I blush when I grab a pair of his boxers too, nudging the doors closed with my hip and probably a little too much force.

I change quickly, leaping out of my pants and looping them over the back of his chair, accompanied far more mercilessly by my own boxers, quickly stepping into his and his sweatpants before I self-combust, or trip over my own feet as they’re caught in the leg holes, or _both_. Probably both.

I hear the complaints of a mattress being sat on, and know Marco’s eyes linger on my bare back as I untangle my tie from my neck and shrug out of my shirt, folding them both messily in my arms, before ruining any semblance of order as I pile them high on the clothes mountain with everything else.  He sucks in a breath that I hear – reverent and telling of how he fights to control the waiver in his tone, and it makes me bite my lip as I pull on his t-shirt over my head. It’s far too big, and the shoulder seams hang a few inches down my biceps, and the hemline covers my hips, but when I turn around again, my eyes wide and cautious, and my cheeks undoubtedly emblazoned, Marco is chewing on his lip and trying not to look too long at me. (He fails.) (It makes me blush – _furiously_.)

I settle my shoulders and try to summon some sort of liquid courage to replace the way it feels like I’m drying up on the inside, each fleeting glance of his that’s stolen in my direction vitrifying all the blood in my veins and all the saliva in my mouth. I stretch out a self-assured smirk, but it creaks and groans on my lips, and I’m sure it doesn’t hide just how nervous I am.

“Kinda hot, huh?” I grin, sauntering towards him with as much confidence as I can muster, and pinging the waistband on his sweatpants hanging loosely on my hips against my skin – which are also erring on the big side. I watch Marco’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, worshipfully. He reaches out, finding my hand when I step back into his orbit, and he tugs me close to him, pulling me to stand between his legs.

He moves to settle his hands on my hips, but he hesitates, retracting his fingers more than once as he bites down on his lower lip in thought. He glances up at me, unsure, and his pupils are blown wide.

I shrug nonchalantly, despite the fact I feel _far_ from _put together_ on the inside. I’m surprised my palms haven’t started sweating, and really hope he doesn’t feel how much I’m boiling beneath my skin when I move his hand holding mine, and slide it – for him – under the inside of my t-shirt, guiding his fingers to trace across the concaves of my hips and the coarse hair trailing up my lower abdomen.

Marco turns bright red, but he doesn’t pull his hand away, inhaling sharply as he spreads his fingers out across my lower stomach, and brings his other hand up to hold my hip firmly in place. He slowly edges the shirt up, revealing a strip of my skin between the rumpled hemline and the band of the sweatpants. His eyes are intently focussed, following his roaming fingers as he explores how my prickling skin radiates electricity and moves, oscillating, as I breathe in fluctuating rhythm with him.

He smoothes the shirt up a little higher, revealing my belly button, and then leans in for a kiss, pressing his lips chastely just above the top of the trail of hair that leads below the waistband of the sweatpants on my hips. I shiver, wincing as I turn my head away, barely able to look at him as I feel the tickle of his breath so … so close to— _so far away from my lips_.

“You’re beautiful, Jean,” he breathes, kissing my stomach again, his fingers squeezing into what little give I have around the lines of my pelvis. I imagine what would happen with just a little more pressure there – what purple marks might bloom is he just gripped a tiny bit harder, and the thought is like a coaxing finger, tempting me to— for things to— _for things to happen, y’know_?

“So pretty,” Marco hushes again; he finds the drawstring of the sweatpants and tugs gently, inviting me forward, although there’s really nowhere to go, other than—

—his hands slide down from my hips to the backs of my thighs – places that I don’t think I’ve ever been touched before, not like this, not when it wasn’t completely _innocent_ – and he guides me forward onto his lap with a hitching sigh.

It’s not like it hasn’t happened like this before – in the sand, or in the ocean – and I know what it feels like to have my thighs either side of his, flush together with a quake unmissable … but this is his _bed_. This is on his bed, and there’s no danger of people watching us and making stupid remarks, and there’s no desperation to catch up with touches that were always thought about but never seized – this is slow, and considerate, and gentle. Really gentle.

Marco looks up at me, his hands holding me steady, hovering above sinking down completely onto his thighs, and I watch the flash of his white teeth pass over his lower lip.

“You’re beautiful, you know?”

It’s so hard, y’know, trying to force myself not to look away, and hide the way my face blazes and the overwhelming need to throw myself under his duvet and bundle myself up, shrivelling up into nothing but a pile of pillows and blankets, so I don’t have to deal with the way this _ache_ consumes every part of me, from my head, to my heart, to my _dick_ —

_Okay, a little crude, b-but … it’s not like it’s a lie. I’m definitely paying attention … down south._

“L-like you can talk …” I grouse, “You look like what Chris fucking Evans would be like if he went and lay in a sunbed for a few hours.”

Marco snorts, and I see a glimmer of a rare smile flower on his lips, more free and genuine that anything I’ve seen flash across his face all day. It alleviates some of the tension coiled snakingly in my gut, and I let my stiff shoulders drop, relaxing into the way he holds me upright.

“That’s not what I mean,” he chuckles airily, swirling his thumbs under my shirt, over my hips.

“What _do_ you mean then?” I retort, though my voice breaks gaspingly. _Doesn’t everyone find Chris Evans attractive? Isn’t that one of the laws of the universe?_ “’Cus I—I really _did_ used to call you freckled Captain America in my head.”

Marco blanches and casts his eyes away shyly for a moment; with him not focussed on my face, I shuffle forward onto his lap and sink down comfortably onto his thighs, wrapping my arms tentatively around his neck. He mumbles something I don’t make out, but the colour that returns in his cheeks speaks volumes. I push against him gently and he gives, flopping backwards onto his bed, and taking me with him, pressed flat against the planes of his chest.

I wriggle myself over him, moving myself and tilting his chin so that I can look at his face, dusted so prettily rosy, even under the harsh glare of the light hanging from his ceiling. He curls his arms around the small of my back, and the weight pulls my hips down on his – sweatpant jersey rubs against the checkered cotton of his pyjama pants. I try _really fucking hard_ not to think about it.  

“Marco—?”

“I-I dunno,” he stammers, “I just … just always thought you were – u-uhm – very p-pretty? Since … since the first time, I just— it wasn’t a crush, or anything, no, but— well. You know. Being able to t-touch you— like this, is, uhm … pretty nice.”

Marco groans, unlooping one of his hands to run down his face, exasperatedly. I snort unattractively, threading my fingers through the locks of his thick hair that spread across his forehead, smoothing them back against his hairline.

I smirk, causing him to huff.

“P-pretend I didn’t say that,” he mumbles, “It’s cheesy. I know.”

“I dunno – I think it’s … kinda _cute_.”

“I’m just fuelling your ego, Jean.”

“Touché.”

I sit up on his thighs, the large t-shirt slipping back down over the waistband where it had been ruched up, and roll off of him, towards the head of his bed. Marco pushes himself up on his elbows, watching me curiously with a flushed face as I tug back the corners of his duvet, and crawl underneath it, drawing the blankets up to my chin once I’m safely rolled up beneath it.

“Now that’s just unfair,” he pouts playfully, feeling around in the creases and folds of his bedspread to find my legs beneath the covers. When his fingers find them, he prods me determinedly. “I was … _enjoying_ what you look like in my clothes.”

“W-well, if you got under the covers with me,” I shrug cordially, biting my tongue cheekily between my teeth. I pull the covers up over my mouth to hide the way my lips curl upwards into a stupidly eager grin, and it muffles my words. “I can’t make any promises, but … ya’ know. I could probably stretch to some of that cuddling stuff. I-If you’re game for that, ‘course.”

“You’re awful,” Marco chides, shaking his head theatrically. I can‘t help but snort.

“Get the lights and let’s sleep,” I say, and then yawning to prove a point. “’M sleepy. And you need to get some shut eye. As much as I _like_ your face, eye bags don’t do you much of a service.” I pause, judging his expression, and then add in a softer voice, “Get some rest, yeah? You deserve a good night’s sleep, Marco.”

I regret how his expression contorts with the faint suggestion of contrition, as if I’ve reminded him of the things he’s been trying to forget – of the day he’s been trying to block out by being here, with me. I don’t want him to have to forget it – _I know that_ – but it doesn’t mean I like the way his face falls any better. If I could wish that the two of us – him and I and our little corner of the world – could be back on that beach, under the stars and drizzled in sea foam spray like we were living in a stupid summer movie that we would laugh and watch anyway, I would. I would wish that with all my heart. Optimism is not effortless. Wanting things like that is not good for us.

We can’t forget.

“Marco, I—”

“No, I’m … I’m sorry, Jean, I don’t mean to—”

“Don’t apologise,” I interrupt him firmly, pushing the covers away from my face and pushing myself upright against his headboard. “You don’t have to apologise. Not to me. I told you it’s okay to feel – to feel like _this_. So stop pretending that it isn’t, yeah?”

Marco ducks his head meekly, looking apologetic as he sits up, swinging his legs back onto the floor and squeezing his hands timidly between his thighs. I purse my lips into a tight line.

“Get the light, Marco. And come … _come to bed_.” And let it be the sand, the shingles, the fragments of limpet and periwinkle shell. Imagine the square of diamond-pitted canvas to stretch all the way across the dark ceiling, and let it be the night sky. Pretend my breathing is like the waves or the wind in the dune grass.

But do not forget. Search for the place where it doesn’t have to hurt so much anymore.

Marco drags himself to his feet wearily, plodding towards his door where he flips the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. He stands still for a moment, until his eyes grow accustomed to the milky glow of moonlight and starlight that filters through his sky window, and then the floorboards creak under his weight as he sidles back over to his bedside.

I slide over on the mattress, squishing up against the wall as I feel him pull back the covers next to me, and the bed dips as he swings one leg in, and then the other. His feet are cold where they brush against my legs – I scrunch up my nose and scramble for him in the darkness, my eyes not so used to the lack of orange streetlamp glow outside the window, and he remains little more than a shadow that my fingers fumble over, mapping his chest and his shoulders as I try to pull him against my side.

He obliges me with little more than a muffled squeak when I accidentally poke him in the eye, trying to guide his face to mine so that I can kiss him, my lips fumbling to find his, missing a few times as I squash my mouth against his jaw more than once.

I grumble to myself, which dredges a chuckle from Marco’s lips in the darkness, his tender hands more careful in cupping my cheeks and positioning me so that he can deftly connect his lips to mine. He kisses me quickly: once, twice, three times with a peck that has me chasing him as he pulls away in the darkness, with a breathy, amused huff.

Pulling up the covers over our shoulders, I open up my arms, inviting him to nestle into my chest – he doesn’t need asking with words, understanding me enough to know where to bury his nose and how exactly to tangle his legs with mine beneath the sheets. He presses his ear against my chest, leaving me to forage into his hair with my nose – something I don’t think I’ll easily tire of. It smells more like him, and less of new suits and lily flowers, and the scent of his shampoo is soothing. I inhale deeply, unable to keep my fingers from carding through his roots as well, twisting the locks between my thumb and forefinger absent-mindedly.

“You need a haircut, y’know,” I whisper, “Scruffy.”

I know he likes the feeling of my fingers roaming across his scalp, so I tug a little – he rewards me with a tiny sigh, burrowing further against my chest.

I’m surprised though, because he reaches up to tug my hand away from the prickle of his shallow undercut, and brings it down to where his lips are, kissing the lines of my palm gently, before letting my own hand rest on my chest.

“I have time now,” he says quietly, “To do that stuff. _Get a haircut_. All of it.”

He snuggles down beneath the duvet, squeezing me tightly like a comforter, but I recognise the way his laboured breathing tells me of his pain.

He has time now.

It shouldn’t have had to happen like this, but it did. It did. We can’t change that now. These moments of impact define who we are.

Still – it _hurts_.

 

* * *

 

It’s the darkest part of the night when I’m awoken abruptly; the starlight through the window in the roof has lost its magic, now little more than grey and grainy in the outline with which it slathers the furniture in Marco’s room.

I blink stickily against the darkness, squinting and grumbling, before my ears can really hear the bleary noises growling in my throat. I stretch out, scrabbling blindly in the darkness for whatever warmth it is that I can feel nearby, but when my fingers find the soft fabric of a shirt stretched taut across a back, I startle more numbly awake when I realise the skin I touch through the thin cotton is shivering.

I remember where I am just as the smell of camomile laundry detergent mingled with the sheets I’m tangled in fills my nose, and I feel the unmistakeable clench of fists in my shirt, knuckles pressing against my chest through the flimsy cotton.

At first, I think it’s just a trick of the night – the _noise_ that I hear. Maybe it’s just the purr of a passing car engine, or the coo of a bird up too late beyond the window, all played through a sieve of white-noise, turning it into garbled nonsense that I could almost miss, because it’s so quiet and indiscernible.

But then I make out words, and my sleepy heart crumbles.

“ _D… dad. Dad. D-dad, please … please_.”

The fingers in my shirt tug sharply and I jolt forward, narrowly avoiding cracking my nose off Marco’s forehead, barely inches away from me in the dark.

He’s fucking _shaking_ , sobbing in his sleep as his lips move restlessly over pleas for his father that he clearly sees slipping away from him in whatever it is he dreams of. He whimpers, and it’s a broken little cry that feels like a chisel lodged between the vessels in my heart, with pressure applied to the handle to pry my aorta from my vena cava, and create the vacuum of unnatural space within my chest.

“D-dad … _dad_.”

I think I have thick skin. I’ve had to have thick skin to get through this far, and to shrug off all the knives handed to me over flowers in the past – but it doesn’t help now. However elasticated I might be does not help the fact that Marco cries in his sleep, nor the way his congested breaths and wet chokes make the mattress tremble.

What can I do? I’ve told myself already that being with him … being with him like this can’t change what happened. It can’t just _make things better_.

Things are not better. He cries at night, because his subconscious knows no-one will see him, no-one will hear him, and that’s better, _that has to better_ , because he doesn’t want his family to think he’s— he’s—

He’s _not_ weak. He’s grieving, God dammit. Grieving for more than one, shitty day in August, or some lily-garlanded funeral in September; he’s grieving for going on ten years of dealing with something he must’ve hoped would never end.

It must be a shock to have it all gone now. Something he’s grown used to; something he’s grown up with for most of his life; something he probably spent years fooling himself into believing wasn’t as bad as it was. Looking for a silver lining.

The clouds in his head must be thick and overcast now, and I wonder if there are any gaps in the cumulus to allow sunlight through, to create spindles of silver and gold around the edges of what hangs heavily over him at every waking – and sleeping – moment.

And it’s difficult – God, it’s so _difficult_ – to lie beside someone you love like this, when they’re crying into your shirt without them even realising it, and not want to save them. Because it’s not your job to save them. It’s not. It can’t be.

You don’t get to fix stuff like that. You get to help. You get to hold them, support them, hug them when they’re shaking in the dark, but you can’t _save_ them. It’s _them_ who has to wake up every morning and face the world anew. That’s up to _him_ , and that thought is what hurts my stubborn heart.

Boys cry. Cigarettes do kill. Parents lie. Things don’t always get better quickly.

It makes it hard figuring out where to start.

“D-dad … dad, please, you— _dad_.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, scrunching up my face as I grit my teeth. The world is not fair. But I knew that.

Maybe everyone owns a little piece of themselves that wants to _save the world._  But I think growing up means realising that it’s okay to only get to save one person out of those seven billion and some, and that person ought to be _you_.

In his sleep, Marco tugs again on my shirt, drawing me closer to him with a quiet whine; I let him plaster himself against my chest, and I curl my arms protectively around his back, holding him tightly in place as my nose finds his crop of hair. His shivering doesn’t stop, but the pleas on his lips become less words, and more indistinguishable whimpers, before fading out into pained, sniffy breathing.

“Marco,” I whisper, kissing his name softly into his hair, “M-Marco, it’s okay. It’s okay, you’re okay.”

I don’t know if my words reach him on whatever plane of existence he’s walking, swimming in the deep and unforgiving waters of his dreams or his subconscious – or if he even wakes, and chooses to remain still and not seek my lips in the darkness. It doesn’t matter so much, because I am all too focussed on the prayer of pretty words and the repetition of his name.

“Marco, it’s okay. Marco, _I love you_. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

 

* * *

 

When I wake again, broad sunlight is streaming through the skylight, forming a column of yellow light in the centre of Marco’s floor. The ambience it graduates across the room is not sharp and glaring – not like the swords of light that pierce through my blinds and onto my face at home; instead, it paints my skin and makes Marco’s sleeping face pressed against my chest glow warmly aureolin.

I squint, blinking blearily against crusted sleep-dust, and my head whirling with the feeling of cotton wool packed between my ears. I groan, my dry throat gravelling, and the cramp that has pooled in my legs and arms overnight spikes up with a buzz like television interference.

The smell of Marco all around me is overwhelming; his sheets, his pillows, his clothes that I’m wearing, his hair that is inches from my face still. He hasn’t moved – his legs are still securely meshed with mine beneath the covers, and he’s holding onto my shirt like a limpet.

This is the second time I’ve woken up next to Marco like this – not when one of us has a killer hangover and can’t remember the night before; or when we’ve spent the best part of the night talking on the roof about things I don’t want to think about this early in the day – but this … when he’s wrapped around me, and breathing softly against my sternum.

Second time. _Second time of many_?

The thought makes me blush.

It also stirs up memories of my conversation with Mina yesterday, before Marco had found us.

 _Boyfriends_.

Waking up next to someone like this is not something that you do when you’re … _not_. Telling someone that you’re beautiful, and then running your hands over their hips and kissing their belly button is not something you do when you haven’t _thought_ about it. Knowing well enough that you whispered an _I love you_ to them whilst they were sleeping is not something you do when you don’t _want_ it.

 _I’m_ thinking about it. About asking – I won’t know until I do. Won’t get an _answer_.

Maybe he’d just laugh at me, and take my face in his hands and kiss me quickly, telling me breathily that he figured that’s what we already were.

Or maybe he’d blush furiously, and chew his lip until it tortures me to look, whilst he nods shyly at my proposition.

And maybe it will make him happy. I would hope it would make him happy, if I asked. The more I can do to make him smile – that brilliant, Hollywood _beam_ of his – the better he’ll feel. That’s all I want.

I smooth his hair out of his face with clumsy fingers, still tingling with pins and needles, for a better look at his sleeping expression as he lies against my chest. I can see the residue of salt water tracks on his cheeks, and it’s a downer and a half to know that it wasn’t a dream on my part, hearing him cry in the night.

The skin between his eyebrows is smooth though, and not creased up in unconscious worry or a pain that I cannot touch. His lips are gently parted, and his breaths are soft, calm and unpolluted.

I wriggle upright a little, and hold him tightly in my arms so that he doesn’t slip away from me as I move to lean against the headboard. Small frown lines appear around the corners of his mouth, and pinch in his forehead, but they disappear just as quickly as I readjust him against my chest, and smooth back his hair once more, unable to swallow back the sickeningly domestic smile that forms on my lips, and the way I bite my tongue to prevent it from spreading into a grin.

I might as well have God-damn _hearts_ in my eyes, but, y’know what? I don’t care. Not here, not right now. No-one’s looking at me, and no-one’s going to burst in and point a finger and _laugh_ at me for the way I let my cautious fingers slither down from his hairline and walk along his jaw, feeling the prickle of tiny hairs against my finger pads, and then the subtle puff of breath when I hesitate on tracing my thumb across his lips, but give in anyway – because if one of us is weak, it’s _me_ , and it’s for _this_.

Marco mumbles something dopily, and snuggles down against my chest, nuzzling his nose against the valley hollow of my collarbones.

“Mm—” comes a low noise from deep down in his throat, dry and gravelly. “’S a dream?”

I snort airily, retracing my steps with my fingers, returning to scratching gently at his scalp in small circles, hoping to hide the way my heart jitters with erratic flutters as I feel his lips move sluggishly against my skin through my shirt.

“Not that I’m aware of,” I reply gently; Marco grumbles, and suctions himself around me, twining his legs between mine in a tangle of calves and feet that still feel a little on the chilly side.

“Never had a dream ‘bout you ‘nd then you still be here when I wake up,” he mumbles dopily, freeing his fingers from his handholds in the shirt I’m wearing, and then swiping them up and down my chest affectionately – _until he freezes_.

It’s almost comical to watch the way his eyes bulge and his cheeks flare up brilliant red, and he clamps his teeth down on his lower lip with a muffled squawk.

“I-I … can’t believe I just said that out loud,” he wheezes with a sleepy but embarrassed chuckle, turning his head to hide his expression from me. Probably for the best, considering the way my cheeks are overspread with the deepest blush too. I scratch the end of my nose awkwardly.

“Can’t believe you said that either,” I murmur bashfully, sweeping my fingers through my bed hair with a grouse. But there are no Connie and Sasha to knock against tent walls, or my mom to wonder out onto the patio and interrupt some deep and meaningful conversation this time – it’s just us, with Marco blushing prettily in my arms, and me trying to swallow down the dryness in my throat – _and I want more_.  “Y-you’ve got a penchant for the sappy stuff though, so I dunno what I was expectin’.”

Marco sits up abruptly, holding his weight on his arms on my chest, and frowns at me playfully. His hair is mused up a field of cowlicks, and his parting obscured by the desperate need to run a comb through the tangles, and coupled with the pout on his lips, I feel— well, it’s pretty fucking _cute_. I resist the urge to clench my knuckles between my teeth, and instead, just stare him down, questioningly and suspiciously.

“You’re the one with a secret fondness for sappy words, thank you very much,” he says determinedly, jabbing me in the chest with his pointer finger, clearly far more awake now than he was thirty seconds ago. “You can’t fool me. I _know_ you, Jean.”

“Lies and fabrications,” I snort, sticking my nose in the air. Marco rolls his eyes, shuffling himself more upright to sit himself next to me – he doesn’t untangle his legs from mine though, and once he’s settled, he wraps his arms back around my chest and leans his chin down on my shoulder.

“Mhm,” Marco muses, blowing gently against my ear until I shiver, “I know you like it really. I bet you steal away onto the roof and read poetry books and soliloquise about the world when you think no-one is looking.”

“Poetry?” I grouse in a low voice, turning my head to him – a whisper of space exists between us, but I maintain it, a teasing gap between my lips and his skin. I feel the corners of my mouth begging to quirk upwards into a sated smirk. “Are you joking? I wouldn’t do that.”

“So you’re not denying the soliloquising then?” Marco purrs back, walking his fingers up towards my collarbones, flicking against the metal studs in my clavicles through my shirt, coyly.

I shrug with a small grin.

“Guess not.”

“I knew it.”

“Bit of modesty would do you well, Freckles,” I jibe, jolting a little when Marco circles his thumb over my piercings and it sends a shockwave shooting down to my toes. He bites his tongue between his teeth in victory, and rubs his foot up and down my leg beneath the sheets. I exhale a shaking breath, trying to remember how to concentrate on not … _getting an erection_. You know, that old chestnut. Ugh. “You don’t know _everything_ about what I do in my spare time.”

“Hmm, I think I know enough,” Marco shrugs audaciously. “I reckon I can read you _pretty_ well.” Absent-mindedly or not, he wets his lips with his tongue, and I battle with myself to stay as still as a ramrod in bed. Which is easy enough when it involves keeping my legs still, and not letting my fingers trace over his shoulders and his back, but not so practicable when it means stopping my tongue from wagging.

“Okay then,” I gripe, “Tell me what the first thing I thought about was when I woke up this morning.”

Marco quirks an eyebrow, playfully unimpressed.

“I didn’t say I was _psychic_ ,” he says.

“C’mon, just guess. It ain’t exactly hard.”

Marco purses his lips, returning to fiddling curiously with the silver metal of my piercings, having tugged the loose collar of the shirt away from my neck. He seems fascinated, swirling his thumb around and around the stud and running his finger along the ridge of my clavicle, and back again. I know he feels how my fingers dig into his arms on reflex, because I catch the mischievous-looking glint comet across his eyes. I scowl at him censoriously.

“Maybe,” he shrugs meekly, “About me?”

“Too vague. Be more specific,” I retort dryly.

Marco laughs brightly, slapping me lightly on the shoulder as he scoffs.

“You didn’t even deny it!” he squeaks, his cheeks flaringly darkly. “G-give me a clue?”

“W-wanted to ask you something,” I reply bashfully, rubbing a hand around the back of my neck awkwardly. Marco recognises my nervousness, and pulls himself tighter against me – which doesn’t exactly _help_ the matter. He leans in and nudges his nose against my cheek flirtatiously, and I could almost imagine him fucking _purring_.

“Ask me,” he hums lowly, his breath murmuring against my cheek where he ghosts his lips. I drag the hand that I had scouring through my undercut through my hair, and then down over my face, twisting away from his teasing lips and hiding my eyes with my fingers. Marco pulls back, tilting his head at me curiously.

“The _b-boyfriend_ thing,” I choke through a whisper, not daring to unshield my eyes. “I was … I wanted to ask if— y’know, you wanted to do this, uhm— officially, or—” I stop myself prematurely, clamping my mouth shut as I wince. I pry my fingers open to peek at him anxiously. “S-shit, I mean, I didn’t mean to ask like—”

Marco’s eyes are like dinner plates – wide and shiny in his surprise, and his mouth falls open in a round o-shape. He pulls away from me, sitting up properly and twisting around, the checked covers falling down around his waist, and he holds me at an arm’s length. My eyes fly over his face, taking in every crease around his eyes or lips or in his brow, and I can feel the tell-tale signs of word vomit brewing in my stomach and threatening to spew up and out of my throat.

“I-I mean, I uh— it was just that Mina said yesterday that I should ask— b-but also she said your mom was pestering you about it, and telling you t-that— shit, I mean, that’s not the reason that I want to— I just really, really want to be your— _uhm_. S-shit. Fuck. Uhm.”

 _Eloquent_.

I fist my fingers in the duvet that covers my lap and stomach, squeezing handfuls of the well-worn linen in my palms. I gulp, staring hard down at the green and blue and white squares on Marco’s bedspread, my eyes following the geometric pattern staunchly.

Marco stutters on incoherent sounds, starting to say something before closing his mouth and huffing – and then he starts fucking _laughing_.

_I don’t see what’s so f-fucking funny._

Marco ducks his head onto my disgruntled shoulder, and I watch his back heave as he tries to control his chuckling. I swat him on the arm, scowling.

“H-hey, I was being s-serious! Don’t … don’t laugh, I—”

“You ask so _bluntly_!” Marco giggles, interrupting me. He lifts his head, and his eyes are sparkling, creased up like crescent moons and decorated with laughter lines at the corners of his apexes. He bites down on his bottom lip, but his grin is broad and makes me suck in a sharp and unexpected breath. “ _This boyfriend thing_?” he mimics crassly, snickering lightly. “Are you asking me if I want to date you?”

“I told you I don’t do p-poetry,” I mumble, causing Marco to shake his head as he chuckles breezily.

“I think that’s a lie,” he retorts jovially. One of his hands drops away from my shoulders, and I follow it reverently with my eyes as he pushes away the duvet that covers my lap, before clambering onto my thighs. I can’t help the pathetic little mewl that escapes my lips as his hips slot against mine, and he fucking _straddles_ my legs … _Jesus, save me_.

I don’t know what to do with my hands, awkwardly twisting and untwisting my fingers in the white sheets, until Marco grabs both my wrists, guiding my palms to rest on his pyjama-covered thighs. I wonder if my eyes are bulging out of my skull yet.

He cups my pouting, bewildered face, and snorts airily through his nose again, trying his hardest not to laugh as he knocks his forehead against mine, shaking whatever nonsense I have blended into a pulp inside my head.

“I’ve wanted to … to do the _boyfriend_ thing for a very long time, Jean,” he hums brazenly. I lick my lips, eyeing up _his_ , and he squirms when my fingers automatically dig into his muscular thighs. “Be your boyfriend. I’d … I’d like that a lot.”

“R-really?” I squeak.

Marco laughs heartily.

“Yes, Jean!” he chuckles, “ _Really_ , really!”

“I-I won’t be very good at it though,” I quip shyly, as Marco brushes my nose with his, a happy humming noise escape his lips as a musical tenor. “I’ve never … never had a— _y’know_. I haven’t … _dated_ anyone b-before.”

Marco slips up, dipping in to peck at my lips briskly. I open my mouth on reflex, but he pulls away just as quickly, looking guilty in the pink that paints the apples of his cheeks round and definitely kissable. (I should _do_ something about that.)

“It’s okay,” he says quickly, wriggling forwards on my legs, “I, uhm … I’m the same? B-but, I think, uh … I think it’s okay. If it’s with _you_ , that is. Figuring it out with you, uhm— that would be pretty good.”

“You sure?” I jibe, “Even if I have to disappear onto the roof to wax lyrical about the world, or whatever it was—?”

“ _Jean_!”

“You were the one who brought it up!”

Marco replies with a kiss – fiercely pressing his lips against mine and slipping his tongue between them, and it stumbles over the precipice into warm, wet breaths, and my hands roaming up and down his thighs, feeling my way along the seam of his pyjama pants, until his breath hitches in my mouth when my thumb slides up to the hollow of the vee of his hips, and he tenses up entirely.

He pulls away from the kiss with a lewd pop, and his mouth slick with mine and his saliva, all pink and delicately swollen, and _oh boy, is it a little warm in here, or_ —

He breathes heavily, his shoulders rising and falling like he’s just crossed the finish line of a marathon, but when he realises the question in my eyes, his lips break out once more into a breathless, _heart-stopping_ smile. He tips his head shyly to the side and rubs his pointer finger beneath his nose, but can’t drag his eyes away from my face. He laughs huskily, the sound mingled with the rumble in his chest, which gets more rasping when I run my fingers curiously back up to the contours of his hips. I keep my eyes fixed on his, intrigued by the way he blushes even _brighter_ , and squeezes his eyes shut when I touch him there.

I curl my fingers around the waistband of his pyjama pants, and ping the elastic against his skin. His look becomes more daring, more _intense_. I bite the inside of my cheek shamelessly, and can’t conceal a bold chuckle at his worked-up expense.

(I file this information away for future reference.)

Marco spreads his thighs a little wider over my lap, tripping over a light gasp when I trace my fingers once again over his hips, letting my fingers stray into what feels like pretty _tempting_ trail of coarse, dark curls slipping below his pants. I raise both my eyebrows appreciatively as Marco sucks in his lower lip, his eyes hazing over with something dizzy and smoky. I try not to make it look purposeful when I lift my hips, pretending I’m just shuffling beneath him, but I watch intoxicated as the tanned column of his throat bobs and his jaw tenses. I roll my hips upwards again, holding him steady in my lap, and this time his ragged little breath is unmistakable.

There’s a grumble in my throat and it coaxes Marco down, nipping carefully at the angle of my jaw until my eyes flutter closed and fighting the urge to arch up into him has me shivering. My hands stray to his cheeks and tilt his lips to catch mine, stealing a sweet kiss and a supple, shaky moan from Marco’s chest as I drag my thumbs idly over his jawline and the tender skin beneath his ear, and slip my tongue against his. I try to roll my hips again, but Marco pushes back, grinning widely with his tongue poking out between his teeth.

“You have morning breath,” he remarks teasingly, sliding an inch or two back on my thighs, giving me some breathing room down south, where I’m more than positive I feel a twitch. I scowl up at him, distracting myself by prodding him in the leg.

“You’re one to talk,” I retort, “Didn’t brush your teeth last night. Totally gross.”

Marco scoffs, shrugging his shoulders. He ducks back down and brushes his lips fleetingly against mine again – I try to keel forward, to maintain the contact, but he leans out of my reach, his fingers swiping through my hair, nails blunt against my scalp as he swipes down the longest ash-blonde strands onto my forehead until it tickles my eyes. I direct a grumbling puff of air upwards, trying to breeze it out of my face, but it just flops back down over my eyebrows.

“All part of the boyfriend package,” he remarks mischievously, but _God_ , I don’t think I’ve ever seen him _smile_ so fucking wide, or _sparkle_ so damn much. It’s a far cry from shivering against my chest in the dark and calling out for his dad – and I wonder if he even remembers any of that. He said he dreamt of me, but was I in the same dream? Or did that come after, and erase the painful, hazy memories of the things that left tear tracks down his face when he was asleep.

The colour in his eyes glimmers, reflecting the gradient of soft yellow sunlight in the flecks of copper brown and topaz, like molten gold. I could paint those eyes. He’s fucking beautiful. I feel a little winded.

“Could take it back, y’know,” I pout, resting my hands back on his legs. “Can easily go back to being _just friends_.”

“ _Jean_!”

He shoves me gently, and I flop back against the pillows with a thud, laughing, but he’s not exactly _impressed_. Not that it matters. The feeling that bubbles up so brilliantly in my chest is golden, something like holding a sparkler from the wrong end, with all the lightning springing out from between the gaps my fingers but without the burn, without the pain; splatterings of white-hot colour that burst as flowers in full bloom, reminding me of how his telling smile is like a sunflower, save twice as bright.

He raises his eyebrows, silently asking me what’s so _funny_ , and when I shrug, he shoves me again with an affronted-sounding squawk. I can’t help but grin, even if Marco wipes the smirk from my face with another vacuum kiss that sucks out all the air from my lungs and leaves me panting when he withdraws. He slaps me playfully on the shoulder.

“Hey, if I’m gonna get a kiss every time, I’ll say stuff like that more often,” I joke. Marco scowls at me, unimpressed. I crane my head again, relinquishing my grip on his thighs to find his chin and tilt it down towards me, searching for his lips with a triumphant quirk of my own – but the creak of his bedroom door is not exactly something I want to hear, accompanied by a shrill voice.

“You know that’s how you get, like … _cooties_ and stuff, Marco.”

Shrill, and entirely _unamused_.

Marco rolls off of me like it’s _nothing_ , a cheerful, sunny grin in place as he plops onto the mattress beside me, and his sister bounds over to the bedside from the open door, wrapped up in her fluffy dressing gown.

Nice to see they’re both so chipper. I’m fucking mortified. That was close. Too close. Definitely too fucking close. I don’t think there was even anything close about it – Mina just walked in on her older brother straddling me.

I don’t know about her, but _I_ want to bleach _my_ eyes out, and I was the one trying to kiss him.

“I don’t think it works like that, Mina,” Marco chimes happily, the blush in his cheeks barely more than a pretty dusting that is nothing to the raging fucking _fire_ burning in my face and causing steam to pour out of my ears. I flop backwards onto the mattress with a muffled thump, hitting the pillow as I suffocate a mortified whine in my throat, chewing it down as I grit my teeth – I throw a hand across my face to try and save myself some dignity. _Good fucking luck with that_.

“All boys have cooties, so it’s like … double the cooties!” Mina quips; I groan loudly, and keep my arm pressed across my eyes, because I definitely don’t want to see Mina’s scrutiny, or the way Marco is undoubtedly trying his hardest not to laugh at me. I tug at the duvet covers, hoping to pull them up around my face and slink away into the safety of the sheets and become a hermit, but Marco’s weight on the covers prevents me from finding much slack.

I grumble again, but it bursts into a pained _welp_ when Mina fucking _launches_ herself onto the bed – and my legs. Possibly breaking them. _Probably_ breaking them. She’s heavier than she looks.

Neither Marco nor Mina seems to actually care about my apparent pain, which is, y’know, _great_. She bounces up and down on the mattress and the springs groan creakingly in response as she tries to tackle her brother, flinging her arms around his shoulders and pulling him into a playful headlock that he pretends is far stronger than it actually is. I peek out from underneath my arm, watching Marco as he reaches back and tickles her mercilessly under the ribs, and however awkward or embarrassed I might feel, I guess it really means nothing compared to how radiant he is, surrounded by people who _care_ about him.

I slowly unshield my face, resting my hands gently on my stomach – Marco looks up and makes eye contact, grinning blindingly at me. Mina is clawing her way up his back, trying to clamber over his shoulders, but he holds in her place with one hand, rubbing his other hands up my leg through the covers, reassuringly. His smile twitches sympathetically, but he doesn’t have time to act on it, with Mina demanding that he pass her a pillow.

“You’re like a little monkey, you know?” Marco cajoles to his sister, as I pass him the pillow I’m not flopped on. “Why do you want a pillow, huh?”

He passes the pillow over his shoulder and Mina seizes it greedily, weaponising it almost immediately, smacking her brother over the head with it, laughing wickedly.

“I’m unarmed, I’m unarmed!” Marco squawks, shielding his face with defensive palms outstretched. “Jean has the other pillow!”

Mina’s head whips around and I swear to _God_ there’s evil intent in her eyes to rival Connie and Sasha any day; she scrambles away from Marco, all pointy elbows and knees jabbing into my legs as she wields the pillow over her head and smacks me hard on the chest.

“Mmph! _Ow_!”

“Pick up the pillow and fight me!” Mina grins triumphantly, swatting me again on the stomach with way more force that necessary. She’s clearly out to beat me to a pulp – and pillows can hurt when they’re wielded with malicious intent, okay?  Okay. “C’mon, Jean! Stop being such a wimp!”

“I-I’m not a wimp!” I protest, swatting the pillow away with my hands when she tries to beat me with it again. “I’m just looking— _mmph_ — out for you, ‘cus I’m the pillow fight— _ow_ — champ! I’d pulverise you if I— _hey_ — fought properly!”

Mina shoots me a look that tells me to stop running my mouth, because she believes _none of it_.

“Marco, get his hands,” she instructs coolly; my eyes whip over to Marco, and I fucking dare him, I fucking—

“You stay outta this, Mar— _mmph_!”

I receive an elbow to the gut as Marco pounces on me, squeezing all the air out of my lungs as he makes a grab for my wrists as I try to seize them out of his grasp – I’m too slow, of course, and a lot of squawking on my part results in him having my hands pinned down on the mattress, and Mina buffing me in the face with two hands full of duck feathers.

Marco laughs brightly as I squirm, but he holds my arms down securely; I kick my legs, causing Mina to dive out the way and thump onto the floor, but all she does is giggle, eagerly springing to her feet and going in for round two of _let’s beat up Jean when he did absolutely nothing wrong_.

Thankfully, I’m saved when Anita pitches up at Marco’s open door – though I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. Judging by the way I watch all colour drain from Marco's face, only to be replaced by a deep, deep red, I'd say it's not exactly _sparklingly_ great. 

“Are you annoying your brother, _piccola_?” comes her voice – a little sleep raspy, or maybe just raspy from yesterday, I don’t know – and Mina pauses, sliding to the edge of the bed feigning an _angelic_ smile and the picture of innocence as she shoves the pillow behind her back, giving me a view of Anita leant against the doorframe. Her curly hair is piled up messily on top of her head, pinned up with hair slides and her spectacles resting on her forehead. She’s wearing a nightgown and fluffy slippers that have seen better days, and has a dressing gown loosely draped over her shoulders, not tied around her waist. She’s clearly not expecting me to be here.

“I’m not annoying him! He’s helping me fight Jean!” Mina chirps playfully, abandoning her pillow and sliding off the mattress clumsily. Anita smiles warmly at her youngest, but her dark eyes barely flitter over Mina's mischievous excitement, returning to scan scrutinously over my startled gawk, and then rest more certainly on Marco's similar one. Her expression is unreadable - and that in itself is unsettling enough to make my stomach believe it stands a chance on the Olympic gymnastics teams, backflipping and cartwheeling all over the place, because Anita's cordiality has never been anything less than effortless and serene. I force back a gall-tasting gulp. 

Marco lets go of my hands, and _now_ he’s bashful. As for me, I’ve _been_ to bashful, and left it far behind in the dust. I wriggle upright, opening and closing my mouth like a fish as I try to scrabble for what words to say, considering she’s just walked in on me … technically in her son’s bed. Bashful is an understatement. I fist my hands in Marco's bed sheets, and clumsily try to kick my way out of the cocoon of his checked duvet, hoping, fallibly, that I might be able to pretend I was never underneath his covers. 

This is not how this was supposed to go. Hell, we haven’t even had time to discuss how we wanted it to go, and now, here I am lying on my back, propped up on my elbows, watching as Marco’s mom tries to hide the way she gapes at me. Shitballs. 

 _F-fuck, what am I supposed to say now_ —

I glance up at Marco in a mild panic, but his gaze is turned down at the covers on his bed and he’s suddenly darkly timid, judging by the worry lines that mark-up his face and the way he picks at the fabric of his quilts. Mina seems to sense something’s amiss too, because she looks quickly between her mom, Marco, and me, frowning in confusion.

_Maybe I shouldn't have stayed over. Maybe it's silly — God, it's totally silly, I should've given them all a bit of space. Of course Anita's going to be shocked, why shouldn't she be shocked; I shouldn't have let Marco persuade me to—_

Marco is the first to speak up.

“M-mom, I need to tell you—”

He doesn’t get very far. Anita folds her arms across her chest, looks mildly unimpressed, and interrupts him calmly. I feel a silent wheeze squeeze out of my lungs as if someone's wringing the last dredges of water out of a damp towel inside of my chest. I feel myself prepare to recoil, hit much too quickly by things I haven't the chance to consider, but _should've_ \- because this is _us_ now. This is _me_ , this is what I'll have to deal with, when it's like this between Marco and I—

“Well, Marco,” she says severely, and I know I miss a breath or two, the lump in my throat sticking to the sides of my gullet as I try to swallow it down stutteringly. It's cinematographically dramatic in the way a whole bunch of things seem to flash across my mind - all sorts of frantic panic that extend their hands way further than Marco's mom finding me innocently-enough tangled up in his sheets. I see my mom, and for a second, my dad too, and an epileptic sort of weight appears on my heart at the thought of the things I haven't pressed played on yet. Of the consequences that are bound to come knocking at my door sooner rather than later, and which definitely don't have a rewind button. I stare dumbly at Anita, her pause for effect dragged out excruciatingly to my ears, which seem to think it's equally a good idea to imagine what words would come out of my _own_ mother's mouth if it were handing their instead. For a moment, I swear I genuinely _hear_ my mom's voice when Anita opens her mouth to speak. 

“How about _next_ time Jean stays over, you tell me in advance, hmm? Fortunately, I’ve made extra batter this morning, so it’s not a problem, but I’d rather he didn’t go home thinking we were bad hosts now.”

 _This can't be fucking good for my blood pressure._  

Marco and I both blink rapidly; Anita’s face contorts into a humorous smile, and she shakes her head, chuckling lightly, I’m sure, at how alarmed the pair of us look. Alarmed is a fucking understatement. I feel like someone's just gone and pried a defibrillator to my chest whilst I was still conscious, and given me a good frying. The noise that croaks from my lips is something on the borderline between a crackled sob, and the sound of a deflating pool ring, having just suffering a skewering puncture. 

“So,” she grins, and the broadness of her smile makes up for the tiredness in her wrinkle-lined eyes, “Who wants some pancakes?”

I stare glaringly up at Marco, undecided if shocked or appalled is exactly what I'm feeling, because— because that— that's not wh— I mean, there's meant to be shouting, right? Or a scorned look? Disappointment? Words kept to the side and grilled into us later when we've both got our heads hung around the kitchen table, staring scolded at our feet? Right?

 _Isn't there meant to be a bollocking_ , is what my bewilderment screams, matching the way I feel my heartbeat spike irregularly and subsequently flat-line into a dumb, wordless gape. Marco doesn't really have any answers to give me - not coherent ones at least - because he looks just as shell-shocked that his mom just gleefully asked us what we want for breakfast, and not  _why the hell is Jean sleeping in your bed?_

Amidst Mina' squawks of  _pancakes, pancakes, pancakes_ , I realise opaquely that I am prepared for a grand total of none of this.

(But maybe a stack of pancakes might help the matter.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's part 2 of the promised double update!
> 
> I'm not completely happy with this chapter ... but I can't figure out why. I think the balance is off, which I guess is to be expected considering this was written as a direct continuation of the last chapter, so doesn't really have the structure of a fully stand-alone chapter. But oh well. it is what it is. Please be gentle with me.
> 
> Not much plot development here ... but character exploration, there was a lot. And also a lot of fluff. Crack your toothbrushes out, don't get cavities. Should mention the line about "a little bit of saving the world" is taken from a quote by an unnamed anthropology professor, and I loved it so much that I adapted it. I thought it was a brilliant piece of philosophy that fit pretty damn well to the fic. 
> 
> I'll move the plot forward again in the next chapter, for certain. I think Jean's dad will be back. And the new semester is starting up, which will throw in some new situations for Jean and Marco. We're approaching the end of the fic, but we've still got some good things left to come, and a little more angst, and certainly a little more conflict.
> 
> Your feedback is invaluable, so please please please feel free to leave your comments below - I read all of them, and they're /so/ useful when it comes to writing. I like to look back at previous comments and learn from them what parts of past chapters go down well with you guys. My Tumblr inbox is also open for questions, and you can post anything in the "fic: droplets" tag, and I'll see it.
> 
> Thank you for all the comments on the first part of this chapter, and for the art and feedback that's come my way! Until next time. Hopefully it won't be too long away.


	23. Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are exactly where you need to be.

Here’s the thing about pancakes: _they demand to be eaten_. I know that’s not how the quote goes, but I think it sounds far better, and apparently I like to brutalise other people’s literature when I’m in a mild state of panic.

Pancakes demand to be eaten. Ideally, by me, and smothered with maple syrup and sprinkled with chocolate chips. Or sugar and lemon works great too. Bananas and melted caramel maybe on days when I’m feeling healthier—

For the briefest of moments, it is the mouth-watering thought of a hearty breakfast that ripples through my mind, hoovering up the splintered fragments of surprise that has just raked down the inside of my conscious.

_Did Anita really just— and then ask us if we wanted—_

Mina squawks loudly in the door to Marco’s room, her fingers fisted in Anita’s dressing gown as she blabbers about wanting _this_ amount of chocolate sprinkles, and _that_ amount of whipped cream on her pancakes – but it all rattles in through one ear and out through the other, and I gawp agapely at the way Marco’s mom’s smile forays on a line somewhere between embracing and mischievous.

Her full lips twitch upwards the longer I stare, open-eyed and open-mouthed, and the creases of her teasing smile become lost in crescent-shape wrinkles that dent her cheeks.

“You’ll stay for breakfast, won’t you, _caro_?” she beams resolutely, and whatever jagged pieces of disbelief that were jamming their way down my throat and preventing me from speaking turn instantly to dust, filling up my lungs with a grainy, sawdust sort of feeling that makes me splutter when I try to say yes and nod my head far too vigorously.

Anita’s grin becomes toothy, a little peek of tongue slipping between her yellow-white teeth in a habit much the same as Marco when he smiles too broadly and unabashedly. Her eyes wrinkle up with the folds of crow’s feet, and she pets Mina, who still clings to her impatiently, motheringly on the head.

“Wonderful,” she simply and breezily. “I’ll be sure to set an extra place then. Come on down when you’re ready.”

My eyes cast back to Marco beside me, his back ramrod straight as he sits to attention, his face the colour of a near-to-bursting thermometer, and I swear beads of sweat could be forming on his forehead at any moment. He swallows, and despite being caught up in the way his throat bobs when he does, I do manage to catch the choking noise that he excuses as words.

“Y-yep, we’ll be – _uhm_ – right there, mom.”

There’s a look that Anita throws her son, then and there, that makes the colour flare even _hotter_ in his cheeks, and makes _me_ need to whip my eyes away at breakneck speed – because it’s as suggestive as a wink, and I do not _ever_ need to see that – nope, _never_.

Anita’s thick eyebrows shoot up towards her hairline and she laughs heartily, patting her stomach giddily at the state she’s thrown the pair of us into by tipping us _out_ of the box with no warning, before turning to Mina and ushering her out of the door with the promise of chocolate chip pancakes. God _dammit_.

The second the door clicks shut, I fall back into Marco’s pillows with a noise torn from my lips that sounds something like a dying cat screaming it up in an alley at four in the morning. I grabble for one of the discarded pillow from our impromptu pillow fight and slam it over my face, my groans becoming muffled by linen and lumpy feathers.

“Oh … my God,” I hear Marco gush, and imagine him burying his face in his hands, the redness in his cheeks blaring through the gaps in his fingers. His mattress squeaks loudly as he shifts and then flops backwards with a deflated _thud_ beside me. The springs squawk and the headboard buffets the wall and I worry which one of us will set fire to his bed linen sooner with how furnacely hot we both burn.

“That was … that was _not_ how I wanted to tell her,” Marco admonishes, his voice sounding wheezed. His heavy breathing is undulating. “Oh God, I’m so … _embarrassed_.”

I squeeze my eyelids tightly shut and breathe hotly into the pillow, more a surrendering sob than anything else, before slowly peeling it away from my face, creating a tunnel of mid-morning light through which to see the way Marco lies on his back beside me, one arm flopped across his face as he stares dumbly at the swirls on his ceiling.

He’s been out to his family for almost half a year now – but I suppose it must be very different bringing home the first boyfriend, even if it’s not really the first time he’s brought me over at all, merely … well, merely the first time his mom has found me in his bed. Fuck.  Fuck, yeah, _very different_.

My own heart still beats very loudly and very brashly inside my chest, and I know that he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t prepared for _that_.

Truth be told, I haven’t even really considered _this_ , or _that_ , or anything in between – not until now. Because in this little paradisiac bubble – even if it hasn’t been all that smooth sailing, and things have been rocky, and waves have been large and forbearing – there’s been a sense of it just being Marco and I holding onto the edges of our coracle being bruised by whatever current we’re facing on whatever the day. I guess that’s not entirely the case, and when one storm clears, it becomes more possible to see how vast the stretch of ocean is out before you, and perhaps, what other ships – bigger, blacker, grander – might be navigating the seas too.

 _It’s not just us_ , is what I’m trying to see.  Within our _us_ , there are other people – his sister, his mom, _my_ mom, my dad – other people who we might want to tell, or who we should at least discuss about telling.

The feeling that spirals in my chest is bitter – something grey and a little guilty, and it wrings me the same way as too much dirt brushed across my skin. I feel unclean for having pushed Marco into that position – coercing him onto that podium atop which he’s forced to splutter to his mom about what we are now.

God. I feel bad. A gritty, selfish sort of bad that I haven’t felt in a while. Nice to know _that’s_ still a thing, despite the pretence of the _bubble_.

The feeling audates itself as another smothered groan, and I roll over towards Marco, my shoulder buffeting his as I careen onto my front, squishing my nose firmly into his pillow. Smells too much like me _already_. Not fair.

“’M sorry,” I mumble feebly, not daring to raise my head and wonder if he turns to look at me in earnest. “F-fuck, I … _mrrmph_. Fuck.”

The bed creaks again, and I imagine Marco twisting to face me, some sort of precious perturbation pulling up his eyebrows into a frown, and tilting down the corners of his lips. There’s still a close warmth radiating from him, but I am acutely aware that we are no long touching. It becomes an ache all too quickly.

“Jean?”

Another groan weasels its way from my throat and into the pillow, and it begs me to twist my head to look at him, still squinting against the light.

“’M sorry,” I repeat disdainfully, scrunching my mouth up into a flat pucker. I heave a hand out from where I have both arms squashed beneath my weight and drag my fingers across my face, pressing my fingertips hard into my cheek. Marco’s frown stiffens, and he pushes himself up onto his elbow so that he can look down on me; I can’t help but huff at the expectant look in his dark eyes.

“That _was_ embarrassing,” I mumble, flickering away from his gaze, unable to hold it for longer than a simple appreciation of the colour in his irises when the sun hits his face at such an angle as it does now. My heart flutters like a sparrow that has caught the wind wrong. “You … you hadn’t told me if you wanted your mom to know, and I … I shoulda just not …”

 _Just not been caught? Just not stayed over? Just_ not _._

_This is like blundering in the God-damn dark._

“’M sorry for putting you in … in that position,” I grit. “S-shit, if you didn’t want Anita to know yet, or—”

“Jean.”

“F-fuck, I’m sorry, Marco.”

“ _Jean_.”

“I hadn’t even thought about having to … to _tell_ people, and now you have to deal with it like this, and— and I don’t even know what the right thing to do—”

“Jean, _look at me_.”

I realise I‘ve been addressing my concerns loudly to his chest and not his eyes, but when I glance up at him, there’s nothing but warmth and acceptance – and possibly mild amusement – gently cradled in the softness of his expression. He shakes his head, and then reaches out to trace his thumb over the rise of my cheek tentatively. The little bird in my chest spins in pinwheels.

“It’s okay,” he says simply, trailing his fingers to the corner of my mouth and then along my prickly jaw, up towards my ear. The skin in more sensitive there. “It’s a little embarrassing, yes, but—”

He leans forward and I feel the suppleness of his lips press a deft kiss behind my ear as he sweeps my hair out of the way. His breath tickles my skin, a little deeper than I’d like to admit, and I feel taut. His fingers curl around the neck of the t-shirt of his that I’m still wearing, and he tugs the fabric down, stretching it a little, so he can nuzzle his way to the nape of my neck and plant more reassuring kisses there, giving each of them glass-like wings that flutter and scatter brilliantly across the tremors that he never fails to cause. I squirm, and he chuckles breathily in my ear before leaning back.

“But it’s not like I don’t want her to know. I want _everyone_ to know,” he continues, “Well, everyone that _you_ want to know. I … I want to tell people that you mean a lot to me, Jean.”

I sniff loudly, and consider burying my face back in the pillow, if it weren’t for the eclipse in both his eyes – the black of his pupils so blown that the rings of his irises are barely halos of colour. The deep abyss absorbs me, and maybe I should go tumbling into it, for that’s what so much space really requires. I feel small lying next to him, my nose to his shoulder – but not small in an insignificant way.

“I … want people to get _sick_ of hearing how crazy I am about you,” he adds, his tone licked with something more intense and rich in colour as he turns his head to lean in close again. “Is that bad?”

I blink owlishly, something like whiplash straining my neck and throat and lungs as my eyes dart to his lips and then back to his eyes again, wildly. _He does this on purpose, r-right?_ I gulp stiffly.

“Try telling that to Connie and Sasha and the others,” I grouse, ruing the nervous tremor in my voice, “Eren especially. He’ll probably hit you. You’ll be … losing friends left, right, and centre for being … being such a G-God-damn _sap_.”

Marco bites his lip, but his smile still curls its way around how his teeth nibble his skin a rosy pink.

“Worth it,” he chimes coyly, and he knows he’s found a weak spot in the way I let my eyes roll and snort haughtily through my nose.

“ _Worth it_ ,” I mimic sarcastically, “Some _Casanova_ you are.”  

Marco chuckles and rolls onto his side, poking my toes with his until I let him tangle his legs with mine again. He tugs at the pillow beneath my head, stealing the corner and pulling at it impatiently until he has enough space to lay his head next to mine, our noses brushing, and the shadows of his eyelashes on his star-kissed skin distinctly visible.

“Are you suitably swept off your feet?” he asks impishly, nuzzling the tip of my nose playfully. Purposefully or not – I don’t really know – he wets his lips, and I feel myself twitch.

“In your _dreams_ , Freckles,” I retort huskily, edging myself closer with fingers finding twisting holds in his shirt. Marco hums happily at the contact, snaking his arms around my waist and guiding me willingly closer. “I’m not—” I puff a gentle wisp of air against his mouth, and slowly steal myself the centimetres, and then millimetres, that exist between my lips and his, greedily lapping up every moment of daybreak space that is too much and too teasing. A moment suspends between us, his eyes on the way my words form viscously, and mine daring to flutter closed. “—So easily persuaded.”

Marco doesn’t let me bluff for long – indulging one or two dandelion kisses as I press my mouth heedfully against his upper lip, and rewarding himself with a peppering of happy whispers along my jaw – before he prizes himself away and scrambles over my legs, almost kneeing me in the crotch as he stumbles out of bed. I roll over with an incumbent frown, following the path he trips across the bombsite of his room, disappointed to be abandoned in the midst of thalassic things.

Okay, so it’s not a _bad_ sight – his pyjamas hang low on his hips, and he has very nice hips indeed, taut with muscle in the small of his back where freckles seem to pool – but he also seems to suck all the warmth out of the bed in the same instance, and I draw my legs up towards my chest as I watch him fling open the doors of his closet and begin throwing around items of clothing that really deserve better treatment than _that_.

The floors in this house must be thin, because I think I can just about make out the faint fizzle of a stove downstairs, and the clatter of plates, and the shrill, metallic clank of cutlery being fetched from a drawer – and yep, the smell of pancakes: warm, rich, and gluttonous, with the sort of sticky, moreish weight that makes me both full and _starving hungry_ from just breathing in the air that has dappled in Anita’s cooking and drifted upstairs and under the gap in the door. My stomach growls aggressively; I frown down at it, as if I might scold it into not being so God-damn whale-like in its noises, but it just rumbles fortuitously again.

I wonder if it’s a taste I could get used to – not just the pancakes of course, but the domesticity. Is that something _I_ could be allowed? It feels like something far too superficial to be touched – too delicate, too fragile a thing that really exists as just a pendulum moment that is swiped away into foggy clouds of a daydream with a careless hand.

The thought of mornings spent like this – well, not exactly like _this_ , but with the promise of sunrise kisses and soft, lazy murmurs into my hair, and that lethargic feeling of an ash-dying summer – and of padding sleepily down into the kitchen to eat together around a breakfast table, and to laugh with his family, and to be trusted by his sister, and loved equally by his mom … is a fierce craving.

But perhaps so fierce that it’s worth fearing. Not in its essence, but in how my paradigm would spread its shadow over those breezy hopes of waking beside him to the breath of fresh grass, chalky pollen, and a chorus of birds in the eaves of the house.

Thinking about telling people about us terrifies me. And it’s the worst sort of realisation, because the uncomfortable chill that sprouts so suddenly beneath my skin all too quickly becomes spindles and tangles of twisted spines, digging up the earth that rests between my sinews and tendons – and then it becomes _more_ than uncomfortable. An itch, a scratch, something that needs caving out of my skin with blunt nails.

I don’t want to be scared about it. My eyes focus again on Marco’s back as he hums a tenor tune, folding a hoody over his forearm as he continues to search through his closet.

_I am not ashamed of it. Not ashamed of him._

So it’s a selfish fear. Good to know.

Or maybe it’s not, but I’m still learning to tell the difference, and old habits don’t always die hard. They live quite peacefully beneath the surface, and rear their heads ugly when they care to remind you that you haven’t yet changed from what you were before.

Thinking about telling mom about Marco and I … makes my stomach compress itself down into a fistful of muscle and it squeezes. I never thought of her as the sort of person who would— who might— who _could_ —

But she _could_. She could react that way I fear, and it would hurt so much more to rip open that tear that we’ve just sewn back together with thick and callous scar tissue. And what would be worse – the blood, or the fact that it would only become a scar deeper and blacker than before, if it ever would heal?

I twist my fingers in Marco’s sheets and tug his duvet up towards my nose, inhaling deeply as I knot my feet into the soft linen, hoping that it might anchor me to the bed and prevent me surfacing from the deep water of _what if_.

And then there’s dad. I don’t even know if I want him to know – because it’s an outright shattering of his cookie-cutter mould, if ever there was one – but there feels like an obligation there. I know there shouldn’t be, and I know that what it is that I feel for the boy with the freckles and Hollywood smile is mine to favour and mine to nurture and mine to keep close to my heart if that’s how I want it – but the sense of duty remains.

(Maybe it just shows how little autonomy I’ve really had. Maybe it just shows that I still fear what my father’s repercussions might be. Maybe it shows that I’m still not the person I desperately want to be.)

The day will happen. Maybe one day I’ll tell him outright; maybe one day he’ll catch Marco and I being too close, and he’ll realise; maybe one day I’ll just let it slip, along with a barrage of everything else I’ve never quite been eloquent enough to tell him.

I think it’s the uncertainty that makes me shiver, despite the warmth of the sun that creates a column of yellow-gold through the skylight of Marco’s room. It’s the fact that I feel I have no control over what might happen, and I can’t even begin to figure out how to _seize_ it for myself.

_I’ve never done anything like this before._

I want to be confident for Marco. God knows he needs that of me right now, and not someone fumbling and tripping over his own … _sexuality_ or whatever. Or really the fear of other people _finding out_ about that sexuality. I don’t want him to think I’m embarrassed of him. It’s so, so far from that. But how do I tell him that?

“H-hey, Marco?” I stammer, pulling up his quilts to hide most of my face, save my eyes. Marco turns around too happily, with too much of the spring in his step that I’m unused to seeing, and his smile is too broad and too sunny for the way that I’ve twisted myself into feeling. “D’you want to … y’know … tell your mom _properly_?”

Marco tilts his head onto his shoulder plaintively, and hooks another hoody over his shoulder before picking his way back across the room towards me. I duck my eyes away from his face when he perches on the edge of the mattress, one of his hands immediately coming to rest on my side over the duvet, whilst I fiddle pointedly with the corners of his sheets.

“Is that something you want to do?” he asks me fondly, slowly swirling his fingers in sluggish circles over where he feels the protrusions of my hips.

I shrug, chewing on the inside of my cheek.

“Maybe. I dunno.”

Marco presses his lips together tightly, and it shrinks his smile. He leans down and presses his forehead tenderly to mine, breaths deep and steadying as he shuts his eyes. The feeling passes over me too – and maybe he meant for it – and I feel the glassy tension in my chest begin to sublime.

“I think she’s already seen enough,” he breathes softly, with a slight chuckle, “But I think … I think I _do_ want to tell her properly. If that’s okay with you.”

He leans back just enough to search the look in my eyes – and whatever it is that he can see there, I’d appreciate him telling me, because the fuddled mix of subsiding fear, and my squalling heartbeat, and the little bit of a magnetic pull radiating from the inches between our lips, is enough to make my head swim.

A deep blush resides in his cheeks – no longer a shock of panicked red, but a saccharine pink that seems natural and at home amongst the clover patch of freckles across his cheekbones.

“You’re red,” I find myself huffing. Marco laughs bashfully, his hand moving from ghosting up and down over my ribs, to touch his own cheek, feeling how much warmth he is conducting.

“ _Thanks for noticing_ ,” he gripes, flingingone of the hoodies draped over his arm unceremoniously over my face, laughing at my spluttering welp.

The soft jersey smells like him, of course – that aphrodisiac chamomile, mingled with the same mustiness that seems to hang in the air in this house. I press my nose to the fabric whilst it’s still spread across my face, and inhale deeply.

“’M scared, y’know.”

Not being able to see his eyes makes it a little easier to admit, but not much. I feel Marco shift on the mattress, his hand returning to my ribs, even as I try to curl in on myself again.

“Of what?” he asks. I swallow thickly, and reluctantly pull the hoody away from my eyes, so that I can peak at him from over the top of the jersey.

“Moving forward. Stuff. I dunno. _This_. Never done anything like this before.”

 _Of the flinch that lives inside of me like a_ slug _that refuses to move when I think about things like the future._

Marco smiles sympathetically.

“I told you last night that I’m the same. It’s okay. I’m up for figuring this out with you, if … if you are.”

I shake my head, and wriggle myself upright against the headboard, not quite managing to maintain the quiet intensity of Marco’s gaze. Instead, I focus on my white skin translucing over my knuckles as I fist and unfist my hands in his checked duvet. The back of my hand is rivered with a blue veins, dividing into tributaries that meander between the tendons that pulley beneath the surface of my skin.

“It’s like … it’s like, I never really thought about what I— _we_ might have to, y’know, deal with now,” I say, “Which is probably pretty shitty of me, especially towards you, and I— I just really don’t know what I’m doing, but I … I _want_ to know. I wanna know how to be open about … _being with you_ , and not be scared of it.”

“There’s no rush, Jean,” Marco says tenderly, and there’s something nostalgic in his words that cradles me like a hand on my knee or a palm cupping my cheek, as he has done every other time I’ve wobbled along the path. “We can go at our own pace.”

It’s his gossamer-like intuition that’s addictive – like the feel of fresh grass between your toes, or how a sunset looks when you stand alone late at night in your garden and little else matters – and not the same kind of addictive that causes a dirty rush up inside your veins. It’s clean, uncomplicated, and it doesn’t mask that gritty feeling – it clears it like a gust of wind somersaulting through the windows, and billowing curtains in a way that makes them take on the shapes of figures in your subconscious.

Marco knows. He always _knows_. He knows intrinsically, and he knows gently, possibly much the same way in which he loves.

He knows like clarity. In the sense that everything that was _before_ seems shrouded in some faded sepia film, and holds the memory of old movies, all grainy and splintered together on a reel, whilst he – and everything that gravitates itself around him and us now – is like opening my eyes for the very first time to a vast, green country.

Marco _knows_. And it’s dumb to pretend that he doesn’t any more.

He feels the very same cold, fearful uncertainty that I do, because it vibrates along our silver thread that twines our pinkies together, tugging in the same way it pulls at me, seizing and tangling in symmetrical knots and the webs of time’s grey spider. He knows my chill because it draws out goosebumps on his skin too.

“You’re worried about telling your parents?” he asks, though it need not be a question. I nod dumbly none the less, and huff loudly. “You’re allowed to be, y’know? It took me … years to tell my parents. There’s no rush, Jean. No rush. Don’t feel pressured because of me, or because of … _yourself_.”

I sniff noisily, screwing my mouth up into a grumpy pout.

“Yeah … I know.”

 _‘S hard though_. _It’s really hard_.

Marco pulls his legs up onto the mattress, nudging me over until he has the space to fold himself up beside me, resting his head on the same pillow as me. His walks his fingers over the folds in his sheets, seeking out where my hands have curled into fists, and he pries open my palms until he can slot his fingers into the spaces between mine. He squeezes, and draws our enclosed hands up into a bundle that rests tightly between our chests. Gently, Marco brings my knuckles to his lips, and kisses them soundlessly in a wordless promise. He understands when I have to keep my mouth closed to swallow back the muddy things I was never taught to express.

“I know,” he whispers, “But we’ll figure it out. Just like everything else.”

He nuzzles close, poking his tongue out playfully between his teeth and pecking the end of my nose. I scowl at him, buffing him in the chest as he grins.

“For now,” he murmurs, unlinking one of our hands so that he can daintily reach out and swipe some of my hair from my forehead, “I would be pretty happy to make the most of the fact that the person I like asked me to be his boyfriend today. And if he would, perhaps, want to go and eat some pancakes and probably get embarrassed by my mom whilst doing so, that would be pretty … great.”

I sigh nasally, and lean willingly into the touch.

“Can probably manage that much,” I murmur.

 

* * *

 

I shrug on the hoody thrown at me by Marco, unscrupulously pulling down the sleeves so that they cover my fingers and then pressing the well-worn fabric to my nose. I pull the hood up over my head in absence of any mirror in Marco’s room, and just hope that it conceals how much of a bird’s nest I’m sure my hair is.

Even though Marco shares a smile, I notice how he’s careful where he steps on the landing, avoiding creaking floorboards that I fall into the trap of, and he’s vigilant in not letting his bedroom door slam shut behind us. He is also cautious not to touch me, his hands hovering when he holds the door open and gestures for me to follow him, but his fingers ghost – and it creates a numb feeling on my skin, like I know that he is close, that he might touch, but nothing quite lends itself to the feeling of skin on skin.

I can hear Mina chatting jubilantly to her mom downstairs, bubbly and spirited against the sound of frying and the jazzy, seventies hum of mid-morning radio. I inhale of staunch lungful of pancake-air, and can already taste the promise of sugar and maple syrup on my tongue, and it makes my stomach growl incessantly. Marco turns back to look at me with a smirk at the grumbling noise, so I knee him roughly in the back as we skirt down the stairs.

He’s shy when he nudges open the door to the kitchen, and I’m shier, keeping my head ducked and my eyes cast on the floor, focused on how the cold tiles chill the balls of my feet, instead of on Anita’s beam of a smile that she flashes over her shoulder.

Their kitchen is warm and homely and well-lived in; no white walls and white floors and polished marble surfaces, but terracotta tiles, and dinner plates hung up on the ochre-yellow walls, and a stout, beech-wood table pushed against a corner and caped with a white-and-blue doily table cloth. The kitchen cabinets are sandalwood brown and covered in blobs of old blue-tac, some still sporting dog-eared and tea-edged kindergarten drawings made colourful by finger-painting and clumsy, bristly brush strokes.  

The light in the kitchen is yellow, and it makes the air yellow too, lit by the sun and the low-hanging lights, even if one bulb is dead, and the others seem dim with that sleepy sort of glow of halogen bulbs. There’s something soporific to be felt from just standing in their morning drowsiness. 

A large bouquet of orange and yellow daylilies is arranged proudly on the kitchen counter, fronting a parade of large, ceramic jars, labelled in turn _sugar_ , _salt_ , _flour_ , and so on, painted with delicate strokes of floral colour and calligraphy. A second cluster of flowers – perennial yellow daises, slightly wilting but less plasticised in their bold, aureolin petals – sprouts spryly from a shallow vase in the centre of the kitchen table, perhaps freshly plucked from a garden, yet already having discarded flecks of one or two petals across the wood-top autumnally.

There are four places set on the table. It shouldn’t strike me because _heck_ , there _are_ four of us – but it makes me wonder what feeling might have burst in Anita’s chest when laying the fourth and final place, after only a few weeks of having to get used to not laying out an extra set of dishes.

(And it does fill me with the sort of dread to be expected. I don’t want to be sitting in his place. I’m not something that has come along to replace the hole in Marco’s heart. I’m not the caulk for that wound; and nor am I probably worthy of someone comparing me to such.)

Mina sits at the end of the table, balancing on a toppling pile of tatty cushions, wielding both her knife and fork aggressively at the pile of pancakes steaming in front of her, positively drowned in maple syrup. She blinks up at me when she sees I’m staring at her staring at her breakfast, and she pokes out her tongue between her teeth insolently. I return the gesture by screwing up my own face, but all she does it glower me down as she shovels half a pancake into her mouth without breaking eye contact.

Anita has her back to us and an apron knotted over the top of her dressing gown. Her sleeves are rucked up around her elbows, but threaten to slip down towards her wrists, and she’s thrown a handful of slides into her hair to keep her fly-aways neatly pinned down. The frying pan in her grip sizzles with the spit of butter as she swirls the pancake batter around the sides, mediating the flame of the gas hob with a flick of her wrist as she jostles the pancake as it browns, before edging a spatula beneath the golden side, and flipping the batter over with a hiss.

“Jean,” Marco says abruptly, snapping me out of the daze of standing in the middle of their kitchen, literally drooling. He squeaks the legs of a chair across the floor as he pulls it out from beneath the table, and gestures for me to sit next to his sister. “Take a seat.”

I slip into the chair with a pressed smile, trying to ignore the way Mina seems to stand guard around her stack of pancakes, shooting me the stink-eye as if in fear of me reaching over and stealing some of her breakfast. Marco scoffs, ruffling his sister’s hair as he passes, sidling up behind his mom.  

There are no words spoken between them, but as Marco kisses the top of his mom’s head, she presses the spatula into his open palm, and then reaches up to rest her hand for a winding moment on the side of his cheek.

I see within her both forms of tender; the affectionate touch of a mother greeting her son, and the painstaking delicacy of a woman who’s still careful about the hairline cracks in her own skin, still waiting on the resin holding her together to set once more. She touches Marco in a way that speaks volumes of all sorts of sorrow, of unspoken questions asked about how he fares, of sentimentalities, of recovery, and of lingering memory of what it was that they went through yesterday. Her touch to his cheek – barely a second, but still so much said – reminds him, and herself, and me as the bystander, that today is the first day they’ve woken up after their true goodbye.

 _Both forms of tender_.

Anita pads over to the dusty, seen-better-days _Sony_ stereo buried under unsorted documents and opened mail atop the kitchen counter, and turns the volume up, letting the crooning melody of Gladys Knight’s _Midnight Train to Georgia_ sweep out across the kitchen in a lull of acoustic piano, pass, and proud trumpets as Marco flips pancakes over the stove .

Anita sways on her feet, her fingers miming to the bluesy sway of the music, as she tucks the bowl of pancake batter beneath her arm, beating the mix of milk and flour in time to the soulful singing. She is not shy in singing along with the words she clearly knows well, humming over the guitar riffs and singing the parts of the brass that resonate with the timor of late night theatre blues, which this track has always reminded me of whenever I’ve heard it on the radio. Even Marco bobs his head in time with the serenade, and I imagine him mouthing along to the words of songs he surely knows of lovers overcoming differences to be together; the thought of Anita bouncing her young son on her hip whilst dancing around their Jinae kitchen to the nostalgic music of her youth and teaching him the lyrics makes my heart fill with a trickling feeling of fullness.

I feel like I’m looking in on a moment – _a moment of them getting back on their feet_.  It’s so intensely private; intimate and fragile, yet surprisingly calm, and for once I find myself not quite an intruder, and merely just someone observing from the edge, tangible enough not to be a ghost on the peripheral, but to be someone who has been welcomed with open arms and a keen smile into this warm and wonderful household. There’s something humbling to be found in being allowed to bear witness to this moment of their recovery, and it exposes itself in my chest as a heavy feeling that I don’t really mind being heavy.

It’s hard to place, dangling on the threads of that nostalgic feeling that both tastes the same as looking back on a place once visited and loved, and as stepping out into a new world with fresh eyes. This moment captures both of those things, and I manage to grab the coattails of its magnitude. It feels important. Not earth-moving, not even feet-moving. But _I_ move. On the inside. My paradigm shift.

And I can tell you that those pancakes are _really_ fucking good.

 

* * *

 

I don’t find a name for that hefty feeling, but I learn the things that it smoulders within; it apparates as elbows touching elbows as the four of us crowd around that little table; and as my feet knocking against Marco’s beneath the legs for lack of space; as Mina stealing scraps of sticky, maple-drenched pancake from my plate when she thinks I’m not looking; and as Anita asking me to pass the juice with a serene smile when any one of us could reach anything atop the doily tablecloth without having to ask. The air is thick and dense with it – but not a smoke-like plume, nor something that makes my throat feel like it might stick to its own walls. It’s that same sort of heaviness that one feels hanging, suspended paramount in promise, in the air before a long-awaited gust of rain feeds the dying grass and drying soil of the Trost valley.

It’s heavy like the feeling of home; a real home, where the soft glow of a television bathes a night-dark living room in alien green and fuzzy grey, or the smell of cooking and a warm, amber haze through a window greets you when you pull up onto the drive after a long day pushing away from your gravity. Heavy, filling, _placating_ , like the feeling of bundling yourself up in swaddles of duvets on a lazy Sunday morning when there is no pressure to leave your bed; no people to please, no errands to run, no responsibilities to string you along and away from that sanctimonious ambience.

Marco’s home is just that: in within its sunny, yellow walls, there are people, and the melody of something hearty despite all that which they have suffered. Oranges, and terracotta browns, and warm ochre greens that bleed that same, welcoming feeling as approaching autumn, seep from every chip in the paint of this house; from every cross-stitch on the wall; from every mismatched set of cutlery laid out on the table.

There is no white. No marble, no glass.

I think of the long, crystalline stretch of our glass dining table at home, and the thought of being able to see how neatly my mother’s ankles are crossed by looking through its surface strikes me. How the napkin lays on my father’s lap, and how my own feet are always plastered, flat, to the wooden floor.

I think of dad sitting at the head of the table, and I think of how far it really does stretch, so that if you were to sit at the other end of the glassy expanse, you would very well have to shout to be heard by the throne.

I think of how it feels so very alone to be sat at that table, poking peas and potatoes around my plate, and wondering how to bring up foul-tasting flavours to the people who probably have never known what it means to poke a forkful of pancakes towards the mouth of a boy who has a drop of maple syrup stuck to his chin.

Marco blanches when I point it out, and he runs a thumb beneath his lip in a quick swipe, smearing the trail of syrup up into his mouth. Anita laughs gently at him, teasing him lightly over his table manners, whilst Mina just shakes her head, more melted chocolate-chip residue spread across her chin than I think she realises – or _cares_.

Marco licks each of his fingers in turn, his eyes cast down at his plate until he presses his lips around his thumb again and he his glance flickers up, catching the way I stare; the breath latches in my throat and I whip my eyes away, but both of us blush with the knowledge that I was imagining the lingering taste of syrup in a kiss.

I slice up my stack of pancakes with the side of my fork, not daring to use my knife, for fear of dragging my other hand away from the way it keeps my jittering knee still beneath the table. The tremor builds in my joints and threatens to set my leg twitching like a jack-hammer, so I hold it still, a joyride of misplaced worries running mischief up and down the highways of my nerves.

I don’t want to ruin the moment – because what moment _better_ is there than this picture of idyllic heart? Finally I’ve hauled myself up into that world of golden pinpricks where _Marco_ looks down from, crowned in something glinting and wonderful; sunshine and homes like real castles and the gentle laughter of finding treasures in the sand; and what part of me wants to shatter that for sake of the lonely, blue world that _I_ call home?

I don’t want to step out of line by letting my leg shake and make the table tremble, sloshing my juice around in my glass and making my cutlery clink against my chipped-china plate; I don’t want Anita to throw me a questioning look, or for Mina to demand to know why it is that I’m scared of breakfast, or for any of them to think I’m rude for crumbling the things they’re piecing back together by making this about _myself_ , about _my_ comfort—

But is there a line at all?

Who was it that created the line which I rule and measure myself by? The line that dictates how I mediate myself at the dining room table made of glass, or in the hallways of the white house when I duck away from making eye contact with anyone who spectres there. Marco didn’t draw it, and nor did his family – so is there even a line here which I _can_ cross?

I guess … not. _I guess not_.

The line is binding goals for little boys, or a silent _tch_ when he doesn’t eat his vegetables or when he tells his parents he wants to be an artist. (It’s the same noise of disapproval all the same.) The line is pressed suits and slicked-back hair and loosened belts, just the same as the line is the way anxiety spreads me thin, and I let the fear of stepping right or left, and not forward, rule the way I let myself breathe.

Not here. It doesn’t have to be forward, _here_.

Pencil, paper, or bricks and mortar and cement; I am the artist, the builder as much as my parents ever were. But _Marco_ —

Marco, as ever, is the rain. The rain, the water that flows after us with every step in whatever direction we take, and he dissolves and _erodes_ the line that was scribbled long ago. And I no longer fear it.

There was something about solid walls and a cage with bars that was always reassuring, in a way confinement makes you feel, twistedly, in control. But change is just as good, and once you’ve tasted it on the tip of your tongue – in the flavour of sandy shores, and fireworks bursting over a kingdom abandoned, and the reassurance that there’s something different out there that isn’t white walls, or a foot chained to an office computer like a prisoner to his iron ball – you realise that if it’s a change for many mornings shared around a kitchen table filled plentifully, it’s for the best.

Enjoy this. Relish it.

 _You deserve this moment_.

“Jean, are you gonna eat that?”

I blink slowly at Mina’s fork already poking at my plate, edging towards the untouched scraps of pancake swimming in an ocean of syrup. Her dark, beady eyes are focussed on the prize, and I can’t help but snort loudly, causing both Anita and Marco to look up in surprise as I push my plate towards Mina with a grin.

“Just this once, yeah?” I smile as she greedily scrapes every morsel of pancake from my plate and onto her own with admirable determination, “Don’t think that I’m usually such a pushover, alright?”

Anita reaches across the table and taps her daughter on the arm, a look in her eyes stern.

“What do you say, _piccola_?”

“I, uh— _oh_. Thanks, Jean!”

 _Thanks, Jean_. there’s no thanks that need to be given.

 

* * *

 

Anita steals away mine and Marco’s empty plates whilst Mina is still licking syrup from hers, nose squashed against the sticky blue-and-white china. Marco shakes his head at his sister, but slumps back in his chair with both hands on his stomach and a satiated smile on his lips. The radio croons on, soulful voices and harpic ticklings up and down piano ivories, and Anita hums as she rolls up the sleeves of her dressing gown to turn on the faucet and begin to fill the kitchen sink to wash the dishes.

The smell of dish soap and the sound of running water hitting foam begin to mingle with the fading smell of cooking and simmering coffee steam as I throw back the last dredges of the caffeine hit I’d been offered.

As I set the mug – cheap, glaucous plastic, and printed with the corporate logo of some company that was clearly a free-bee gift – down on the table top, the shrill prattle of a telephone blares out down the hallway from beneath the kitchen door. Anita starts, dropping cutlery into the filling basin with a _splosh_ and a _clang_ , and her eyebrows pinch together in a frown as she stares hard in the direction of the sound.

“Which one of your many great-aunts who couldn’t come yesterday will that be, I wonder?” she huffs – but sourness and gripe does not become her, and as such does not stick like flypaper to her tongue. Something reverts into her eyes more hollow, waxing the glossy shine sprung from the bars and tingling notes seeping from the stereo – it’s an exchange for glass and wear that marks her surface scratched and buffeted again. I watch her shoulders fall. I call it the grim reminder of what was, before all the sunshine and lilt of a summer’s morning came to sweep it all beneath a proverbial rug.

“Probably just calling to apologise,” Marco says with a heavy sigh, his voice quiet. He wriggles out of his seat, pausing momentarily on his feet to glance at his mom, and then at me, his focus distant. “I’ll get it, mom.”

Anita purses her lips.

“Don’t let them talk too long, alright?” she says sternly. Marco nods, and slips from the kitchen door. I find myself listening intently until the trill of the phone is answered by a stately, “ _hello_?”

Marco’s voice is lost shortly to the gush of water as Anita turns on the faucet once more, and it splatters into the half-filled basin. She gives a lenient squeeze of dish soap into the sink, and soap-suds begin to sprawl up her forearms in a bubbly mess of frogspawn; my ears tune into the sounds of sloshing and a saturated sponge squeaking across wet china as she scrubs off the shards of drying syrup.

I am reminded – and I’m not sure by what – of yesterday’s promise to myself. Maybe it’s just my obtuse ability to pollute happy moments with darker, _greyer_ , more brooding thoughts. It manifests itself once more in that feeling of turbulence; the rocking of the boat that can’t quite be controlled by a steadying hand on my knee.

I could say something to her now. Whilst Marco is out the room, and I can catch her alone. I could tell her _sorry_.

Apologies have come easier lately, but this one carries a different sort of weight to the things said to Connie and the others, or grovelled to mom, or whispered to Marco.

Anita has apologies greeting her at her front door, and I wonder if she’d take one look at my meagre offering, and tell me to my face that, “no, I don’t want _yours_.” Neither out of spite nor pity, but simply because she knows not what to do with them anymore. What does one more _sorry_ achieve? Does it make looking at the empty side of the bed any easier, or fling open windows firmly bolted shut, or drown them in forgotten sunlight when they’re still remembering how not to burn?

Probably not.

My apology is a dirty, pathetic sort of _sorry_ , because it holds no condolences, and really no grievances save my own.

_Sorry I couldn’t keep my word that day. Sorry that it’s still something that bothers me. Sorry that I want to drag up things out of the dust that you’ve probably finally let settle._

_Sorry that I couldn’t bring him home that day, when that was the only thing you asked of me._

I slip out of my chair and am on my feet before I’ve even come to a decision – and I suppose it should be reassuring that some part of me is more decisive about which direction it wants me to walk.

“Hey, uh— Anita?” I ask cautiously, “Can I … help?”

Anita looks back at me from over her shoulder, the spectacles still resting atop her head fogged up with the humid steam rising from the warm sink water. She wields nothing but a bright, gracious, heart-stealing smile.

(If anything, it only makes the waves that hit me broadside all the steeper.)

“That’s very kind of you, _caro_ ,” I think she says, as I roll up the sleeves of Marco’s hoody and cross the small kitchen in strides probably too quick and too conspicuous for the way I hold myself rigidly straight. Sceptically, my eyes fall on the swirling water in the basin – lathered with foam and slightly murky – as Anita fishes out a few more stranded knives and forks from the depths.

The soap sticks to her dark skin, and the water droplets seem to congeal instead of rolling freely over her forearm and fingers. The moisture of the steam rising from the luke-warm water collects on my upper lip, muggy and uncomfortable. The need to apologise becomes coated in a slime that doesn’t belong on it and has nothing to do with it.

Anita shuffles beside me, propping the dripping cutlery upright in the draining board, and in the process, nudges me with her shoulder.

“Don’t force yourself, Jean,” she says quietly, reaching across me to grab another dirty plate to scrub. She is scrupulous in not letting her soapy hands brush past my clothes or wet my fingers.

For a moment, I forget. I forget about water, and wonder for a split, bewildered second: _what on earth are you talking about_? Does she know what it is that I’m trying to force myself to say? Is this her declining my offer to sell her second-hand apologies on her front porch? Can she read me that easily? Am I that much of a—

 _Ah_.

I blink slowly and return my gaze to the frothy sink, and remember, quietly, what it is that fuels some of the riptide that buffets me about.

_How does she know about that?_

Clearly, Marco told her.

 _I don’t mean it like that. How does she know … what it_ does _to me?_

But surprisingly, I don’t think that the intrinsic _how_ matters any more.

Sure, my cheeks burn, and my stomach wrings itself in the knots and webs of that accustomed fear that has shrouded me all my life when it comes to those words seethed teasingly once upon a time. ( _Are you afraid of water_?)

It’s not a _bad_ thing. Not _bad_ in the way _I_ use that word. If she can read me like an open book, so be it.

It passes.

What sort of trust is it if you don’ test the planks of the bridge you built above swirling waters below? I feel that current pushing the blood around my body, and I feel my heartbeat ricochet through my fingers and back again, my hand half-outstretched to the tea towel that Anita offers me now, her gaze pricked with curiosity and maybe a dabble of concern.

She need not be concerned. It changes nothing.

I have no qualms in people knowing – or at least _her_ knowing – because for every person I have met bottled with that same, jibing discontent, they are outweighed by those few and far between who are good, and see, in the split second of panic that rattles through my eyes, not a nineteen year old kid who can barely step foot in a swimming pool, but someone who is learning that he is not as broken as he thought he once was.

The little boat can beat on against the tide.

“ _Caro_ —?” Anita pauses, as my fingers remember how to clench and wrap around the cloth she holds out to me. “Can you do the drying-up?”

“Y-yeah. _Yeah_. No sweat.”

Anita smiles again, but says nothing, and we clean up in a silence perpetuated by seventies’ crooners, Mina kicking her legs against her chair, mistimed to the piano melody, and the way I grip onto my thoughts with the same force the captain of that little ship might grip onto the helm.

(It says something, I suppose, that it has now become a ship in my mind, and not that wooden coracle licked with barnacles and peppered with holes, in which I have to navigate the swell.)

Anita passes me each plate in turn that she scrubs, lathed with soap and smelling strongly of detergent, and I juggle them in my hands as I wipe them down, clumsily trying not to shatter her china all over the terracotta tiles on the floor. I would like to trust my fingers more, but still they shake, however much I try to hide that fact.

All roads lead to Rome, and the tremble in my hands ensnares me back to apologies dripping from the end of my tongue, but evaporating before they splatter messily on the counter top. I feel the same sort of restlessness as yesterday, squashed beside her on the church pew – save this time at least I have something to do with my hands instead of wringing them white and ragged.

It’s easy to realise that there are hundreds, if not thousands of ways to apologise, but none of them matter if you can’t even bring yourself to open your mouth – too scared, is it, of how they might react, rather than the importance of the apology as a whole? That’s pretty shameful, even for me.

I breathe in deeply, but the air wobbles around in too much space within my wind pipe.

 _I don’t want to make her upset_ , I tell myself.

 _I don’t want to remind her that I was a coward when it mattered_ , is what rings more truthfully inside my head.

I wonder how long she waited up after that 5AM phone call that drizzly morning – hoping, yearning for Marco to come home safely. Had I given her a thread of solace in promising that I’d find him and bring him home to her? Maybe.

I wonder how long Marco had stayed at the outlook after I left him and had favoured curling up behind the steering wheel of my car, rueing every wretched piece of sinuous tissue in my chest. I wonder how long Anita had waited, fingers pressed against the glass of their living room window, praying for his van to pull up against the curb outside.

And I wonder how much worse it must have made things for her to pry the secrets from Marco’s lips and learn what it was that toppled him – my stupid, thoughtless words (or _lack_ of words) that led to too many weeks of pain that none of them deserved.

I tell myself that it’s in the past. That it shouldn’t matter, because now— _now we’ve fixed it_.

But just because it shouldn’t matter doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. And I suppose it needs to matter, because forgetting it means pretending it never happened, and that means ignoring the fact that I could’ve fixed everything so much easier just by being honest. It would’ve saved Marco a lot of grief, and in turn, it would’ve saved Anita that polluting greyness too.

You tell yourself that it will go away – the putrid self-loathing and the anxiety that wrings you dry – when you meant that one, iridescent person who stains you all sorts of colours you never knew existed; but that’s a perpetuated sort of truth.

I still feel guilty. And guilt is knowing that it was you who didn’t secure the sails of the ship with sea-faring knots.

I almost _jump out of my skin_ when Anita presses the back of her hand to my forehead; the squawk that zips between my lips isn’t exactly emasculating. I’m surprised I don’t shatter the plate in my hands.

Anita’s thick eyebrows pinch together, and she frowns.

“You’re not burning up, so what is it? You’ve been staring at that dishcloth like it holds the secrets to the universe, _caro_.”

My first instinct is to recoil, to rebuff, to throw up sky-high defences built of lines, but she withdraws her hand the second the thought of flight flashes whitely across my eyes. Instead, I set the plate in my grasp down on the draining board and hang my head.

Confessing the makeup of the oil that keeps my gears ticking inside my head feels dangerous –because opening up the mechanics of my head has never exactly worked out _well_ in the past. And Anita – she’s still so many parts a stranger to me. I barely know her – what is her favourite colour; where was she born; what she does for living remains just as much a mystery as the reason why I feel it necessary to blab my mouth.

But I do, anyway, because I know _one_ thing: she is kind. Marco learned his trade from someone, and I think I am a desperate sort of man.

“I, uh— _sorry_. I just— there’s just— _something_ that I’ve been … wanting to say.”

Anita flicks her fingers over the sink and then wipes down her hands on the front of her apron, turning towards me imploringly.

She shares the same earnestness as her son and her daughter; the big, bright doe eyes, wide and unobtrusive with the flicker of something amberine and glowing, saccharine in the warmth that seeps through pinpricks in the dark colour of her irises; that feeling of home.

Home. It holds a torch to the flickering thought of a future, and upon its expanse I see projected my own silhouette for a fleetingly endless moment.

“I just— I feel— I feel like I owe you something. For not being able to— _to keep my promise_.”

Anita tilts her head to the side, mirroring Marco’s habit for when I tell him things too convoluted to make sense.

“What promise is that, _caro_?”

My teeth clench down on the inside of my cheek, sending a sharp prick of pain veining up through my mouth. I’m sure Anita can read my scowl just as much as I can feel it pulling the corners of my lips down and making it difficult to swallow.

“The day that— when Mr. Bodt passed away,” I say slowly, my voice low and croaky, taking my words like stepping stones, daring not to let my feet stray from the thought of solid ground. “You asked me to … bring Marco back home. And— I didn’t. I _couldn’t_. Because of something I had done that was stupid of me, but—but I haven’t been able to _let go_ of the fact that if I had, it might have made it somehow, I dunno, _better_ , or—”

I spare a glance at her, cautious and creepingly shy as I steal a share of the expression that she wears. Her lips are pressed into a firm line, but there is something that hangs onto a drawn out line of sympathy that stretches from me to her and back to that day when the first rain of the summer finally came. She leans her weight on the kitchen counter, and I am anchored by the way her words are mulled with something uncharacteristically sombre for her.

“Jean,” she all but _sighs_ , her eyes falling to where I wring my hands in front of myself. “I wasn’t holding onto that, _caro_. There’s nothing to blame you for.”

I open my mouth to protest, for all the weight of needless blame that swirls venomously inside of my throat, always threatening to spill out all over myself and dissolve me from the outside in as well as the inside out – but Anita presses a firm hand to my shoulder, and if Marco embodies all things water, and I seem to everburn with soot and smoke, then Anita has within her a great deal of _earth_ , because she grounds me with just a squeeze of her fingers.

She glances sideways at Mina, who is completely oblivious to our conversation as she runs her finger round and around the rim of her plate, collecting the last smudges of maple syrup and melted chocolate – and then back at me, gently prompting me to look up and meet her loamy gaze.

“Listen to me, Jean,” she says sincerely, “This morning I woke up to the sound of both my children laughing for the first time in _months_ , ringing through the house, and I can’t— I _still_ can’t begin to tell you how that felt in my heart. And when I climbed the stairs to find them, I found _you_ in the middle of it all. _You_ have been there for both of them. I am eternally grateful to you for that, _tesoro_. You have nothing to apologise to me for. Nothing. Do you understand? _Niente_.” 

Heat pricks in my eyes, so I blink it back forcefully, causing Anita to smile. She gives my shoulder another squeeze, and whilst I _do_ feel embarrassed and am still struck with that familiar feeling of wanting to shy away and coil in on myself, I feel like my skin has been plastered in a meek sort of pride, and it has dried upon me _strong_.

“I want—” I begin haltingly, but with more _conviction_ , “To do more. For all of you, but I— I don’t know _how_.”

 _I don’t know how_. That seems to be a reoccurring theme.

“It’s up to us to cope with this,” Anita says softly, retrieving the dishcloth from the counter top where I discarded it, and drying up the last dish propped up on the draining board. “Making Marco happy like you do is more than I could ask for. You don’t need to do any more than that.”

I’m not sure what sort of vice pride is, but perhaps it’s something I could get used to – more so than the thinly-plated armour that I might have bolstered on my surface in the past. The feeling that absorbs Anita’s words is no concrete wall built to keep people out from jabbing their fingers at an unfinished centre, but instead now the thing that keeps that centre burning brightly _molten_ , free to move and mould itself to the changing tides, and really no plaster cast at all.

I would like to think I make Marco happy, but her telling me as much cements within me more of the good sort of pride than I ever could’ve imagined. It’s a strange emotion, because in a sense I feel the need to try and cup it between my hands and hide it between my fingers and not let drip, close against my chest like something that needs concealing from those looking in, like any other shameful emotion I’ve trained myself to bottle down with a stout cork; but equally, there is no shame with being honest with this woman, and I think she would only beam wider if I were to show her how much that simple statement could possibly mean.

I think she reads it all anyway with the flicker that causes my lips to twitch up. She exhales heavily and nods her head satisfactorily, moving both her hands to her hips. An unspoken moment passes between us: perhaps the creation of our own spindle of silent communication – and I think I would call that string _yellow_ , for all the light that saturates through the kitchen window in that moment, painting the floor gold.

(And it’s a good thing to imagine the feeling of another knot added to my pinkie finger alongside those I have already stretched between mom, between Connie, and Sasha, and the rest; and those silver and red that slink beneath the kitchen door, towards Marco.)

Anita calls for Mina to bring her plate to the sink finally, and Mina grouches as she unsticks herself from her seat, acting like it is some great effort to free herself from the pile of cushions keeping her at table height. Her mom teases her jovially about something I don’t quite catch, caught up in the stupor of this weird sort of hearthial magic – that is, until Mina gratuitously stomps on my foot with her smaller one, telling me crudely, “stop staring into space! You’re being _weird_!”

I splutter clumsily, causing Mina to poke out her tongue at me and Anita to laugh as she submerges the last plate into the soap suds.

“ _Piccola_ , behave,” she chuckles, “If you’re mean to Jean, he won’t want to come over any more. We don’t want that.”

“Jean can take it,” Mina huffs, puffing out her cheeks and pulling a face at me; I mirror the expression, screwing up my mouth, just as Marco slides back into the kitchen, midway through running an exasperated hand through his mused-up hair.

“I leave for two minutes, and you two are already fighting,” he sighs humorously, “You two are hopeless.”

 

* * *

 

Marco and his mom have a hushed conversation about whichever relative was on the phone, whilst I try not to listen, exchanging increasingly vulgar faces with Mina – until Marco grabs me by the elbow and tows me from the kitchen, throwing a _thank you for breakfast_ over his shoulder, whilst I stutter to get out some sort of goodbye.

He _hauls_ me upstairs, and I find myself, ultimately, glaring at myself in the mirror of the family bathroom and squeezing toothpaste onto my finger as Marco tries to stifle his giggling around the toothbrush he has stuffed into his mouth.

He all but _chokes_ on a mouthful of toothpaste foam when I shoot him my best dirty look in the mirror, but he dissolves my scowl with a nudge form his hip to mine. I roll my eyes and resign myself to scrubbing that finger of _Aquafresh_ over my gums, muttering under my breath.

Marco hums to himself as he brushes his teeth, the sound muffled and out-of-tune, and I can’t help but snort as a blob of foam rolls down his chin.

 _Look at you. In love with this. In love with him when he has toothpaste on his face. In love with the thought that this –_ all of this _– could be how it is from now on._

I spit out the wad of undissolved toothpaste in my mouth into the sink, and rinse, rolling my tongue against the backs of my teeth to try and scrape away the taste of far-too-strong _minty fresh_.

This could be how it is from now on. It’s that same craving for normalcy again.

It should settle my stomach, but today so far has been far from a smooth ride, tossed around by Anita’s reassuring words, and how freely things had rolled over my lips this morning, asking Marco to be my—

 _Boyfriend_. That.

Just the word has the butterflies swarming, but they still buffet the lining of my insides in a way that might still pepper my organs with poppy bruises.

This _could_ be how it is from now on. And it’s how I want it to be – curled around each other in the same bed, and sharing breakfast together in his home, knowing that whatever touches we might share do not need to be hidden behind poor excuses of this just being platonic – but the _could_ is the operative word still.

It’s the thought of future that continues to loom as a big, black cloud on the horizon, threatening the bad sort of rain that thunders down from the skies too heavily, having hung in the air too long – yet still you have no place to shelter.

I busy my hands by combing my fingers roughly through my hair, trying to flatten down some of the fly-aways and cowlicks come from sleep, but staring at myself in the mirror only reminds me that it’s no longer the fear of the rain that mediates me, but the fact I have no control over when it will fall that scares me.

_But we’ll figure it out. Just like everything else._

I wonder if thoughts of the future can bow as easily as everything else to Marco’s indomitable will. I wonder if my parents can bow to it.

Even if it goes well in telling mom – of which I’m really only clutching onto the straw of it being _just that_ – both she and I remember all too vividly how dad had kicked the last summer’s pool boy to the curb on merely the thought of mom flirting with him and it being reciprocated.

_It’s different. Because I’m his son, not his wife._

_But I’m also_ queer _. I’m … I’m bisexual, if that’s what I’m going to call it. I’m in love with a man. I’m not a factor in dad’s plan._

 _(And it doesn’t even lay tinder to the fact that he seeks control like a bloodhound. We shouldn’t be_ controlled _by him.)_

I glance at Marco as he spits toothpaste into the sink basin and rinses his mouth with a gurgle. He wipes his lips on the back of his hand, and then tilts his jaw to the mirror as he inspects the faint, unshaven stubble on his chin.

Marco doesn’t know anything about that. He doesn’t know about my father’s great hypocrisy – the double standards which he has paved over mom and me.

And I’m not sure if I want him to know. I don’t want him to have to suffer that judgement, and worse, perhaps, is that I’m scared of him judging _me_ because of it.

What I would give for the reassurance that things would go as smoothly as with Anita – that security, that confidence in knowing what _could_ happen has never been more of a hunger.

I fluff my hands through my hair, but it falls back limp against my forehead. I huff nasally, which catches Marco’s attention.

“May I?” he prompts through a sympathetic smile, gently nudging me until I have my back to the sink, my hands curled over the rim of the basin. I offer a very small nod and a gulp as he slides in front of me and pins me against the porcelain, his feet either side of mine.

He smoothes down the flicks of hair protruding from my head with deft fingers that stray into the shallow slope of my undercut, finding fascination in the coarser feeling beneath his palms; but he can’t resist twisting his fingers in my roots, and he messes everything up again with a breathy chuckle. He runs his fingers bluntly across my scalp in sweeping circles, and I feel myself relax for a moment.

“You’re thinking too much,” he hushes, and I feel his breath coy against the bride of my nose. “I know you, Jean. No-one can go from laughing at my sister to scowling at himself in a mirror as fast as you.”

“Impressive talent, huh?” I mutter, reaching up to wrap my fingers around one of his hands, stilling it in my hair.

“I’m sure it can be unlearned,” he whispers, easing himself closer to me – a hair’s breadth exists between his chest and mine, our hips near flush, and I slow my breathing to try and match the way his sternum rises beneath the loose cotton of his night shirt. “Sometimes it’s best not to think. And just do.”

I laugh bitterly and let my head fall forward onto his shoulder with a chuckle decaying in my throat and upon my lips.

“Easier said than done,” I say, releasing Marco’s hand and letting my arms hang loosely at my sides. Marco makes up for my lethargy, of course, threading his strong arms around my waist – but it doesn’t hold more gravity than a momentary security. “’M thinking ‘bout what you said earlier.”

“About us?” I hear the slight wobble of worry in his voice, and it just makes my head swim more violently.

“No. The … other thing.”

He relaxes a little, and I feel him press his nose into the crown of my hair.

“About figuring out what to do next,” he supplies, and I nod.

“Thinking about telling my mom,” I mumble into his shirt. “After talking to Anita, I know I— I know I _want_ to. But I’m— I’m fucking _terrified_ of how she’ll … react. It won’t be the same. My mom isn’t like your mom, she’s less— she’s more—”

“She’s still a mom. _Your_ mom,” Marco hushes. “And she loves you _so much_ , Jean.” He presses me back against the sink, and his hands slide up from my sides to cup my jaw, my unshaven face rough against his palms. I gnaw on the inside of my cheek at the tender intensity in his eyes, simultaneously invasive and vulnerable, thinking about how it’s exactly _that_ which I always snag on, and always causes me to unravel.  Everything about him is a compliment. Every speck of minute emotion that scampers across his expression just _works_. Little reminds of both the fragile and the whole.

“I won’t say that everything will turn out okay,” he says, “I _can’t_ say that. I wish I could, but— I think I know as good as anyone that however much _hope_ you can pour into a dream … sometimes the outcome isn’t the best. But overthinking will just make it hurt more, and I _know you_ — and I know you’re worried, so I don’t want you making this more difficult for yourself than it already is.” He sighs softly, grazing a thumb over the contours of my cheek. “I get it, Jean. I get it, and I’m here _with_ you.”

“I know,” I choke out. _You’ve always been_.

“I’ll support you in whatever you decide to do. Telling your mom, telling your _dad_ , dealing with Connie and Sasha—” I quirk an eyebrow at that, and Marco’s severity cracks into a bud of a smile, and an airy chuckle makes it bloom. “We can do it together.”

What a world it could be if I were able to caulk my wounds and scars with the same hope and optimism as him. Even now, when he has suffered so much, he can turn his head to the sky and the clouds will part for him and the glimmering expanse of starlight, sunlight, any light. What would it take, I wonder? To swallow an entire sun in order to make me warm enough would just be selfish, especially when so many other people depend on the rays it diffracts to and from the stratosphere.

I pry Marco’s fingers from my face, and mould him into holding me close, to tangle his fingers in the clothes of his that still hang across my back. With a deep breath, I let my own fingers brush against the column of his throat, against the point where I feel his heart hymn like a churchful echo through his veins, against the underside of his chin, before I let my hands spread into his dark hair, holding his lips a whisper from mine.

I just want him to be happy. Anita and I share that same hope, after all.

I don’t want any complicated funny business; I don’t want him to have to wrap up in extra layers to counteract the return of those clouds that dance around his tattered edges; I don’t want him to worry about me.

I will do what I can, and I think that’s Marco’s true gift. The change he prompts within me, however small, is still change. I will do what I can to make it easier for both of us. It might not be much, but as long as it’s enough to elicit that catch of breath in his throat as I press a delicate, chaste kiss to his lips, I know the direction I’ve chosen to walk is guided by some sort of magnetism. I just can’t yet tell if it’s north.

Marco brushes his nose softly against mine, and his mouth dusts across my upper lip. I feel myself pressed more forcefully into the rim of the sink basin, and Marco’s breath begins to stutter flutteringly.

“You’re blushing again,” he whispers, “You’re going to end up with no blood left in the rest of your body.”

“H-hey, it’s just ‘cus— ‘cus I’m not used to this whole kiss— this whole— _y’know_!”

Marco shrugs, poking his tongue out between his teeth as he tries to smother his smirk.

“Well, I do happen to know … _one way_ you can get used to it, I suppose.”

“You _suppose_.”

Marco tilts his head and kisses me softly on the corner of my mouth, all air and cobwebs, and then another, on the edge of my jaw, palpable yet diaphanous, and another on the slope of my neck until my knees resemble something like jelly. I make to playfully shove him away, miming offense on my face, but he draws me back into his chest, nuzzling my forehead happily like some oversized puppy dog.

“Thank you for looking after me, Jean,” he hums against my skin. “I’ll make sure to return the favour now. I promise.”

 _Idiot_ , is all I can think, as I bundle him up as best I can in my own arms. _You’ve been looking out for me since day one._

I want to tell him that he never needed any looking after. He’s strong, and he might have crumbled, yes, but he would’ve been able to piece himself back together bit by bit without me.

But if, by the same logic, I can reason that I would never have gotten back on my own feet without his crutch, then I can call myself a hypocrite along with my old man.

It’s no detriment to Marco’s character to admit that he relied on me as a buoyancy aid, even if I can’t swim. I think I know that he needed me, and I am certain, from pole to pole of my now-pounding heart, that I needed him – _and still need him_ – even if it’s a comparison that I’m just making.

What was it that I feared about putting Marco on the same page as me? I guess, bringing him down out of the stratospheric heights that I had launched him into, and realising that he could stumble just as much and just as often as me.

But that’s okay. That’s okay.

I think it’s okay to realise that it’s not him who is as weak as me – but I’m the one who is as strong as him. We’re the same, really.

That’s okay.

I can steer if he reads the map. _Together._

 

 

* * *

 

Marco offers me a change of clothes to wear home, but I wave him off with a sly grin, telling him that I’ll embrace the walk of shame – even if it isn’t really all that shameful. He laughs at me, and as he runs an exasperated hand through his hair, standing it on end, he gushes that _his boyfriend is a nerd_ , and it makes my chest swell, asphyxiating any lingering doubts that might have been crawling around in the shadows of my thoughts.

My suit is remarkably unrumpled, but it doesn’t stay that way for long, with Marco barrelling me backwards onto his mattress the moment my fingers relinquish the top button of my shirt, and it really does beg the question: how _do_ you get used to something like _this_?

 

* * *

 

Goodbyes are said at the front door, after a text from mom asking when I would be home has me wrenching myself away from Marco’s pecking kisses and sunbeam smile and the hushed words we share as I lounge on his chest, nudging his nose with mine every time he brings up the colour of my face.

To be thrown back into the realisation that a world exists beyond the faded walls and sunny-yellow countenance of that house is grounding, and I breathe in two, deep lungfuls of air as I step out onto the creaking, sun-baked porch. Anita’s potted plants are wilting, turning brown and crispy with the autumnal sun that is yet to turn wet and muggy, and the air, too, shares the same, ripening flavour.

Marco hangs on the doorframe, his arms folded and his gaze soft as he watches his mom bundle me up into a suffocating hug, and I yelp as she squeezes that said air out of me with an iron grip.

“Thank you for coming yesterday, _caro_ ,” she beams as she compresses the life from me, and I pat her weakly on the back. “And don’t be a stranger, okay? Just let me know in advance, and I’ll lay you a place at the table any day.”

“That’s … very kind of you,” I croak out, until she finally lets me go, clamping me on the shoulder with her knobbly hand. Marco snickers from over her shoulder, but I try my best to reign in the accusatory glare, focussing on Anita’s face instead. “Thank you … for having me.”

“Oh, you’re more than welcome,” she smiles, glancing back into the house momentarily. “Now, where did that little mischief run off to? I’m sure she’d like to say goodbye.”

As if summoned, Mina skids into view behind Marco, her arms piled high with … _Disney_ DVDs.

“Jean, you forgot your studying material!” she quips crossly, thrusting the bundle into my unprepared arms, and I watch Tangled almost go clattering to the ground save for Marco’s quick reflexes. He turns the film over in his hands, and feigns a comical frown.

“Aw, you’re not letting him borrow Flynn Rider, are you?” he pouts; Mina shoots me the most poignant _I-told-you-so_ look I’ve ever had the pleasure of receiving.

 

* * *

 

“Should I be concerned about how _thick-as-thieves_ you and my sister are becoming?” Marco teases as we walk down the path that splits the front yard in two towards my car, having divided the mountain of DVDs between the pair of us to save me from floundering and dropping them all _everywhere_. I look back over my shoulder to see Mina and Anita waving at us from the front door, Anita holding onto her youngest’s shoulders to prevent her bolting after us. Mina makes a show of gesturing from her eyes to mine, and back again, nodding severely. I reply with a broad grin.

“She’s got your best interests at heart, trust me,” I snort, fishing for my car key in my back pocket as Marco makes a low noise of disapproval at the notion. (I suppose he’s keen for me not to know about his affliction for animated princes. Well, the game is up.)

We throw the films onto the passenger seat of the Jag, and I discard my suit jacket on top of them, the sun already baking me in the black linen. I nudge the door closed with my hip, and turn around into Marco’s covetous hands.

I lean back against the car, the metal sun-scorched against my back, but a pale comparison to his fingers pressing into my hips and drawing me close.

There’s little that needs saying that hasn’t already been said over the last two days, save perhaps one thing on my behalf. I have it on the end of a fishing line, and I’m reeling it in – but maybe it catches on the way up my throat, and I need to pull a little bit harder before I have those three words in my hands.

It wouldn’t feel right to say them to him now – a poor man’s mask for sympathy at best. And heaven knows he doesn’t need any more of that.

But I don’t need words to spell out the things I want to say, and Marco knows that. He _must_ know. He feels the way my fingers tremble at my sides, unsure; and then the way I find a gulp of liquid courage enough to let my hands trace the outlines of his shoulder blades and come to rest in the small of his back. He tastes the way I steal a hitch of the hot and humid air that he shares with me, and let my forehead knock against his with a shaky exhale that dusts across his freckled cheeks.  He sees the way my eyes drift closed just before he kisses me – but he _doesn’t_ kiss me, whispering words against my lips instead.

“I’ll see you soon.”

Ah, yes.  That was a promise once kept that used to feel like the weight of the world bearing down on my shoulders, but now— _but now_.

“It doesn’t just have to be at pool cleaning,” Marco adds, his fingers toying with the belt loops on my suit pants. I shake my head.

“No, _it doesn’t_.”

 _But_ _now_ — that phrase becomes a kiss, and it shoots skyward, leaving the great expanse of sea far, far behind.

 

* * *

 

I’m not sure what it is that I hope for when I pull up behind mom’s car in the driveway of home. Maybe it’s for the courage I’ve found not to dissipate the moment I open the door of the car. Maybe it’s for purpose, for a new start, for the one day that was promised to no longer be a _tomorrow_ , but a _today_ – and a today that I can grip in both hands and steer in the right direction. Maybe it’s just for that sky of unclouded stars to stretch this far away from Marco.

Well, I suppose the sky _is_ unclouded – a vast, oceanic blue that stretches endlessly nowhere – and that burning ball of gas that beats so relentlessly down on my face through the windshield _is_ a star, so maybe it’s up to me to make that leap.

 _You’re supposed to look before you leap_ , is what runs through my head as I kill the engine. _But Marco told me not to look so hard. The things that I’m chasing can’t be reached when I’m still wearing a life vest. I’ll just float to the surface._

It’s been a strange sort of day – somehow beyond the bonds of time in a quantum sort of transience, as if hanging on a razor edge, but not feeling how sharp and finite its ridge was until I’m slipping down the other side again, and staring at the big, white door of the big, white house, and remembering how it is that the rest of the world exists.

Dazed and disoriented, it takes at least three attempts to jam my key into the lock of the front door, but as I shove it open blusteringly with my shoulder, I find mom startled in the middle of the hallway, clearly surprised by me stumbling in so unscrupulously over the door mat.

“Mom! Uh, hi?” I gabble, grimacing as mom scans me up and down, her eyes straining on the untucked tails of my rumpled dress shirt and my uncombed hair. I suppose the walk of shame is all well and good until you have to start answering questions as to why you look like you’ve just fallen out of a hedge backwards.

“I, uh— I’m sorry that I, uh— stayed over and didn’t call?” I say, clumsily toeing off my dress shoes and skirting my way around mom, sticking against the wall as I sneak towards the kitchen. “I didn’t know that I would be— _y’know_ — uh—”

 Mom blinks slowly, but it seems to clear away whatever haze through which she’s staring at me.

“No, sweetie, that’s … _fine_ ,” she says slowly, squinting one last time at my discrepant appearance, and deciding it’s easier not to pursue the questions I’m afraid of her asking. “How was it?”

I pause in the doorway of the kitchen, spinning on the balls of my feet to face her.

“Uh—” I begin awkwardly, but whatever switch exists inside mom’s head has been thankfully flipped, and her expression betrays only sincere curiosity. That’s a relief. “It was good? They had, _uhm_ — lots of flowers, uh, some music, and—”

Mom quirks an eyebrow, and folds her arms across her chest, telling me decisively that I’m blabbering like an idiot.

“S-sorry,” I stammer, palming a hand through my unruly hair, “Yeah, _obviously_ they had flowers. Geez. It was good. I mean— for them. To say goodbye as a family. That sort of good. And Marco was— _Marco was good too_.”

Mom’s face softens, the skin at the corner of her eyes creasing up with a sad, sensitive sort of smile.

“I’m glad,” she says softly, and I feel the iron-rod skeleton soldered to my bones become more malleable as I relax. I let my shoulders fall, and I nod gently in agreement. “Poor thing. And I’m sure having his mother and sister depending on him at such a time can’t make it any easier.”

“’S alright. They’re depending on each other,” I say, “They’re pretty strong, I reckon.”

“He’s a good kid, bless him,” mom says, waving me aside as she breezes into the kitchen. There’s a cup of coffee on the counter top that she was clearly midway through nursing when she heard me trying and failing to unlock the front door. Before she presses it to her lips, she adds, “And their little girl – Mina, wasn’t it? What a _darling_. It must be so tricky to lose your father at such a young age. You probably don’t remember when your grandfather died, because you were so young, but I was just thinking that—”

“ _Mom_.”

Mom looks surprised to be interrupted mid-ramble, but sets her coffee down on the marble again.

“Oh— _sorry_ , sweetheart. I suppose you must’ve had enough of that sort of talk,” she susses. “Far too morbid for this time of day, I agree. Even yesterday after you left, I just couldn’t _bear_ to sit still, because all I could think about was poor, dear Marco and his family, so I said to myself: _Céline, this is the perfect opportunity to do some errands to keep your mind off things_ , so I got in the car, and—”

I let mom waffle, relaying the adventures of her day yesterday whilst I plod over to the coffee machine and tap my fingers against the glass of the strainer. Still warm. Thank God.

I grab a mug from the rack and pour myself some jet fuel, the delightfully bitter steam clearing some of the dusty, stuffy feelings from my sinuses. I take a sip, slurping loudly, and let myself fall back against the counter top. To think I ever had a problem with nicotine, when glorious caffeine exists in the world—

“Jean, are you listening?”

“Hah— uh, what?”

Mom shakes her head in dismay, and plucks my coffee mug from my greedy hands despite how I whine pitifully.

“I _said_ that whilst I out yesterday, I picked up a surprise for you,” she panders, “And it’s up in your room. So maybe you should go and have a look, _hmm_?”

“A … _surprise_?” I quip sceptically, causing mom to roll her eyes.

“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”

 

* * *

 

I don’t exactly know _what_ to expect as I let mom nudge me up the stairs, prodding me dutifully in between my shoulder blades with her bony fingers.

There’s nothing that I’ve asked for. I don’t think there is anything that could persuade me to encourage her to use dad’s credit card on my behalf anymore: no car, no tripped-out stereo system, no gadget that I undoubtedly _don’t need_.

And so my mind races.

I hope it’s not some gift of truce – because I would hope that there is no longer a need for a white flag between us. She jokes and laughs freely; she smiles; she doesn’t cower away in place of a mothering touch.

I hope she hasn’t bought something just to tell me that she’s over the spiteful things I said and the cold shoulder I gave her for so many weeks. Because I don’t _want_ her to be over it, and I don’t want her to think that I’m still the same person that can be bought into silence.

And especially: I don’t want her to think that she still has ground to make up, when I’m the one who still has marathons to run before I’m out of breath enough to justify what pain I have caused her.

And even if it is not that – my mind can’t help but conjure up images of me opening my bedroom door to a giant banner stretched across my bed, reading: _Congratulations on the boyfriend!_ , because I wouldn’t put it past mom’s mystical powers to have somehow found out despite everything. Hell, I’ve been in a relationship for, what, five hours tops? Surely the laws of the universe state that she should’ve been quicker off the old starting block.

The landing creaks beneath our feet, because she forces me to step on the floorboards that I usually avoid when trying to sneak around the house. I lean back over my shoulder to try and judge her expression, but she pokes me forward.

“M-mom, look,” I joke weakly, “As much as past-me might have appreciated the thought of you leaving a stripper or a kissogram in my room, I don’t think I’m about that anymo—”

“Jean! Mind _out_ of the gutter, thank you!” mom scolds, “What sort of parent do you think I am?”

Mom opens my bedroom door exasperatedly, and in the same instance my shaky teasing disintegrates into wide-eyed shock and _no words_.

For a moment, I’m not sure what I’m looking at: all noble and beech wood in the centre of my room. Some sort of deck chair missing its canvas? A musical instrument without its strings?

It’s neither of those things. It’s a brand-spanking new artist’s easel.

My jaw drops and I open and close my mouth on revolving repeat like a gawking fish out of water.

_That’s … for me? From m-mom?_

I’m in my room and running my hand over the lacquered wood before I can even blink, the burn of fresh varnish simmering my sense of smell.

“I called up Rico just after you left,” mom says, and I’m greeted by a smug smile and arms folded across her chest as I glance back at her, stripped of the bark of what I want to say. “You remember her, right? Well, I thought she would be the best port of call to ask what sort of supplies you might need to take art seriously, and—”

“ _Seriously?!_ ”

Mom _panics_ with the speed at which I whip around to face her, although I keep one hand fiercely curled around the wooden leg of the easel in fear of someone taking it away from me just as suddenly as I’ve received it.  She takes a step back, her hand flying to her chest, but her timidity is bolstered out of the way by a braising grin when she sees how broad my own stretches.

“Seriously,” she repeats honestly, a soft, inward look having come into her eyes. “Heaven knows you need one for your paintings, sweetheart.”

“M-mom, I—”

_Mom, I don’t know what to say._

I’ve said before about how she and I are glass-like, and how we’ve left smudges of fingerprints over one another. I’ve described the feeling of living in a glass box, and pounding on the panels until they splinter and shatter and break.

But this is different. This is like being _made_ of glass yet hollowed out, and when knuckles rap upon my surface, the space within me vibrates indefinitely, unable to pass through the crystalline skin. Yet is doesn’t make me feel empty.

This is prism-like. Sunlight doesn’t highlight the spiralled prints on my surface, nor the dirt, nor the dust, nor the grime – but instead it scatters spectrally, and it’s the array of refracted, multi-coloured light that makes me feel so suddenly whole.

I don’t know what to say, because the cavity inside my chest fills and fills and fills; I feel choked, blubbery, and find myself stumbling over the need to blink back unexpected pricks of water clinging to my eyelashes.

“Mom, you don’t—” I start, feeling like I could almost _laugh_. “I didn’t even tell you, I— _I switched my major_. I never even told you, but— did you … did you know?”

Mom smiles knowingly, biting down on her lower lip until her teeth leave puckered dents in her lipstick-smothered skin.

“I had an inkling,” she admits with a modest quirk of her claret lips, “You’ve always been stubborn about what you want. I can’t say I’m surprised, but— _mmph_!”

I squash up against her in a wobbly hug that almost topples her over; she’s too thin and dainty to be much of a match to the way I barrel into her, pressing my head into her bony shoulder. She squawks in surprise, and her hands flail as she tries to push away, the instinct to fly still ingrained within her as much as I regret that very fact – but I just squeeze her tighter.

I don’t know what I did for all these pieces to be falling so seamlessly together – but maybe it’s the universe feeling sorry for me. Or maybe it’s the universe feeling proud of me, and offering me the sort of crash landing pad that I so desperately need following all this _hurtling_.

I feel mom press a reddened kiss to my forehead, and she settles into my bundled-up hug with a long exhale, wrapping her arms protectively around my shoulders as best she can, probably wishing I was still five years old and small enough for her to rest her chin on the crown of my head when I was in her arms.

It’s been a long, long time since I last had the chance to … think about _this_. Art. This massive part of my life, and the fact that only a few weeks ago, I signed my name over in acrylic paint and charcoals to the goal of disappointing my father and throwing away the safety net of all of his avaricious money.

And yet— it’s been a long time since the days when I shoved my sketchbooks down the side of my mattress and feared for the moment when I would walk into my room and find one or both of my parents pawing over my messy drawings spread out across my mattress.  

Now my regret is that I wish I’d told mom sooner and saved myself so many years of clandestine pencils with a chair propped against my door.

“You didn’t have to,” I murmur into mom’s shoulder, “I don’t need this, I don’t—”

“You _do_ , sweetheart,” she replies gently, “And don’t rule yourself out just yet. You haven’t even seen everything.”

She points towards my bed, and I suppose I must be blind – because on my mattress is an insurmountable pile of … _stuff_. Three large, stretched-canvas boards, packs of coarse hog hair and sleek nylon paint brushes, sleeves of charcoals and graphite pencils, a chemist’s laboratory of paint colours— any artist’s _wet fucking dream_.

I peel myself from mom’s arms and stagger over to my bed, flapping hands and bulging eyes, completely _bewildered_ as to what I want to touch first—and—and—

_This stuff is mine? It can’t be mine, it’s so much, it’s all so—_

“F-fuck,” I breathe shakenly, carding frantic hands through my hair and palming at the back of my neck. “Fuck, mom, this is too much— you shouldn’t have—”

“You deserve as good a shot as anyone, Jean,” she says, teetering to my side and selecting a tray of untouched watercolours from the offering. She turns the paints over in her hands, and then presses them against my chest, encouraging me to hold them – and stare disbelieving at them. “And anyway— we have to win your father around _somehow_.”

It takes just a word to shatter the ideal, but it feels like the blow of a hammer coming down on my prism surface, driving a nail deep into a tectonic crack. I know I baulk.

“Mom, did you— did you use his credit card for this?”

I know she sees how my expression sours, because hers becomes draped in melancholy just as much – but her smile doesn’t quite die. She wraps her arms around herself and shakes her head gracefully.

“No, honey. Not this time,” she says delicately, “It’s a gift from _mamie_ and me. I knew … I knew that you wouldn’t want _that_.”

I let my gaze trail to my feet and I focus on wriggling my toes. The acerbic feeling doesn’t dissipate. It tastes caustic on the back of my throat – not enough to make me sick, or to make my eyes burn, but enough to make it difficult to swallow. The acid burns holes through the happy, wholesome feeling, corroding the glass walls to make tunnels for something squirming to crawl into my hollowing space.

Would it matter if mom _had_ flashed his credit card at the cashier? Will it lessen the blow when he finds out and scolds us both for being so wasteful – of money or my future, it doesn’t really matter. Will the fact that I’m not dragging him down with me into some boundless, impoverished, Bohemian existence make him respect me any more?

I can’t say. I don’t _know_.

And—

I’m scared again.

I just _don’t know_.

“Fuck,” I whisper, pressing the heel of my hand into my eye socket, grinding my palm into my skin aggressively.

_Fuck, I hate this feeling._

_Fuck, why do I never know how I’m meant to feel? What I’m meant to do?_

_Fuck, I can hear Marco’s words in my head again, and I want— I want to do right by his advice. I really do._

_Fuck._

“Baby?” mom dares to ask, “Is everything okay?”

I breathe in deeply, and clear enough space on the edge of my mattress to plant myself, hands gripping my knees and head bowed forward, the watercolour paints discarded in my lap. Wait for it to pass. It’ll pass.

I’m used to bad feelings. The hazy, lazy Sunday-brand depression or whatever label some psychiatrist can plaster on it – I’ve known that for as long as I can remember.  But I don’t like the way it manifests itself now; I never liked it _period_ , but I like it even less now that it’s something that I don’t quite recognise.

Is it even the same cloud? Or is it a different one, not threatening rain, but threatening hail, or thunder, or lightning, or some other weather phenomenon that no number of hands pressed up against the bow of the sky can hold back? Northern winds that carry alphabets and battery and a sweep from under my feet? Who knows.

 _Who knows_.

The crest of the wave rolls over as bitter, faded laughter from my lips.

“Jean?”

The mattress dips as mom settles down beside me, hesitating a moment before she decides to place a hand on my knee. Her hand span isn’t as wide, and her fingers aren’t as strong as Marco’s, so maybe I can’t compare this moment; but where Marco would ground me, would cool the frayed edges of my nerves, mom’s fingers splayed across my knee don’t necessarily give me root to the earth, but they give me something to hold onto. Maybe we both continue to get tossed and turned by the current, but at least I’m not alone.

I spare a glance up at her, and decide that maybe I can share my thoughts too.

“Mom, do you— do you think that you can ever … _control_ of your future? D’you think there’s a way of … of _knowing_ if—”

Mom blinks at me owlishly, and stutters over a noise of surprise.

“That’s … isn’t that a bit of a deep conversation to be having before lunch, sweetheart?” she stammers.

“No, I don’t mean like … like _that_ ,” I say, “I mean like do you— do you think I could’ve— or could still—”

I don’t know what I mean. But it’s not some philosophical question I’m posing to the universe and expecting mom to answer. It’s just— I want to know what grip is best to hold onto the sides of the boat when it next decides to rock again.

Mom sighs, rubbing her hand across my knee. You wouldn’t usually depend on her for advice beyond whether your hair looks good, or if a shirt is in your colour, but I’ve come to learn in recent weeks that she makes it count when it truly matters.

“You are exactly where you need to be,” she says, “And it doesn’t matter if it’s some divine plan, or the choices you made, or— I don’t know, baby. But this is where you were meant to be, and next week, you will be where you are meant to be, and two years down the line, you will be where you are meant to be.”

She reaches for the paints in my lap and returns them to the pile behind us.

“All of this,” she continues, “This will get you to where you need to be, Jean. Don’t think about money. Don’t think about your father. Just about you. Where _you_ need to be. I know how scary it must be to not know for certain where that place might be, but I want you trust me, baby. I’ve seen you, and how your eyes _lit_ up when you showed me your sketchbooks – I couldn’t even remember the last time I saw you act like that, or be that happy with _yourself_. And I knew, Jean, in that moment that I would do _whatever I could_ to see you make that face again.”

She bumps her shoulder against mine, craning up to kiss the side of my head, beckoning out a little weary groan that morphs into a permissive mumble from deep within my chest.  

“Just think,” she chuckles lightly, “It’s going to be like your first day of school all over again.”

“’Cept I’m not five, mom,” I grouse weakly, but she scoffs.

“You’ll always be my baby, whether you’re five, or twenty five, or anywhere in between, Jean,” she lauds. “This is a new chapter for you, so it’s a new chapter for me. This is a step in a new direction, but it’s the right direction. And just think! Marco is going back at college this semester too, right? You’ll be starting together! Isn’t that super?”

I wonder if my lips betray me – in the way that they quirk up involuntarily at the corners with just the mention of his name, and I feel my cheeks begin to colour with all the possibilities that flood into my head as if a dam has been broken somewhere upstream.

I haven’t had the chance to talk to Marco about school yet; partly because we’ve been wading through things much bigger than that, and partly … because it’s on my résumé that I’m good at forgetting things that I shouldn’t be ignoring.

But thoughts of lift shares, and eating lunches together in the cafeteria, and stealing kisses in the parking lot are like a bubbling feeling that springs up from deep beneath the stagnant pool that I was stewing in just moments ago.

_Think about meeting up with Marco after his ward shifts … all doled out with his stethoscope, and his coat, and his scrubs …_

(You can’t say I’m not … _thirsty_ at the worst of times.)

Mom mistakes my small smile for me embracing her words of comfort. She bumps me with her shoulder once more, repeating what she said before in a tone soft but sonorous.

“Exactly where you need to be, Jean. _Exactly_.”

 

* * *

 

Mom and I sit for a while on my bed, sifting through the pile of art supplies and having me explain what some of the weirder looking tools are used for. (Half of them I can’t even _identify_ , so we sit pouring over the internet on my phone, trying to figure out whether or not the waxy pencil I hold in my hand is actually a candle or a crayon blender. Unsurprisingly, it turns out to be the latter, but mom gets a good giggle out of it.)

We eventually clear my bed, arranging everything in neat piles on the floor which mom insists have some sort of order that she understands.

(“Watercolours on the left, acrylics in the middle, and the other one on the right,” she says proudly.)

(“Oils,” I correct, with a chuckle.)

I sneak a few, cheeky snaps of my haul and send them on to Ymir and Historia on SnapChat, knowing that whilst my secret won’t need to stay safe for very much longer, it’s in good hands with them for now. I’m about to send the image on to Marco when I notice the bright pink square of an unread message next to his contact name.  I open it thinking little of it, considering he’s usually been so prone to just sending me blurry pictures of furniture just for the sake of a message.

He’s sent me a photo of his bed, the quilts still rumpled and the sheets still unmade, much the same as how we’d left it this morning. Oh, but the caption—

The caption reads a mortifying: _I don’t like how empty it looks :^(_

With a God-damn _yelp_ , I fucking launch my phone across the room, it ricocheting off the edge of my trash can, and thankfully – although that’s certainly fucking objective – being cushioned by scrunched up balls of paper I’d thrown away who knows when.

“Jean!” mom exclaims shrilly, “What in _Judas’ name_ was that for?!”

I feel my face combust, heat boiling along my hairline and on the back of my neck, and I stuff my hands beneath my thighs to stop myself from flailing.

“I, uh— nothing!” I squawk, eyes boring into my trash can, but unable to get up and retrieve my probably demolished phone from the rubbish. “Ma— Connie! _Connie_ just sent me one of those … those screamer things, y’know? Like, it uh— it just jumps out at you and— and it got me real good, uhm— _yep_!”

Mom squints at me hard, and her eyes roam to the trash, and then back to me again, her son who _talks_ trash.

“You’ve been … awfully _flighty_ recently, Jean,” she deliberates slowly.

“Dunno what you mean. ‘M fine. Peachy.”

“I doubt your _phone_ is fine.”

“It’s survived worse, _honest_.”

Mom rolls her eyes and laughs it off, telling me to get changed as she rises to her feet, and murmuring something about having lunch in the backyard today before we lose the last of the temperate weather of the hanging-on summer.

I let her leave the room and go tottering down the stairs before I scamper over the trash can and rescue my phone, which is, luckily, devoid of any new cracks. Sadly, the same can’t be said for my sanity.

I decide vengefully Marco doesn’t deserve a response to that message _yet_.

 

* * *

 

Mom lets me split a bottle of white wine with her over lunch, and I tease her about _what on earth happened to me being her baby son_. She scoffs lightly, and presses her glass to her lips again, petaling another lipstick print upon the rim.

We spend the day in my room; I scold her to take off her stupid heels before she breaks her neck doddering around my room, shelving paints and pastels – but she replies with a toast of her glass in my direction as I squat in front of my laptop, sifting through all the university emails I haven’t checked in weeks.

I never remember it being this complicated when I applied the first time around, but apparently there’s more paperwork to fill out than I gave the university credit for. Fingers twisted in my hair, I tug at my roots for every line of email I skim read from my tutor, which get more and more frantic the longer I’d left it without replying. (And I don’t think any of my excuses about not feeling up to getting out of bed for the past month – for a variety of reasons – will probably earn me any sort of leeway.)

A few grovelling emails later seems to have me out of the metaphorical deep-end. As long as I bring along whatever I can chuck together and call a portfolio on the first day, they should be able to sidestep around the fact that this time last year I was preparing to sit down in Math and Chemistry classes, pretty much as far away from a freaking paintbrush as physically possible.

All my Chemistry textbooks are still piled up high at the end of my bed, and it makes me wonder just how much dust the housekeeper has swiped off that stack over the rolling weeks of summer.

No matter for very much longer, I suppose. They’ll make good bonfire fuel.

 _Or you could do the decent thing and sell them_ , the internal monologue adds condescendingly. _Maybe check if Marco could use any of them, or at least get a good dollar to put away for a rainy day. Y’know, adult responsibilities and all that._

The sun is dawdling low in the sky by the time I slam my laptop lid shut with a deteriorating sigh. Sleeves of bleary yellow-gold clip the slate roofs of the houses over the street, scattering the light abstractly across the white walls of my room, creating sculpted shadows on my ceiling. The late afternoon is sapphire pink, and heavy with a romantic peace.

I don’t know how many glasses of wine mom has put away, but it’s enough to have sucked the strict rigour from her back, and leave her slumped against the wall on my bed, having kicked off her shoes and folded her legs up onto the mattress. She swirls her wine glass by the stem, a happy, dopey smile natural upon her lips.

I drag my heels on the floorboards and wheel myself and my chair over to the stack of films that tower precariously in a wonky _Jenga_ pile next to my desk, and twist to face mom.

“You got any preferences?” I ask candidly, running my thumb down the spines of each DVD. Mom makes a humming noise, and shrugs. “Or that you’re sober enough to handle?” I add with a dry chuckle.

“Hey!” she pouts, “I’ve only had … _f-four_ glasses? Put on _La Vie en Rose_. I do love that film.”

Mom starts humming _Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien_ , and I suppose that’s _decision made_ on my behalf. I edge the film out from the bottom of the pile, careful not to send everything else tumbling – which is easier said than done with the way I feel the wine tingle already dizzying in my fingertips and zapping my motor skills – and clip the disk into the Xbox, the screen of my television lighting up.

I roll myself over to the window, and put my shoulder into heaving open the sash, being careful not to clip my forehead on the edge like so many times before. The movement of the glass diffracts the light, distilling and fermenting it into something oranger, something redder, and it mingles alcoholically with the breeze of autumn that waltzes in through the open window.

The dying sunlight burns mom’s ashen-blonde hair metallic copper as she tucks strands behind her ears, and steals some of the pillows from the end of my bed to prop behind her back as she settles into the loop of adverts. The wall behind her is lit with the mantle of sunset, and that dance of summer and autumn that whisks around in a three-step beat on the whispering breeze is a benediction, so caressingly intimate on my naked arms and bare cheeks that it could almost be embarrassing.

I steal my half-empty glass from my desk and grab the console controller as I scramble onto my mattress, squishing up next to mom as she pats down a pillow for me to lean against. The wine tastes fruitier, and smoother on my palette now than before, when it bit just a little too sharp and acrid. I let the taste trickle down my throat, and it blends quite well with the evening cadence and the silky croon of Edith Piaf as the opening credits roll.

Mom knows all the words and all the lyrics, and there’s something soothing and nostalgic about hearing her whispers in French beneath her breath; I’m stolen away to memories of long ago and of summers spent with _mamie_ in France; the ever-present tang of rich wine on my palette; songs dripping out of the stereo in _mamie’s_ little kitchen, and mom bare-faced as she sung along; some great longing in the air of a young man in love with an older woman that I was ever too small to recognise until I looked back on those leisurely months when dad would always say he could never get the time off work to accompany us over the sea.

Mom sighs forlornly when the young Edith Piaf begins to sings _La Marseillaise_ on the cobbled streets of Paris, and she wipes away a glimmer that trickles along her waterline when Marion Cotillard receives the news of the plane crash and the death of the man she loved. I excuse myself to sneak down to the kitchen to fetch another bottle of wine, but if anything, it’s to save myself the face of mom hearing the way I’m sniffing.

(I have a soft heart when it comes to these sort of movies, and anyway— Marion Cotillard won the Oscar, didn’t she? Of course her performance is gonna be a little bit … tear-jerking.)

When I creep back into my room, mom pouts when I only fill her glass up halfway, but if her hold on the stem is anything to go by, she doesn’t need much more before she becomes entirely incoherent, or even more likely: _a sobbing mess_.

Trost is twinkling in the distance by the time the film crescends to a close, opulent stars of distant skyscrapers like fireflies suspended in a compromise with the dark. Mom pats her cheeks dry as the music fades out and the screen curtains black, the white scroll of the credits casting only the faintest moon-pretending glow across my room.

I move to slide off the mattress and change the disc, but mom slinks her hand around my arm and holds me tight, leaning her head against mine as her eyes flutter closed.

“This is nice,” she murmurs hazily, “I’m glad … we were able to get this back, Jeanbo.”

I snort clumsily, the world wobbling on its axis as I try to struggle upright, my head giddy.

“You haven’t called me that in years,” I jibe. “And you’re being cheesy. You’re a _cheesy_ drunk, mom.”  

She taps the end of my nose with her pointer finger and grins dopily.

“ _Cheesy_ is my middle name, sweetheart.”

I don’t have it in me to tell her that her middle name is Margot, or that I feel exactly the same way, and this _is_ nice. Her giggly, drunken laughter is soldering and it welds my joints, my bones, the hollow cracks in my chest that had let slip the prism light and let in dark water by the trickle and by the gush.

“On devrait faire ça plus souvent,” I murmur quietly – _we should do this more often_ – but mom just nods, having already blurred the line between what is English, what is French, and what is still Edith Piaf warbling over the still-churning credits of the movie.

A buzzing sound disturbs the inebriated silence, and a rectangle of icy-blue light splurges on the ceiling from where my cell phone vibrates on my desk, rumbling through the varnished wood. Mom and I both eye it curiously for a moment too long, cartwheeling and tumbling through the fog of wine and sleepy movies, instead of walking a straight line forward – but when I realise that someone is indeed _ringing_ me, I all but take a tumble over the edge of my mattress, fumbling my way over to my phone in the milky-luminous dark amidst muffled and muttered swearing.

_Marco-Polo calling. Marco-Polo calling._

The bottle and a half that we’ve split between us has definitely gone to my head – I could tell you that from how I sway on my feet – and I stare curiously at the name flashing on my screen with a smoked-out expression and a blank slate occupying the space where more lucid things should be.

“Jeaaaan,” mom croons, flopping over onto the mattress without me there to support her, “Who’s calling? Aren’t you going to answer it?”

It’s some sort of reassurance to know I’m sober enough to debate on which is worse: me being too drunk to take this call, or mom being not drunk enough to be in the same room as me as I take this call. Well, she’s slurring her words and unable to keep herself upright, so I hope that means she won’t retain whatever I’m about to murmur down a telephone line.

I slide my finger over the green button, and press my phone to my ear.

“Hey?”

“Jean! Hi—uhm— _hey_ ,” comes Marco’s voice, a little fuzzy – though I can’t quite tell if that’s static in the signal or croaky sleep in his tone. “Sorry, it’s not too late to call, is it?”

I shift my phone to my other ear, and lean back on my desk – although my hand almost misses the edge entirely, nearly giving me a drunken sort of heart attack – and watch as mom knocks over her empty wine glass and squawks to herself as she tries to upright it with uncoordinated hands.

“No,” I murmur, “No, it’s not. ‘S never … too late to call.”

“Oh— _good_ ,” Marco laughs lightly, and maybe a little nervously. “I just—well, maybe you’ll think it’s corny, but—I just wanted to call to say goodnight. I’m, uh, just about to sleep, so. Yeah. I wanted to … hear your voice.”

“O-oh. _Uhm_. Okay,” I stutter, curling and uncurling my fingers around the edge of my desk. I bite hard into my lower lip, and am thankful for the dark – and mom’s dilapidated eyesight. “Well, uh— _this is me_.”

“I know,” Marco chuckles breathily, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. There’s something about the embrace of night that makes his voice feel so very _close_ – like a whisper in my ear, and not static over a receiver. I can almost feel the caress of breath against the side of my neck; can almost relish the ghost of hands trailing languidly over my arms.

Mom steals the spotlight by knocking her wine glass onto the floor, with a shrill exclamation of, “oh, _shoot_!”. I snort heavily, unable to stop myself from sniggering at the way she flounders. Marco notices.

“You’re not alone?” he asks, “Am I interrupting?”

“No, no,” I exasperate, “It’s just mom. We were watching a movie and I, uh— guess I let her have _six glasses of wine too many_.” I stage whisper into the receiver, “She’s very drunk right now.”

“I’m not drunk, I’m— I’m just _happy_!” mom squeaks in protest. Marco laughs brightly in my ear.

“Did you hear that?” I ask, chewing on my lower lip more aggressively as I swallow back the way his musical laughter makes me want to fidget.

“Yep. Loud and clear,” he hums, “Sounds like you two have had a good night. Say hi to her for me—”

I lose the end of Marco’s sentence as mom pitches forward with a loud yelp of excitement.

“Jean! Is that _Marco_ on the phone? Marco, lovely! I’m thinking of you, okay! We both are – lots and _lots_!”

I squash my cell phone between my shoulder and my cheek and dart forward, catching mom with both hands around her upper arms, pushing her back onto my bed before she becomes acquainted with the floor.

Marco is trying and failing to conceal his laughter, and I imagine him biting down on his knuckle as he holds his stomach, his cell phone on speaker next to him on his pillow.

“Mom, isn’t it time you went to bed,” I growl, which she finds indefinitely funny. “Time to sleep off the alcohol, yeah?”

 _Parenthood apparently descended on me early tonight. Wow_.

“No, no!” mom splutters, flailing her hands and trying to seize my precariously-balanced phone, “You need to ask Marco if he wants to come round for lunch with his family, _remember_? Ask him if Sunday works, Jean! Ask, ask!”

“He’s in _bed_ , mom,” I grouse, “Like _normal_ people. He can’t tell us right this minute, c’mon—”

Marco pipes up in my ear, his sunny brand of laughter just as dizzying as however much I’ve had to drink.

“Sunday doesn’t work, but Saturday would be great,” he chimes, “I’ve got to see Erwin on Sunday, and mom has a shift, but _Saturday_ — Saturday we’re free, if the invite stands.”

Mom batts her eyelashes belligerently and pouts her red lips, and I wonder if Marco’s mind would be changed if he could see her now. I sigh loudly and deliberately.

“Okay, mom, did you hear that? Marco says Saturday, so you can _go to bed now_ ,” I stress. Mom claps her hands together happily, a sparkling grin irradiating her face. “Believe me, you’re gonna be paying for this with a hangover in the morning,” I add with a grumble. I haul her to her feet as best I can, lucky that she weighs so little, but unlucky that I’m not exactly steady myself; as I prompt her towards the door, she leans into my ear, and sings down the phone,

“We’ll see you soon, Marco, love!”

I resist the urge to kick her out onto the landing and leave her there.

 

* * *

 

By the time I’ve guided her down the hallway and watched her trip into bed, I feel like I could sleep for a year myself.

She tells me firmly that I’m awfully red, and then fucking _cackles_ when I offer her a decisive and mortified _goodnight_ and shut the door on her drunken endeavours. I pad back along the landing, avoiding all the creaky floorboards but one – which gives me a God-damn stroke when it groans obscenely beneath my weight – all the while with the lilt of Marco’s breathing and the soft rustling of his bedsheets pressed against my ear.

The menu screen for _La Vie en Rose_ now lights up my room from my television, the lull of the song donating some of its elegance to the dark that pours in through my still-open window. Trost would be so lucky. I hit the power button, and stumble over to my bed before my eyes adjust to the glow of streetlamps, flopping with a dull thump onto the mattress. I breathe wearily into my phone, and the grey air around me seems to crinkle.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” I say weakly, unsure if Marco’s fallen asleep in the time I’ve been silent, but not really minding. The thought of listening to his filmy breathing whilst I doze seems like an opportunity rather that a loss, however _Edward Cullen_ -level creepy that might sound. “Mom’s a handful when she’s on the _Sauvignon Blanc_.”

There’s a low hum from his end, and then his voice, sounding a little sleepier than before.

“Is she doing alright?”

“Yeah,” I breathe, “Got her into bed. Hangover in the morning, but she’ll be okay.”

It’s not exactly what he was asking – and we both know that – but my answer says enough and _is_ enough for so late at night. I decide to change the topic to something lighter.

“I’m gonna get you back, y’know,” I murmur, “For that God-damn SnapChat from earlier. I threw my phone across the fucking _room_.”

“Across the room?” Marco muses giddily, “Well, I suppose it was worth it then.”

“Glad you got your kicks, Freckles,” I jibe, “Next time send me a warning first. I need to work on my throwing arm.”

“It was just a photo of my bed, Jean,” Marco feigns innocently, “I don’t know what you’re so ... _worked up about_. I’m sure it could be— _uhm_ — a lot worse.”

I quirk an eyebrow as heat rushes to my cheeks; I press the phone closer to my ear, catching a nervous hitch in his breath that follows his words.

“Y-yeah?” I dare to ask, “I reckon I could be persuaded around by _a lot worse_.”

The noise that Marco makes isn’t uncomfortable – but maybe it’s a little bit strangled. Flustered, I guess. (Much like the sound that I manage to suffocate just in time.) ( _No gutter thoughts, God dammit. Let’s keep it c-clean._ )

“I’ll h-have to bear that in mind,” he all but whispers down the line, and I fucking _shiver_. _Don’t think about what that means, don’t think about what that means, you’re not sober enough for—_

“I should probably sleep, unless you— _uhm_ — want to—?”

“N-no, go sleep!” I babble, “I, uh— sleep good— _well_. Sleep _well_ , Marco.”

Marco chuckles airily but it doesn’t quite mask the awkward moment that presents itself where neither of us know how to say goodbye, and I’m still feeling distinctly and embarrassingly warm. I feel myself teetering on the very edge of a great big hole filled with cheesy things, sappy things, things that he undoubtedly _deserves_ to be told if it weren’t for how my throat closes up with jitters.

We both skirt around sentences of three words, which might have once been thrown with full force at the cynic within me, but now I find myself waiting with anticipatory breath for the next time they might be said in passing for want of the enslaving way my blood pressure spikes.

“I’ll see you at the weekend, then,” Marco says, sweeping the husky silence to one side. He rolls over the syllable of my name intimately, as if each letter is padded on either side with phrases that would practice the same form as a kiss. “Sweet dreams, Jean.”

“Y-yeah. _Yeah_ , you too. Sweet dreams.”

 

* * *

 

No dreams of water. No dreams of oceans, endless seas and drowning.

Just dreams of Marco; the tender trace of his fingers over my back, trailing the indentations of my spine and drawing daydreamic circles in the hollow between my shoulder blades; laying face to face in the same bed, our noses just brushing, and dissolving in every flutter of his eyelashes against his cheeks.

This is the real _deep end_ , and for once I don’t want to let my feet touch the floor.

 

* * *

 

I spend Friday having a Disney movie marathon with myself whilst mom is out at her fitness class and batting her lashes at the hot yoga instructor she described in detail to me over breakfast. (“He’s positively _Grecian_ , Jean,” she had swooned, “Hot, Spanish, and, _Jesus save me_ , you could _cut yourself_ on his abs. But you need to _see_ him to believe.”)

After I move the Jag from behind her coupé and wave her away from the end of the drive, I scuttle inside with my arms piled high with my homework from Mina.

I switch out _La Vie en Rose_ from the Xbox and replace it with _Tangled_ and a big bag of _Cool Ranch Doritos_ , settling down on my bed with a sceptical glance at the cover of the case, tapping my finger against Flynn Rider’s face critically.

 _Alright, you cocky-looking asshole, let’s see what your deal is_.

 

* * *

 

By the time mom comes home some four and a half hours later, _Tangled_ , _Aladdin_ , and _Sleeping Beauty_ are discarded on my desk, and I’m tearing up over a fucking firefly in _The Princess and the Frog_. I tell her that it must be a last-ditch attack of hay fever when she asks me at dinner why my eyes are a little bit red.

(What she doesn’t need to know is that I crack out my sketchbook after I’ve had my fill of whatever it is that she’s calling a salad these days, and end up doodling _Disney_ princesses for the rest of the night. Mina will like them, I tell myself firmly, as I decide obtrusively that I need to change the colour of the marker pen I’m using for Rapunzel’s hair. Gotta be accurate.)

 

* * *

 

The charcoaled weather of a booming Indian summer lengthens and lingers in the day, with night-time clawing back upon the precipice of bright sun, and the hum of lofty, harvestal songs of the wrangling autumn vying for a view of the city still radiating heat.

The tips of the hedge leaves are beginning to rust over in chalky highlights of rose and faded yellow, striking against the green grass of the lawn and the pelagic, Neptunian blue of the pool in which they set sail with each gust of more potent wind that whips through the back yard.

The air is sticky on Saturday morning, with temperatures lounging around the high seventies, and me lounging around in a tangle of my sheets, a grubby film of sweat slick against the back of my neck with the oppressive heat and the knowledge that I’ve been staring at my closet for the last half an hour, trying to decide what the _hell_ to wear to see Marco today.

It feels like something official – even it had been shouted down the phone whilst slightly tipsy two nights ago – and the promise made with Marco to tackle everything together weighs heavily on my mind when I realise that the only person in the house today who doesn’t know about us, is mom.

God, I hope Anita doesn’t say something that would give the game away. I can just imagine the ensuing Mexican stand-off where mom drops whatever’s in her hands, it shattering upon the hard-wood floor, and her staring at Marco and me absolutely appalled.

Or maybe it would be better – if Anita or Mina dropped us in it, or mom walked in on a peck on the cheek no way platonic – because then at least I wouldn’t have to be the one to _say something_.

 _Urgh_.

The reality is, I’m the _only_ one who has to say something. And I’d rather beat everyone else to the punch, even if the only obligation that’s dragging me down is the one concocted for myself and the relationship I want to maintain with my mom.

Or the _hope_ of the relationship I can maintain with my mom. _No more secrets_ , we’d told each other. I wonder how far that rings true.

Even if this moment in time – this exact point in the continuum of space where my orbit comes infitesimally close to telling mom just how much Marco means to me – is _exactly where I need to be_ , I just wish it could be easier. Simpler. Smoother sailing. I wish it was the sort of lament that would string crowns of hope across the roof, and not one that threatens to make me abdicate the boat.

I grabble with the nicest pair of black jeans that I own, dancing around my room as I try to pull them up over my bony hips – they feel more snug than usual, and briefly I wonder if I’ve put on some weight in the last week and a bit. Maybe that’s a good thing. I’d rather not continue to have the outward appearance of a boned fish on the best of days, _especially if_ —

 _Well_. Especially if there’s a likelihood of someone _wanting_ to see what’s going on beneath my kegs sometime soon.

_But it’s not like he hasn’t seen most of it before, I mean—_

I grumble as I wrestle with the button on my jeans, trying not to think about the possibility. I already feel like I’m boiling beneath my bed shirt, the flimsy cotton sticking uncomfortably to my sides, and I don’t need rolling in the gutter to give me heat stroke, amongst other unwanted things.

_But are they gutter thoughts when you’re only thinking about yourself—_

No. Nope. Don’t think about it. Think about what I’m going to wear instead.

After much deliberation, which involves squatting in front of my closet and running cloying hands through my hair one after another for at least half an hour, I pull out a capped-sleeve button up from my forest of clothes: starchy, black cotton with a busy white print – supposedly palm trees, but the pattern could be anything if I squint – and it really just feels like a poor excuse to cling onto the coattails of summer.

I button the shirt up to my neck and flatten the collar against my throat with a deep expulsion of breath.

I was not sober enough on Thursday night to realise exactly how suddenly mom had thrown this on me, but the mild panic has arrived just on time.

I hope mom likes Anita. I hope Anita likes _mom_. I’m sure she can come across overbearing to people who haven’t known her for long – and I know she can come across as shallow too. In the past I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at the assumption, but now— I’m certainly more protective of who I know my mom really is. I hope Anita can see past everything and recognise that too.

And I hope they both like _me_ when I’m caught in the middle of the puzzle between the pair of them, and Marco. Because it feels like this is the bare me, but equally, this is the me most guarded – if both facets of myself can exist and complement one another simultaneously.

And if I can make it down the stairs without feeling like I need to puke my guts up with nerves. Better focus on that hurdle first.

I’m not usually one for wearing shoes inside my own house, but I slip on a pair of loafers which seem to suction onto the wooden floor of my room, and each step requires so much more _effort_. I twist hair gel through my roots and ruffle the shaggy ends until I achieve the _precise_ sort of pretentiously unkempt that I want – distracting myself from the inevitable for as long as possible – before dropping a pleading word in with whichever big guy upstairs in listening, and slipping out of the gap in my bedroom door.

It’s just gone quarter to twelve. I guess they’ll be here any minute now.

The kitchen is already bustling by the time I’ve taken each stair one at a time, dragging my heels on the floorboards – and it’s a testament to mom how much of a _storm_ she can kick up in there when it’s only her. I’d suggested she called the housekeeper for some help, but she’d been adamant to prepare everything herself – from scrubbing every inch of the house clean until it genuinely sparkles, to concocting whatever it is that simmers on the stove top as I slide awkwardly through the doorway.

“You’ve, uh— _dressed up_ ,” is the first thing that escapes my mouth as I lay my eyes on mom – she teeters in sky-high sandals on the white tile floor, the heels squeaking and clicking and looking dangerously fragile as she nips between the fridge and the bubbling hob.  She’s wearing a red and white dress which tapers mid-calf into a pencil skirt and clings to her wiry frame immaculately. The waist is cinched in with a scooping black panel, and gold, dangly, probably fire-hazard earrings mix with her hair, curled in loose waves around her face. Her lips pout in a shock of red as she looks up at me, flinging the oven gloves draped over her shoulder onto the counter top.

“It’s too much?” she whines, looking herself up and down with a scowl that excavates frown lines between her neatly-plucked brows. “I wanted to make an effort, but I could change if you think it’s a bit over the top—”

“No, no, mom, it’s fine!” I backpedal, “You look great, I mean, it’s just— just that I don’t think Anita will dress up as much, because it’s not her _thing_ , and—”

“Well, you’ve dressed up too,” she whines obtusely, gesturing at me.

“Yeah, well,” I frown, tugging on the untucked tails of my button-down awkwardly _. I’m the one who’s actually dating the guy. I’m allowed to scrub up for him._ “’S just jeans. It isn’t much.”

“ _Isn’t much_ ,” mom scoffs, turning the flame down on the stove, “Don’t think that I can’t see that you’ve done your hair, Jean Kirschtein. You can’t pretend that you’re indifferent to _me_.”

I hope my dry chuckle sounds more sincere than it does guilty. I wonder just how thinly I can stretch this half-façade, half-lie until it pings back and slaps me in the face.

My eyes fall on the array of chopped vegetables on the counter side and my fingers begin to nervously itch.

“Is there anything I can— y’know, help with?” I query, fighting back the urge to wring my hands or start picking at the skin around my finger nails. Mom follows my line of sight to the chopping board and quirks an eyebrow.

“Jean, do you really want to be trusted with a sharp knife?” she remarks, “You look like you’re ready to bolt at any moment, Christ alive. It _is_ only Marco, sweetheart.”

 _Only Marco. Good joke, mom. He isn’t_ only _Marco any more._

Mom sighs, resting a hand on her jutting hip.

“But it’s that, or making the coulis for the dessert, and I can’t imagine you even know what a coulis is, so— just promise me that we won’t be taking any unplanned trips to ER this afternoon. I would rather you kept _all_ your fingers, and I don’t want to get blood on this dress. It was expensive.”

 

* * *

 

I _am_ genuinely surprised that I manage to keep all my fingers with the way the knife jitters and jumps within my sweaty grip, especially when I trip headfirst into the pitfall of remembering the last time I helped mom chop veg – an embarrassing and regretfully long time ago – when Marco came over for dinner, and his fingers had drifted across my knuckles as he’d stolen the knife from my grasp.

It’s cringe worthy to think that I’d probably react worse _now_ , if that were to happen again. I’d be a blushing and fumbling mess. How I managed to keep a straight face, I’ll never know.

I butcher a few carrots and some onions, my tear ducts pricking vinegarly as I throw the translucent cubes into the sizzling pan, each one hissing as it hits the oily surface. Haricot beans and gammon lardons simmer in the deep-basin saucepan on the adjacent ring, fragrant with the waft of stout rosemary and thyme, and my stomach growls violently.

It’s cassoulet, mom tells me proudly, reciting some story about how it’s a recipe she learned when she was still a girl living in France, and it’s a delicacy of the region in which _mamie_ now lives. And, mom stresses pointedly, the fact she’s using rapeseed oil makes it a really healthy alternative, and yadda yadda yadda. I nod along absent-mindedly as she continues to talk, as she pokes the contents of both pans with a wooden spoon, and then turns the oven up high to preheat it for the casserole dish – but I’m staring into the middle distance, floundering for something equally less and more concrete to hold onto and distract me from the way I can’t stand still. There’s something like the feeling of hot coals beneath my balls of my feet, and I shift my weight from one foot to the other near incessantly.

I debate making myself a cup of coffee – but, as mom points out, it would be rude to make a pot before our guests even arrive, and as I point out to myself, it would only fry my nerves even more.

_But if I fry my nerves enough, I won’t have to feel anything. I’ll be so wired on caffeine that I just won’t—_

_Yeah, brilliant idea. Not._

Just as mom is easing the now-full casserole dish into the oven, having scraped out every last drop and flake of veg from the stove-top pans, the doorbell rings – and I _leap out of my own skin_ with a mortifying yelp.

“Jean!” mom scolds, “You’ve behaving like you’re about to meet your executioner!” She nudges the oven door closed and sets her timer for thirty minutes, propping it on the counter top as she rights herself, dusting imaginary dirt from the skirt of her dress. “Go and get the door whilst I clean up – and for Christ’s sake, _relax_! You’re going to embarrass yourself!”

My loafers squeak jarringly on the floor of the hallway as I skid out of the kitchen, expecting to travel further, but forgetting the friction of the shoes that I’ve stuffed on my feet. As such, I almost trip head over heels before I even round the corner of the stairs. I hear Mina’s shrill complaints, followed by Marco’s low tone instructing her to behave, before I make out their silhouettes through the frosted windows of the front door. I think there’s something a little _antsy_ in his voice.

 _Well, that makes two of us. But I reckon I could give his nerves a run for their money_ , I think, wiping my sweaty palms frenziedly up and down my thighs until my fingers chafe and burn.  The door handle rattles in my grip – and believe me, I scold myself for it, because it’s just Anita, who pressed her hand to my forehead when she realised I was sinking in too deep, and it’s just Mina, who quietly added me to her drawing of her family, and it’s just Marco, just Marco, who—

 _Where to start_.

Not leaving them outside on the drive is a start.

I think I must almost wrench the front door off its hinges, because the second thing I see is Anita’s wide-eyed expression and Mina’s puzzlement that is quickly wiped away by a scathing scowl, but the first thing that I see—

The first thing that I see is that beaming, sun-kissed, freckled face, clutching a sprawling bouquet of delicate periwinkle-blue asters, pale chrysanthemums, and white dahlias that bleed pink closer to the stamen – all tied together in cellophane and string, and still with flecks of earth clinging to their stems – and I think my heart God-damn _stutters_.

Marco’s eyes fly to my face, and the welcoming smile on his lips saturates into his gaze, becoming vibrant and smouldering.

I have to fight the urge not to wheeze and sink down against the doorframe and die right there on the spot. It’s understandable. It’s _totally_ understandable. Marco seems to hide the quirk of his lips behind the flowers, but the pinkness that darkens his tanned skin creeps up and over the plumage and into his cheeks. He averts his eyes to the floor for a moment, but then returns my scrambling stare, because he has a penchant for my death wish.

Anita’s subtle clearing of her throat reminds me that I’m _not_ in an art gallery and free to appraise the most breath-taking of carven sculptures – but in fact am gawking over the same boy I saw only two days ago as he stands on my front porch with a bunch of flowers for … me? For mom? I’m gonna say me.

 _Not exactly something you can get over fucking quickly_ , I muse. _Look at him. Fucking asshole. Stop making an expression like that._

I let my gaze drift across Marco’s shoulders as he lowers the flowers meekly, marvelling at how well the button-down he’s chosen fits him, hugging his biceps and his chest obscenely, with the sleeves meticulously rolled up around his elbows revealing those fucking _stellar_ forearms. Illegal. _Ill-fucking-egal_.

Wobbly, I step back from the door, shoving it wide and gesturing for them to usher inside. I wonder if it’s possible to be both ghostly pale and bright fucking red at the same time. I try my damnedest to turn my attention to Anita, and Mina – clearly stuck in yet _another_ dress that she hates – who drags her feet as Marco lets them over the threshold first.

_Don’t embarrass myself, don’t embarrass myself, don’t—_

Anita is quick to drag me into a bearish hug and plant an affectionate kiss on my cheek.

“ _Caro_ ,” she coos, the musky smell of long-bottled perfume strong on her skin. “Don’t you look lovely today? Very sharp!”

I chuckle gratefully, though the sound is more like an awkward garble in my throat as I step away from her, ducking my head. I notice, in the same instance, how Mina hangs back, behind her mom, with her thin fists entwined in the skirts of her dress stiffly and her shoulders square as her glare flits around the hallway, darting from white wall to white wall to the eaves of the high ceiling. She throws a concerned sort of look up at Marco, who simply returns a smile, nudging her gently between the shoulder blades with his free hand. I don’t think what she says is what Marco is expecting or hoping for.

“Where is all your _furniture_?” she hisses, squinting at me peculiarly as mine and Marco’s jaws both drop abruptly, and Anita can’t reign in a snort of laughter. She clearly doesn’t understand what’s so funny, because her glare flits around the bare hallway once again, before laser-focussing back on my face incriminatoryly.

_Y’know what, that’s actually a good question—_

I have no chance to poise that query to the void, because mom comes pottering around the corner and her lips erupt into a claret-lined beam.  Even _I’m_ dazzled, and I’m the one that lives with her. From the corner of my eye, I catch Anita smoothing down her sundress and straightening the dusty-pink, sun-faded blazer she’s thrown over the top.

“Hello, hello!” mom chimes luminously, swooping in on Anita like a bird of prey or a stalking predator, and fake-pecking her amorously on either cheek. “Hi! Anita, love, it’s so wonderful to finally meet you! I’ve heard the _world_.”

Anita, so usually bubbly and full of that hearty, wholesome sort of spirit, is surprisingly reserved for a fleeting moment, and I know Marco and I both notice. Something in his body language changes minutely, and whilst I don’t know what it is, I’m acutely aware of it as much as I am aware of Anita’s uncharacteristic self-consciousness. (I deign to call it protectiveness.)

Mom hasn’t yet learned Anita’s frequency – or many frequencies for that matter – so I can forgive her for glossing over the shift in Anita’s countenance, instead fluttering her attention to a disparaging Mina, gushing over how cute she looks in her dress. (I’m not sure how Mina takes the attention, caught on the wire between scowling and hiding behind Marco, and lapping up the sudden flood of compliments from this skyscraper woman who looks like she’s fallen out of a sleek magazine spread.)

Finally, mom greets Marco, and I feel it like a dust of wind separating and scattering the seed heads of a dandelion puff, leaving me, as the stalk, with a bareness I am not used to. Mom hasn’t seen Marco in a long time, and sometimes I forget that he was a friend of hers as well as mine.

It’s a more intimate moment than I was expecting as she cups his cheeks in both palms and leans up on her tiptoes to kiss his forehead like she so often does to me, before embracing him in a fond hug, Marco gracelessly manoeuvring the bouquet of flowers over mom’s shoulder to save them from being crushed into smithereens of petals.

“Oh sweetheart,” mom condoles, her sparkly enthusiasm not dampened, but dwindled into something halcyon, “It’s been so _long_. How are you coping?”

The sympathy rings clear and true in mom’s eyes as she nods along to Marco’s answer, and then plies him with all the serene empathies that can be read from the lines in her face: a sorrowful crease between her eyebrows, the brackets of dimples that enclose the downwards tilt of her lips, the concern that pleats around her eyes as she lays a neatly-manicured hand on Marco’s shoulder.

Mom makes it effortless – in the transition from having to translate her feelings through her eyes only, to seeing how she pours her whole self into it now; and in her graceful, hosting chatter that would fool anyone into thinking she’s known these people all her life. I wish the right words came so easily to me as they do pouring out her red lips like they’re nothing and weightless. I guess being small with shaky hands and a heart that trembles makes you more aware of things like weight, even when the fluency and efficacy with which mom babbles, gushing over the flowers in Marco’s hands, makes me wonder if weight even exists at all.

“What lovely dahlias,” she crows, reaching out for the bouquet in Marco’s hands and throwing her repose to the wind. “Ours just never seem to grow, and I can’t for the life of me understand why. Jean, would you be a dear—”

I tear my eyes away from the velvety petals of the white chrysanthemums to stare blankly at mom. The little quirk of her eyebrows tells me eloquently enough that’ve I’ve been grimacing off into space like a tool again. _Stop thinking so much._

“—and go fetch a vase for these?”

“R-right. A vase.”

She passes the flowers to me and strings her bow with another ushering arrow of a look that tells me strictly: _normal, Jean. Remember how to act normal._

I creep away to the kitchen as mom guides Anita through to the living room, amidst praises of _what a beautiful home you have here_ , which gives mom ample room and excuse to begin a rambling tale about why she chose this pretentious shade of off-white for the walls, and what sort of wood the floor is made from. Her voice carries through the house, bounding off walls and high ceilings, sopranic and enthused – and that should be a good thing, because that’s what I’ve been wanting – and yet I can’t shake the rattling feeling. Something _rattles_ when I shake, and if I could catch it, I know I wouldn’t pin to it the justifiable nerves that come with the mother of the boy you love meeting your _own_ mother at last – but instead it likens to that same ambiguity that doesn’t rhyme as I wish it would.

(And I am shackled to the headlessness of a rhythm that never comes.)

I lay the flowers on the counter top and duck beneath the kitchen sink, feeling around bottles of bleach and peroxide until my fingers coast across the cut-glass of what I’m looking for. The clap of hard-soled shoes on the kitchen tiles makes me almost clip my head on the underside of the cabinet and drop the vase when I stand up.

“Careful,” Marco hums, grabbing the vase before it slips from my fingers entirely. “Let me get that.”

I nibble on my lower lip as he leans past me in a breeze of faint cologne, and fills the crystal vase with a gush of cold water from the faucet, before I suck in a stiff lungful of air and unwrap the flowers from their cellophane cape, flecks of loose soil falling from the green stems.

Marco slides the vase towards me and I dump the flowers into the water unceremoniously; he leans on the counter in silence, forearms flat on the marble surface, watching me carefully as I arrange the stalks and petal clusters shyly, his eyes drawn to my hands rather than the flowers themselves.

I don’t know how long passes before I find the gall to say something, but I can hear the _tic-tic-tic_ of a second hand of a clock doing the rounds inside my head.

“They … seem to _like_ each other,” I say quietly and irresolutely, finding my throat tight as I stroke my thumb and forefingers along the velvet valley of a dahlia petal.

“Mm,” Marco murmurs incoherently in agreement, reaching out to pluck a single aster daisy from the crowd of other flowers. He swirls the stalk between his fingers, and then presses the periwinkle crown to his nose, inhaling softly.

I wonder if he remembers how the sand-white asters had speckled the cliffs of the Jinae beaches like flakes of misplaced snow, following the sun around a clock face and yet not melting. And the colour of this one he threads between his fingers is the same as the sky had been about the sea, and it is striking against his skin, in the same way that the ocean had been against his silhouette.

He extends the flower to me; I lean down to let my nose tickle the petals. It doesn’t really have much of a smell, no fragrance to talk of save for the freshness of something recently plucked from outdoors. I wrinkle my nose and frown at him, which begs a small, private smile on his lips.

“Flowers are for you, you know,” he murmurs, setting the aster down on the counter top. My insides rattle only louder. Marco reaches out again to catch my fingers and pull them away from fiddling with leaves and stalks and stems, covering my hand with his on the white-grey marble. “Jean. Stop for a moment?”

I do as he says, inhaling deeply, slowly, and tasting some dusty sort of sweetness from the more fragrant flowers in the vase on the back of my tongue.

“Sorry,” I mutter, “Don’t know why I’m so on edge.” _Lie_. I know exactly why.

From the purse in his lips, I think Marco believes me just as much as I believe myself.

“We can just be friends for today, if that makes it easier,” he says softly, but I’m all too quick to shake my head vehemently.

“I don’t want that,” I say. _That’s not fair on you._

“And I don’t want you to walk into something that you don’t know if you want yet,” he replies, running his thumb over my knuckles. “I want you to take your time.”

Take my time. I know that. If this happened any faster, I’d rip my nerves to shreds. But I’m impatient too. Not in the sense that I want to go catapulting into this with my eyes closed and shout from the rooftops what it is that incinerates my insides; but in the sense that I don’t want to battle with the cloying feeling of not knowing who or what might try and come between us, or trip me up as I’m just finding my way, after we’ve waded through so much water and misunderstanding keeping us apart.

The look in Marco’s eyes is both scintillating, and troubled. I don’t want to call it dejection, but maybe it is. He says he doesn’t mind, but he’s not superhuman, however much I might believe he can fly.

“K-kiss me,” I breathe stutteringly, and it makes Marco halt.

“W-what?”

“Kiss me,” I repeat, squaring my shoulders as he blinks up at me. _Don’t feel like I don’t want you. Never feel like I don’t want you._ “Uhm— p-please?”

“Are you sure?” he stammers, “In here? When they’re just— _are you sure_?”

I nod resolutely, grinding my teeth as I clench my jaw. Marco doesn’t respond right away, his gaze roaming over my face and searching my eyes for some sort of stubborn _madness_ , but when I bite down into my lip, he moves gracefully to bridge the gap.

His kiss is a gossamer thing, as if he thinks I’m too fragile a person to taste how he tastes when his blood is pumping through his veins like a marching drum and his breath jackhammers in his throat. His lips ghost over mine, tingling and sublime, and then he sighs, lifting his fingers from mine to graze over my jaw and tilt my head to deepen the touch to a tender mantra. His downy eyelashes flutter against his cheeks and he sinks into it, dragging me down and deep and pious. I let my teeth graze his lower lip – just a tiny sip, really nothing but a dare and a middle finger to the dark of the risk that standing in the middle of the kitchen poses – and my hands seep up through the hair on the back of his head, twirling strands between my fingers.

My heart _throbs_ , and I dare the hands of fate to guide mom into the kitchen now, and save us from _taking our time_.  I want this. I want everyone to know this. I want them all to taste suffocation.

Marco’s lips are soft, and his breath is softer when he pulls away and lets his shaky exhale become mine intimately. He rests his forehead against mine and his fingers swipe the column of my throat, reading my collarbones like braille.

“I don’t want to pretend,” I whisper, “Not any more. Don’t want to pretend that I’m not scared. Don’t want to pretend that I don’t— that we aren’t—”  I heave a sigh. “I already pretended too much. Don’t want to go back to that.”

Mom and I are better now. Good now. I have to believe that we’ll still be good when—when the inevitable happens. I have to believe that movie nights and lunches over wine and laughing about yoga instructors and helping her stumble drunkenly to bed can still be ours.

“Okay,” Marco hushes, “No pretending.” I wonder if he knows how much depth that word needs to have now.

We walk to the living room together, his shoulder buffeting against mine, and the vase of flowers in my hands, each star of petals more beautiful than they were before. Mom perches on the precipitous edge of the white-leather couch, embroiled excitedly in conversation – still – about her design choices, and Anita nods along. (I wonder momentarily if it’s because she’s genuinely interested, or if she’s just as polite as her son. I wonder, also, when the last time she had a conversation with someone beyond her immediate family that didn’t remind her in some roundabout way of the baggage she carries with her.)

Marco flops down onto the sofa next to his sister with a satiated huff, prodding her in the belly until she squawks and slaps the back of his hand, glaring daggers at him. Her legs dangle over the edge of the cushion, unable to reach the floor, and even with the flounce of her skirts, she looks like she might be swallowed up by the bulk of the cushions with just how far back she leans into them.

I prop the vase of flowers on the coffee table, catching mom’s eye and her cordial smile transitorily, before falling back onto the couch next to Marco, my thigh flush against his, and his knee knocking against mine. It’s anchoring – but do I really need anchoring when I feel like a deer with a bullseye painted on its flank, about to be hit by a trailer truck. The need to flee is bristling like the scratch of a bramble or the sting of a nettle, and needs scratching – but I have to resist it.

I flit in and out of the conversation, not offering anything to say – but mom safely talks for two. I’m a little embarrassed when mom asks Anita what she does for a living and I still don’t know the answer to that question. (It’s hospice, it turns out. She’s a carer at an old folk’s home in their neighbourhood, and it suits her, I think.) Mom has a million and one _more_ questions to ask, naturally, and I watch Mina’s eyes glaze over in the same instance, almost comically.

Not that I last much longer, I should probably admit – because whilst Marco politely offers his two cents and smiles warmly whenever mom compliments Anita on her work or mentions his or his sister’s name in passing – I find Marco’s strong hands folded in his lap infinitesimally interesting. His freckles dissipate across the backs of his hands, but there are one or two that strike out further than the rest: secretly on the inside of his ring finger, faint on the curve of his right thumb, and in the dents of his knuckles.

It fascinates me indefinitely to watch how his fiddles with the joints of his pinkie fingers as he talks, unaware of the way he habitly plies his skin and rubs at his freckles. And it’s those hands that have danced across my shoulders, and swept over my ribs, prickling my skin like acupuncture in the small hours of the morning.

I remember how they feel in my hair; how his blunt nails spin spirals between my roots; how his palms chase the rough feeling of my undercut; how his fingers are so nimble in sweeping my bangs out of my eyes and clearing my forehead for a press of his exultant lips in prayer.

When was the first time we touched? It was a handshake, but I don’t remember how it felt. I should’ve pinned it to memory, but all I can recall is how my eyes had followed the line of four freckles across the bridge of his nose.

His hands are miracles. I could watch them for hours.                      

He stretches then, rolling his shoulders with a click of his neck, and – ever so fucking casually – slings an arm over the back of the couch, his knuckles brushing against the fine hairs on the back of my neck as he rests his arm along the spine of the sofa.

_H-holy sh—_

I’m so distracted that I don’t hear the question that mom directs at me, until I look up and find her pointed stare resting on my face in anticipation.

“Jean?”

“H-hah—yeah?”

Mom frowns sceptically.

“I’m going to clean your ears out with a cotton swap,” she huffs, “ _I said_ : was that the oven timer that I just heard?”

 

* * *

 

I show Anita and Mina through to the dining room, whilst Marco trots after mom and I hear him ask if there’s anything he can do to help. (And I also hear her consequently scold him for even daring to ask when he’s our guest.)

Mina seems struck by the length of the table – a runway of glass that stretches out proudly in the centre of the room – and puzzles over the drops of cut crystal that dangle from the lights, which scatter the sunbeams that roll lazily through the windows into stripes of rainbow colour across the pale walls.

Anita still seems subdued, but I think she recognises my concern as I pull out a chair for her, because she shoots me a reassuring smile. I don’t ask her what’s the matter, because I know what the answer will be: _I’m fine, caro_. _I’m just admiring your home_.

I want her to feel comfortable here. I want her to feel that same sense of _home_ that I felt sitting around her kitchen table – even if that’s a tall order when I don’t even feel it myself when I’m _here_. I want her to see me, and see where I come from, and not judge me for it, because I’m the boy her son has decided it worthwhile to fall in love with.

I can’t say any of that aloud, so I skirt along the table length, and pull out a chair for Mina next to her mom.

“Your throne, my liege,” I say, bowing my head as Mina hops up onto the chair, her feet skimming the floor. I tuck her back under table when Marco comes crawling back with his tail between his legs after being reprimanded by mom. He smiles meekly at me; I nod him towards a chair on the other side of the table.

Mom starts to crow my name from the kitchen, so I duck out of the room to resume my duties as a packhorse; mom piles me high with dishes in both arms and a bottle of wine tucked beneath my bicep, and we set the table. The cassoulet smells good, still simpering with haricot beans and tender pork shoulder, and my mouth waters. Mom is all too eager to recite the same story she told me earlier about how the recipe is part of her heritage, and how the housekeeper had taught her how to cook back in France; her pride swells in her voice, and I think Anita recognises that, her smile becoming more warm, and more revealing.

They split a glass of wine between them as I offer Marco a Dr. Pepper from the stash I’ve been knowingly keeping for him, and Mina pokes at her cutlery impatiently and fruitlessly, hoping for everyone to settle down so she can start to eat.

I sink into the chair next to Marco, but it surprises me – as well as something distinctly more than surprise – when mom considers the chair at the head of the table, dad’s normal seat from which he glowers at the way we hold our cutlery and the way we hold our heads – and then _chooses it for herself_. She’s never done that before, but she arranges herself in throne effortlessly, without the blink of an eye, as if it means nothing.

I try to catch her eye but I think she purposely avoids it, and the glass of wine in her hand carries her into friendly conversation with Anita, which seems to warm up with every sip either of them take.

The food is good. I can tell that from how quickly Mina vacuums up her plate once she’s giving the subtle okay from her brother that she’s allowed to pick up her cutlery and start attacking her lunch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone inhale food so quickly, but she’s slumped back against her chair, kicking her feet beneath the table, and lauding over an empty plate before I’m even half done.

Marco laughs under his breath and nudges me in the ribs to point out the way his sister eyes his half-full plate with beady eyes, eager to steal leftovers, but clearly too shy to reach her fork across the table in this unfamiliar house. She licks her lips hungrily and Marco chuckles, making a show of savouring his food in front of his sister in a way that only an obnoxious older sibling can.

There’s something about laughter that makes food taste all the better – richer flavours, the pine of rosemary, the earthy smell of thyme, the way the pork falls apart on my tongue like butter. This is no exception.

Home is not always where the heart is. I think that’s a given by this point. Home is good food, good people, good feeling; home is in the way mom’s voice lights up the room better than any dripping, crystal chandelier; home is the kindling of Marco’s teasing chuckle as he goads his sister; home is two eyes and one heart.

Home is not always a house – but maybe it can grow to be. I want it to grow to be. I’ve had enough of living a life boxed in by white walls; by empty walls. I want them to become _blank canvas_ walls instead, which only means that they can be painted with good memories. 

Marco nudges my foot below the table – entirely unsubtly, given the fact the table is made of glass, which is funnily enough see-through – but as I glance down, I see my leg jittering. I hadn’t even noticed. He pokes the side of my shoe with the toe of his, not trying to get my attention, but perhaps trying to calm me down – does it really surprise me that it doesn’t take a glance in my direction for him to be aware of when I’m stewing in saturated thoughts?

But they’re good thoughts. _They’re good thoughts, Marco_. _I’m okay. This is okay – hell, it’s better than okay._

_It’s exactly where I need to be._

I let my hand drop beneath the table to rest upon my thigh and I stretch out my fingers, the gap between his leg and mine just slightly too far to span. But Marco sees, from the corner of his eye, and without breaking the stride of his fork to his mouth, he scoots his chair a little further under the table and a little to the side. He knows he’s blocking mom’s line of sight, and it’s encouragement to not pretend – so I don’t, gently touching the outside of his thigh, brushing my fingers against the seam of his slacks and wondering if  he realises it’s a _thank you_ , and wondering if it makes his toes curl.

Dessert has Mina’s eyes sparkling, and Marco letting his hand wander to _my_ thigh when I withdraw mine from his, his fingers lingering just a fraction longer with each sip of wine we watch mom swirl between her lips, her laughter growing more vibrant.

His hand is warm even through the thickness of my jeans, and with his pointer finger he traces a tiny heart on the denim. I scoff lightly, hiding it behind a spoonful of meringue that I shovel into my mouth, and tell my eyes not to betray the tiny bursts of cosmos colour that his touch never fails to elicit.

_You corny shit._

(And I’m talking about myself just as much as him.)

Mina might not be able to stretch her arm far enough to swipe sneaky mouthfuls of food from Marco’s plate, but I’m far closer and feeling just as mischievous, and he’s more susceptible to the cheeky grin with which I supplant his affectionate gaze. Anita chuckles when Marco points out the meringue I have stuck to my lower lip and teeth, and mom rolls her eyes as I inspect my gums crudely in the reflection in the bowl of my spoon.

This is what I want. Just this. Time enough to forget. Time enough to _play pretend_.

But it’s not pretend. It’s not.

It doesn’t have to be.

 

* * *

 

Marco and I clear the table, with me encouraging mom _not_ to stand in those heels when she’s already had two glasses of wine. She and Anita retreat to the living room, a disgruntled Mina following slowly and begrudgingly behind, and when the dishwasher is loaded and the leftovers packed away into the fridge for late-night raids, it’s my fingers that stray on Marco’s waist as we stumble our way back to the couch. I flop down next to him closer than before – if it is in any way possible to be touching more of him at once – and he jostles me playfully, and in his eyes are the somnolent sorts of sunbeams I want to laze on.

Maybe mom casts a quizzical look our way, faltering over the rim of her wine glass as something clicks in her mind that she can’t quite name, but knows is different. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. Neither Anita or Mina’s expression changes, so maybe she thinks it’s just all in her imagination.

And maybe I don’t mind as much I thought I would. As much as I did.

With him, it feels like eighty years old and still in love, yet with that same sort of whimsical magic as a summer affliction, and the intrepid touches of a first crush. With Marco, the air crackles between us, even when we’re squashed shoulder to shoulder on the white-leather couch and there is no gap over which the morphinic static can jump.

It almost feels a boastful moment, untouchable as it shrugs glances from its shoulders which trickle between my bones as conceit – but not the greedy kind. It manifests as a restless hum between my teeth that prickles and vitrifies upon my skin, and yet wants to be free.

Mom casts her eyes down, flitting along the floor and then back to her wine glass as she swirls its contents. I don’t know what it is that I see in her – her face is unreadable as if she’s plied her forehead with injections and her lips with Botox again – and I don’t know whether to call it a silent retreat, because I couldn’t even say if she’s realised what it is to retreat from. And I’m not even sure if I want that sort of privacy.

 _Look, mom. Just look. Can you see what I see? There are sunflowers in his eyes, in his hands, winding up his arms. A gracious touch, a slender lilt, spinning on this God-damn_ pedestal _only three steps from the sun – do you see how I lean into it?_

_When was the last time we felt the sun on our faces like this?_

I just want her to figure it out. If she could just— if she could just _know_ , from one simple look. Just figure it out. It’s got to be obvious by now. If she could just know, and we wouldn’t have to have that conversation, and we could just continue forwards without another stumble.

 _Just figure it out, mom_ , I coax her almost desperately. _Please just figure it out_.

I don’t know if she complies with my selfish wish. I don’t know if I should be shouting louder into the void, or whispering quieter into her ear, or just hoping that she’s somehow telepathic enough to read the plea in my eyes.

Marco rests his arm along the back of the sofa again, and I hear a small puff of breath breeze over his lips as he tries to mask some sort of relieved exhale. He lets his fingers graze my far shoulder, gently tugging at the seam of my shirt for an ephemeral moment.

Mom doesn’t notice. She takes a sip of her wine, and her broad and dazzling smile is hammered back into place in response to something Anita says. ( _With timber and nails_ , I want to say, but she makes it more painless than that. She makes it easy. She’s had many years to perfect that blurred and distorted line between what is real and what is forced and make it soundless.) 

“So school starts again on Monday?” mom gushes, dragging me into the conversation and out of the one sided staring contest I’m trying to incite. She’s addressing Mina now, and Anita is nodding warmly, encouraging her youngest to actually speak and not slouch into the sofa looking like she might snap the neck of a Barbie doll. “And what grade are you going into? Wait, wait, let me guess! I’m going to say … sixth grade? No, maybe seventh grade!”

I know full-well that mom is aware how old Mina is, but its testament to her love of coddling small children that she appeals to Mina’s ruffled ego. Mom is a master of sucking up to other people’s offspring.

Mina pouts – unsure of whether mom is being genuine, and undoubtedly remembering the fact that she’s _sure_ she’s told this woman how old she is before – and yet I can see the flattery turning the cogs within her head. She fiddles with the skirt of her dress, knotting the fabric in her fists hesitantly.

“No,” she says slowly, “Fourth grade.”

“Fourth grade?” mom admonishes, throwing a hand across her lips in dramatic surprise. “Surely not! You look much, much more grown up than _fourth grade_.”

Mina is bashful, her freckles disappearing into her cheeks as she blushes and she screws her mouth up into a pucker. Marco snickers beside me.

“I’m the oldest in my class,” Mina says quietly, “My birthday is in—” She glances at her mom for reassurance, who kindly fills in for her, patting her youngest lovingly in the crown of her hair.

“—three weeks,” Anita comforts with a kind smile, her eyes cottony on her daughter. “Ten years old. They grow up fast, don’t they?”

“Too fast,” mom affirms, and she almost falls into the pitfall of casting me a side-long glance. I see the flicker of movement in her eyes, but it doesn’t quite come to pass. “One moment they’re scribbling on the kitchen floor with coloured crayons, and the next they’re shoving college applications in your face.”

“I think colouring on the kitchen floor is still something we’d rather do,” Anita chuckles, “I know _this_ one would rather stay at home and draw all day. Isn’t that right, _piccola_?”

Mina frowns bashfully, but mom has a certain magnetism towards holes in conversation. Her face lights up.

“Oh, is that right?” she chirps, “Sounds just like Jean. Actually, this week we’ve been rushed off our feet sorting out stuff for the new semester—” She turns back to Anita, and gestures with her free hand to make her exaggerated point. “—But you wouldn’t _believe_ how much kit they need to study art, Anita. I went to the store to pick up a few things for Jean the other day, and half the things I wouldn’t even be able to pronounce, let alone tell you want they’re actually used for. So much simpler when they’re young and it’s just _wax crayons and poster paint_.”

Marco bristles beside me, and I know that if I looked his way, I’d see his tongue clenched between his teeth as he tries to bite down on the effervescent smile that wants to burst with unshelved pride that I didn’t ask for (but that I would lap up when it spills from him).

I never told him what mom did for me – of how I didn’t need her acceptance physically, but she gave it to me anyway in the form of paints and easels and canvas and _creation_. Of how the next time I pick up a paintbrush, I will be able to feel that same opiate rush of euphoria that came with her understanding and her acceptance, and not have the come-down of having to mediate fast strokes across the paper in order to lay down as much paint as possible before someone walks into my room uninvited.

Maybe I’ll show him later; tug him up by the hand to my room and pretend like its Christmas and I’m a five year old kid eagerly showing off all his new presents with a glimmer than can’t possibly be extinguished in my eyes. And he would laugh so boldly, and loop his arms beneath mine, and pick me up and spin me around, crushing me against his chest, and would feel bold.  

(Sometimes I wonder which of us is the real artist, because he always seems far more excited than me whenever it comes to this facet of mine. Maybe he just enjoys the way it shines, even when it hasn’t been polished in a long time.)

I spread my fingers across my thigh, flexing my pinkie finger to jab him in the leg. It masks the need to go tumbling onto the floor in a tangle of his arms and heady, excitable kisses bombarded all over his face.

(But God-damn it, don’t I consider it.)

“Hopefully I’ll be able to get some paintings to put up in the house though,” mom continues, gesturing at the wall behind Anita. “I’ve been thinking that the walls are just so plain lately, don’t you think? So perhaps a big one over here, and then maybe—”

“Glad to be of service, mom,” I interject dryly, through a lenient smirk. My eyes dawdle a fraction too long on Marco’s hands.

“Well, you know what I _mean_ , Jean,” mom admonishes crassly, “It would be nice to have some of your work up around the house. It’s about creating _conversation points_ within the room.”

I’m about to offer something sarcastic, but Marco bumps me with his elbow and intervenes.

“Your mom just wants the chance to boast about you when you’re not here, Jean,” he grins, and I squint at him, internally rebuking him for being such a _brown-nose_ – yet he just laughs at the way it contorts my expression.  “If _I_ was Mrs Kirschtein, I _sure_ would want everyone to know how talented you are.”

_You little—_

“ _Exactly_ ,” mom croons, allowing Marco to crown himself with a triumphant, cavalier grin.  “Though heaven knows who he inherited it from, because it certainly wasn’t his father, and no-one on my side of the family has a penchant for the arts.” She turns back to Anita, who hasn’t yet had her hind leg talked off, but might be coming very close to losing an ear to mom’s incessant rambling. (Bless her though, because her attentive smile doesn’t betray any discomfort that I would feel if I were in her place.) (Or perhaps – and I should probably realise that it isn’t a particularly wild idea – Anita actually likes to listen to my mom recite her life story. As I said before, they seem to be _getting along_.)

“But his French—” mom continues propagandising, “—at least I can claim responsibility for _that_. N’est ce pas, Jean?”  ( _“Isn’t that right, Jean?”_ ) Her smile is positively _insipid_ and I can’t help a humourless chuckle.

“D'accord, si tu insistes,” I snark. ( _“Okay, if you insist.”_ ) Anita seems fascinated, but mom replies with a stern glare telling me not to push my luck when she’s trying so desperately _hard_ to make an impression.

“C’est ton talent!” she insists with a whine, “Tu devrais être fier! Peu de personnes peuvent parler français aussi bon que toi.” (“ _It’s your talent! You should be proud! Few people can speak French as good as you can._ ”)

“Je ne pense pas que le français du lycée soit un _talent_ ,” I smart. _(“I don’t think high school French is a talent.”_ ) Mom sighs witheredly.

“Jean is very _modest_ about it,” she explains dryly to Anita, “But he’s really quite good. I try to encourage him to speak it in the house, but—”

“Mom,” I cut in, “Anita doesn’t need to hear about everything I’ve done since I was _five years old_.”

“It’s alright, _caro_ ,” Anita replies, and I detect amusement in her eyes – but not directed maliciously at mom or me; merely sharing in the exasperation she hears in my tone. “It really is very impressive.”

“I’m only saying, Jean,” mom insists, her gaze roaming to Marco instead. “How about you, Marco, dear? Jean clearly doesn’t want to talk about his degree, but he did mention that you were thinking of going back to school? Is that true?”

Suddenly, it’s not Marco’s hands that are interesting, but his mouth – _and not in that way, c’mon_ – for the way his nervous tick flares up and he bites down on his lower lip, unsure of the bright glare of spotlight on him and not on me, where he has grown used to teasing me from the wings.

But it’s also the way his lips curl so nicely over the words he grants my mom through a serene smile that has me boneless.

He’s just talking. Christ above, he’s just _talking_ , but every fucking preposition has a gravitational pull all of its own.

 “Yes, uh— that’s the _plan_ , at least,” he admits, “There’s a lot of paperwork to fill out, but I’m hoping that— that there’ll be a place for me to start back this year. It’s cutting it a little close though, with just a few days, but—” He trails off and turns just barely towards me, angling himself so that I know whatever he says next is messenger for my ears above the rest. “I think—I’m looking forward to it. A new start is kind of a scary thing, but—I’d say I’m excited.”

Me too. Me too, _me too_. God, it’s a neurotic excitement, isn’t it? It’s the way his smile soothes, but his eyes are full of promise; fearful, intrepid, almost _manic_ promise that makes me wonder if he’s considered all the things that I’ve daydreamed of, and played them out within his head until the tape wears out.

“Well, that’s good,” mom says, ignoring – or oblivious to – the way I bask in Marco’s ridiculous glow and the way his supple kindness is like a religion, mesmerising. “You’ll have to let me know if you need anything – Jean and I will be more than happy to help out if you need someone to child-mind whilst Marco’s studying, or maybe we can arrange cooking a few meals now and again. It’s the least we can do to help.”

Yes, yes, all of it. _All of it_. Whatever we have to offer to them, I want to give it. I want to spoil them, I want to spoil _him_ – rotten, if it were possible, but I doubt there’s anything within him that could possibly go bad like that.

I want to give him everything that I am – even if that is just a collection of dismantlements; of half-assed attempts at counting his freckles that always end up distracted by his lips, his eyes, the dexterity in his fingers; of saltwater and oceans that have yet to decide where it is that the river meets them, but knows well enough how rejuvenating the freshwater tastes; of a light sometimes a little too bright for my tired eyes – and yet when I fall into the cradle of sleep, the dreams that play behind my eyelids no longer involve drowning.

Flustered glances, and trembling touches, and a little, lost boat that discovered it was in fact a ship with a great, tall mast that bowed, and broke, and was rebuilt over the lip of many rolling waves. Heartbeats so loud that people will think the crudest things when all I’m wanting to do is reach out and lace my fingers with his, our audience be damned.

God, my fingers _itch_. I drag my blunt nails slowly across the grainy denim that stretches taut across my knees. I’m acutely aware of his arm behind my head, and how his fingers dangle just above my shoulder, enticing, teasing, daring me to just roll my _own_ shoulders and crick my neck and stretch – and maybe I’d feel his fingertips against my shirt again. Mom’s voice fades out in my ears, replaced by achiral dizziness that makes my head buzz with the same blue noise as floating underwater for a long time – a silence not truly a silence, but a bulbous sort of echoing quiet.

It really just begs to be shouted into – that sort of vacuum. It needs beautiful words to fill it – and I have a plethora of them to choose from, because poetry seems to write itself when it uses Marco’s willingly-given blood as ink.

And it’s no longer constellations of _what ifs_ that I can’t read; it’s a myriad of _could be_ , and _can be_ , and _will be_ that he is teaching me to chart.

My anxiety exists like a pendulum, and the fear will ultimately come swinging back and knock me square between the ribs without warning, and the clock will strike twelve with what ultimately cannot be avoided – but can it be so bad when there’s _this_ to fall back into.

And I don’t mean just Marco and his strong arms – although that is certainly a decent enough thought in itself – but I mean _this_. Mina, and Anita, and mom’s bubbling enthusiasm as she explains with wild gestures that the pool would benefit from Mina’s good use if she wanted to, and that she makes a mean cobbler that she’d love to share the recipe for, and that the more excuses Marco has to come round, the more reason she has to see me smile.

 _Happiness if only real when shared_. I remember that line from Philosophy class, even if it is the _only_ thing I recall from Professor Dok’s snooze fest every other day. I wonder which pretentious Greek philosopher might have said that – old, and white, and crumbly, but maybe onto something there. Definitely onto something. It feels like a pretty unshakable truth.

I am happy. I am happy in this beautiful, fleeting moment, because it sings of the sort of transience that cannot be captured again, but can be matched – will be matched, because—

Wait.

I hear the sound of a key turning in the front door lock.

Oh.

Mom startles, eyes flying high and her sentence collapsing in the middle of a word. I don’t want to describe the look that she strikes me with, and strikes me hard, and it shatters the simpering smile I was letting boil.

The front door opens, and then slams, and I we all hear the sound of Oxford soles cuffing against the hallway floor. A briefcase is discarded at the bottom of the stairs, and a grumble revvs the air, and the way my shoulder moulds so well with Marco’s is brutally cut short – but not by him. By _me_. By me _ripping_ myself away and leaping almost halfway across the couch.

The itch in my fingers turns to scathing dust, the pendulum swings back, and the little boat – the poor, battered and bruised little boat – shatters against the rocks.

It’s stupid to forget.

 _Dad_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am not dead. I've just been up to my eyeballs in exams. Luckily, I passed my year with a really good grade, so it was worth going on hiatus! It means that I might get the chance to live in Barcelona next year, which is super! As such, thank you for being patient as a whole, and waiting for me to come back from the depths of outer space (also known as a Chemistry text book).
> 
> I'm sorry this chapter isn't particularly punchy or fluffy in terms of making a big come back. But I think it's set up reasonably what's still left to happen. And some important character development for everyone. Céline especially. Can you see how her gravity is shifting? I hope so, I hope so.
> 
> Next time will be ... stuff. I'm trying not to give too many spoilers now that we're nearing the end. You might have noticed I removed the expected story length again. This is because all my chapters are always too long, so I don't want to cap it yet. I doubt there will be more than 30 total.
> 
> There's some steamier stuff coming soon. This chapter was a little lacking on the intimacy, but I exchanged it for a different sort of intimacy between Jean and other characters. Just as important. But listen. I'm not saying poolside hanky panky in the near future (canon or side-piece idk), but ... *whistles nonchalantly as I slink back into the shadows* 
> 
> PS. Thank you for all the lovely art, messages, and responses! My tumblr is theprophetlemonade, and I check the tag "fic: droplets" regularly, so please post anything you like there! I read everything you guys say! Comment box is always open, and message box is open for questions! I'm more likely to reply to specific queries or points about the story, but I do appreciate anything you have to say. Over and out!


	24. Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some days I wonder: what on earth is wrong with me?  
> Well, maybe it's just every single, little thing.

The summer before last, we had a pool boy. Not Marco, of course – it was the year before Marco, in the summer that the thermometer stayed above ninety for months on end, my dad forced a tight smile when my college acceptance to Trost U came in the post, and Eren pushed me into the backyard pool from the roof of Connie’s falling-down house.

That summer feels like a blur now – and I suppose it was a blur then, but for different reasons. (Reasons like not wanting to remember, or face myself for what I had done to Eren or the others.) It contrasts darkly against the summer of this year just gone, which begs to come apart at the seams with how crammed it was with special moments, and which feels sun-bleached in retrospect, as if its colour has faded with time and exposure to passing seconds.

The face of that pool boy is also a blur. I couldn’t tell you his name, even after only a year. I couldn’t tell you the colour of his eyes, or his hair, or how tall he was compared to my scrawny, self-depreciating self.

The only thing I can tell you about is the redness that had bloomed in my dad’s face when he had flattened my mom with his yelling, one afternoon in late August. That redness had burst as words that struck with the same ferocity as thunderclaps and squealing car brakes: something about the young man having the _nerve_ to flirt with a married woman, and something about mom having the audacity to be coy about it.

The only thing I can tell you about is the way dad had torn up the cheque and thrown the ripped-paper shreds into the pool boy’s face, whilst mom screamed at dad, and whilst dad screamed louder, demanding for the man to leave his property and take his business with him.

The only thing I can tell you about is how I had shut myself in my room that night for fear of the anger I bristled with: how dare he, that man, my father – how _dare_ he act like he owned my mom. How _dare_ he treat her like his property. How _dare_ he think he had a say over that sort of thing when he was the one fucking other women behind her back.

That feeling is not blurred, and I recall it now with crystalline clarity as mom’s eyes meet mine across the living room, and for a fleeting moment, her gaze lands on Marco. It doesn’t linger – not with the sound of clattering in the hall, of a suit-jacket being hung-up in the cloakroom, of habitual grumblings that fill the air too gruff for what has just disintegrated before us both.

I know mom remembers too. And I figure – in a moment that seems to stretch out far too long and daunting – that she shares the same ridiculous, but equally parasitic fear that history might just repeat itself.

(And it _is_ ridiculous. It’s exactly that. I know how absurd it must sound – but I also know that the volatility that runs in my veins is not something I’ve inherited from my mom.)

I can’t see Marco’s face – even with the metre of space I’ve shoehorned between us in the blink of an eye – but from the way Anita’s eyebrows furrow on the other side of the sofa, I figure he makes eye contact with her, and some wordless something is exchanged between them.

Mina seems bewildered, or as bewildered as a child of nine might be in a situation she is unacclimatised to, and she stares dumbly up at her mother, and then across at her brother, and then at me. I wonder if my own wide-eyedness is reflected in her own.

Anita speaks, and her voice is low and soft.

“Céline?” she says, and it’s almost like a switch is flipped: with the sound of her own name, I watch mom’s crumbling façade repair itself into a claret-red smile. It’s plastic. “Is everything alright?”

Mom laughs brittly, and pets a thin hand on Anita’s knee, her smile two rows of blindingly white teeth pressed together too tight and unnatural. I wonder if Anita notices the way in which I’ve always been aware of mom’s artificialness. 

“I think I’ve had a glass too many,” mom says, with a shrill chuckle, “I spaced out for a moment there, didn’t I?”

Anita returns mom a smile, but I’m not blind: I see it as a comfort only. A reassurance that she hasn’t found mom out – or at least, isn’t going to _call_ her out.

I fist my hands in my jeans. It seems like a reaction I am involuntary to, and I can’t stop my fingers from curling. Marco has turned away from me, his arm still tucked over the spine of the sofa, but his face now focussed on the archway that leads out into the hall. I doubt his face reads anything I wouldn’t be able to assume. My spine feels stiff – ramrod straight and made of iron – and the room feels cold, as if hanging on a chill expulsion of air, waiting for my father to round the corner of the door.

_Why is it like this? Why is it so cold?_

I realise that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen my dad. I account the coldness to the fact that he would be a stranger in his own house if it weren’t for the blood that he shares with me that ties us together unwittingly.

And then— he’s there, and it’s not just cold. It’s the thought of the art major I haven’t yet told him about, and the stack of paints occupying the space under my bed upstairs, and Marco being here beside me. It’s numbing.

When dad stops in the doorway, he seems surprised – but civilly so. When he stops in the doorway, he’s just a man – a man in a business suit with his hair slicked back and the faint trace of stubble peppering his jaw after a long day in the office. His belly protrudes over the taut strain of his belt, holding up his slacks, but his shirt is still neatly tucked beneath his waistband, and his collar is unrumpled, his tie tight about his neck. Folded-up beneath his arm are today’s paper and a few, nondescript brown-paper files.

His thick eyebrows are pulled up towards his receding hairline in mild surprise, not expecting to have turned the corner to a room-full of guests, and I watch his mouth purse into a fleeting pucker – though more out of composition, than distaste.

There’s nothing about him that I can be angry about – not instantly – and that in itself is unsettling. There’s no lipstick on his collar; no loosening of his belt; no swagger in his steps indicative of a beer or two before he drove himself home.

It feels not like I’m seeing a new man, or a different man, but an _old_ man. Like the person who used to live in my memories a long, long time ago, before all that was polluted by fallacies that ride upon his shoulders.

He doesn’t look like the villain in this story. He looks so _normal_.

“I didn’t know we were having guests today,” he says, but his voice, although deep, is not gruff and accusing. Where I expect him to finish the statement with mom’s name – in a fashion somehow declaring that the having of company without his knowledge is somehow worth blaming her for – he leaves me hanging.

He squints a little as his eyes roam over Mina, over Anita, over Marco – but one could put it down to the fact his reading spectacles hang over the pocket of his shirt, and not upon the bridge of his nose – and I wonder who it is that he sees.

(If he sees anyone at all.)

I decide that I don’t want it to be me, and I turn away from him in that instant, just before his eyes can meet mine in some awkward, silent stare that would have me on edge over the fact it would be unreadable. I clench my jaw, and stare hard at the floor before me, catching the way Mina’s kicking legs have stilled against the baseboard of the sofa.

“This is Anita,” mom says, gesturing politely to her side. Her lips are still stretched into a smile, but she’s gathered its reigns and _hauled_ between me looking away and looking back. Her smile is well-practiced. (Maybe enough that it’s real. She’s made it real.)

“And Mina,” she continues, “And Marco. Jean’s friend, you remember? I invited them around for lunch.”

It’s odd, I think, because I find myself not focussing so much on the words mom chooses to use, or not use, as it were – instead, I’m captured by the way Anita seems to perch on the very edge of the sofa, both her feet planted flatly on the floor, and her hands folded neatly, yet purposely in her lap. Something about her posture is deliberate, and solid. She’s angled herself towards my mom – consciously, I know it – and I wonder if she knows it looks like she’s playing guard.

(She knows. It’s Anita, after all.)

“Marco,” dad says slowly, parroting mom’s words back at us. I try not to dwell on the way Marco’s name sounds so foreign coming from his mouth, and instead imagine the cogs whirring in his head as he tries to remember where he needs to remember that name from. “Ah, yes,” he continues, and his tone is civilly enthusiastic. “I do remember, yes.” _The pool boy_.

I’m aware of Marco straightening beside me, still facing over the back of the sofa and towards the door. I figure my dad has met his eyes at last. (Briefly, I realise that this is the very first time they have met in person. _Briefly_ , I wonder what Marco must be making of the man stood before him, and if he sees me within the broad and lumbering stature of my father.)

For a moment, I fear the ridiculous, and replay all the hypocrisies that have ever flown my father’s mouth – but it passes without a quake. But I still don’t turn to look.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” dad says, and I imagine him checking his watch with the ruse of a dissatisfied scowl. “For not being able to stay and chat – it’s been a busy day at the office, and I have some papers still to look over. But it’s nice to have met you all.”

Mom asks if he wants any leftovers from lunch heated-up and brought upstairs to the study, but he declines, and it’s all very domestic, very civil, very _placid_ – and I can’t quite tell if it’s unnatural or not.

I remain staring at the floor nonetheless, and after mom has insipidly told him not to work himself _too hard_ , I count the sound of his hard-soled shoes retreating on the hallway floor. I count five steps, and then he stops.

Stops, turns around, and retraces his path to the living room door.

“Jean.”

He says my name bluntly, but if anything, I am relieved by the fact it’s not acrid. He doesn’t repeat himself, which forces me to look back over my shoulder.

“I need a word with you after your friend goes home.”  

That’s the tone I know and love. Not accusatory, not spiteful, not even aggressive – just cold. Icicles from my fingertips, and a north wind chafing my cheeks, _cold_. There is nothing there. And it is _nothing_ that burns quite like the cold.

Maybe I nod – I don’t entirely know – but I hear dad make a gruff, gravelly noise of assent. He turns on his heels once more, and his Oxford soles on the hard wood ring out loud enough to make me blanch, and I know I must be white. The stairs creak under his weight as he traipses upstairs, and no-one says a word.

In the silence, I hear the squeak of the sofa cushions as someone moves – it’s the fake leather that squeals. It’s shrill and uncomfortable, too loud and obtrusive for the moment. I shift my weight too. The sofa whines again.

And then Anita’s hand is upon my knee.

She’s slipped from the sofa, and is caught somewhere between kneeling and standing halfway across the floor, crouched awkwardly in place with her fingers pressed lightly across the denim stretched taut across my knee. Her fingers are withered and worn, knobbly and leathery around her knuckles, and tanned by the sun. Her nail polish is messy, as if put on by someone long out of practice, but eager to make an impression.

She squeezes my leg gently, and I raise my head abruptly, caught by the hook in her dark eyes.

 _Don’t touch me_ , I think. _I’m cold. You’ll get cold too_.

Her hand is warm.

“Jean,” she says softly – yet her words are firm, “ _Caro._ ”

Her back is to mom – who is swirling her wine glass in her hands, watching its contents lick the sides with a ruddy film – and Anita mouths something to me that is supposed to be private. Two words. It looks like: _you’re okay_. 

I breathe then, and nod more resolutely, and Anita pulls her hand away but not her eyes. She moves back to the sofa beside mom, lowering herself onto the white, squeaky cushions with poise and composure. Mina’s confused stare bores into her mother’s side, her thick eyebrows knitted together in a scowl, but Anita doesn’t look at her – she remains looking at me.

It’s an awkward moment, but I can’t look away. I drop my gaze, sure, but I can’t drop my head, or will myself to stand and leave the room under the pretence of something poorly masking my anxiety. I’m aware of her gaze intrinsically, and it allows me to name the feeling is my chest, quite robustly, as _fear_. 

I feel chapped, bitten, _winded_ , and I’m not sure if it’s because of my father, or his words, or the glaring obstinateness of the moment, or the fact that this is the first time I’ve allowed people to look upon my wound when it’s raw, rather than just a scar.

(Why _has_ it scarred? Why has it cut? Shouldn’t that sort of thing be reserved for the people who have it worse – truly worse – who are hit, and struck, and stripped, or left to grieve for something they didn’t deserve? This— whatever _this_ is— the coldness, the distance, the judgement, is not something that I deserve to shed blood over, is it? That’s gotta be selfish.)

The quiet is the worst – near unbearable in how I can hear the breath that everyone seems to be holding shakingly within their throats, including my own. Mina has a fierce pout upon her face, her lower lip stuck out towards her mother as she tries to silently demand an explanation for what just happened, and what she has yet to understand. Mom’s slender fingers tap against the side of her wine glass, a delicate noise with each of her manicured nails tapping a staccato that is neurotic. She keeps her eyes cast low, and spidery lashes create shadows I can see upon her powdered cheeks. I wonder if she is ashamed.

Marco is stony silent. I can feel him – in the way that I’m always aware of his warmth and his presence – beside me still, even with the foot of impenetrable distance between us. He still faces over his shoulder, towards the door. I can’t quite bring myself to get a read on his expression.

Instead, I try to hold onto the certainty in Anita’s gaze, but it’s difficult.

It’s difficult, because it feels like a gust of sudden wind has rattled through the front door with my dad, swept me off my feet, and left me on the floor with the cruel realisation that I should’ve checked the weather forecast this morning.

Anita speaks, and whilst her tone doesn’t sound severe, it sounds practiced; her words are lacquer-dipped, glossy with some demure efficacy – but they’re only words, not sentences to my ears.

She turns to mom, asking something about what my dad does for a living, where in the city his office is, if he is able to come home often; mom raises her eyes, and ignites the plasticised smile upon her lips once more. The home-owner smile; the suburban-mom-on-the-PTA smile; the is-my-lawn-green-enough smile. The everything-is-fine smile. (The _I-can-ignore-it-if-it’s-not_ smile.)

The atmosphere was nice before. It was pleasant before. Pleasant, natural, and sinking into the feeling of being pressed up against Marco’s side, at peace with not pretending any longer.

Now, the air in this room is waxy, and it is brittle. The change is minute really – it’s just mom’s lips that are a little more stretched, and her dimples just a little more solid, and I wonder if Anita and Marco could possibly recognise so small and inconsequential a thing—

But I do. I do.

I see it in mom’s smile as she talks softly; in the crease between her neatly-plucked brows; in the way she presses her feet together on the hard-wood floor, prim and proper and _defensive_. I know what it looks like to be fast-erecting walls around oneself, hauling up timber and scaffold with all the effort you can spare without letting the fear of the toil show upon your face.

I know it very well.

Maybe Anita does too. Her eyes flitter back to me once, twice, maybe three times when I blink and miss the slight tilt of her head in my direction – but she turns herself towards mom on the couch, and nods when mom explains, and hums when it’s appropriate, and asks another question to keep the awful, awful silence at bay. I’m thankful, I guess. Thankful that she can help mom like that, and help me like this— letting us play make-believe for a little while longer as we ween ourselves away from things that sit on our shoulders like silver-tongued devils.

Anita knows how to keep a conversation going. Words roll off her in waves of ease, steady like the pulse of a soothing tide lapping froth at the foot of a beach; she doesn’t let the water stagnate around mom. I thank her in my head once more. And again, for good measure. The melting of the permafrost brought in by the opened front door begins around her first.

I feel the thawing in my feet first, as mom manages to redirect Anita’s conversation away from dad and back towards Anita herself, asking her about her work, her career, her care-patients. (I wonder if that’s deliberate on mom’s part, or just inherent that she would do anything to not talk about the car crash of a family she keeps at home. I don’t know which I would prefer.) Mom’s words fall paper-light upon my deaf ears; I am too distracted by the way my knees are jittering and my feet are incessantly tapping as the feeling returns to them from out of the veil of frost.

It’s the same as the feeling of recovering from a God-awful bout of pins-and-needles. My nerves cramp and frizzle and are restless like white-noise, and I fidget. Other things are thawing too – the ability to think, mainly – even if the fear still drift-like in my bones is an ever-present cold one.

I don’t know how I feel. There’s no anger, no grief – only confusion where my father’s presence scorched footprints in the doorway. There’s a part of me that’s scared – there’s a part of me that’s always scared – but I don’t know if it’s meant to be. I don’t know if the thought of my dad is something that should be chilling me this way. There’s a part of me that’s angry in the same way too, and in the same way, I don’t know if he’s worthy of my red and blaring feelings. I don’t know what it is that still ties me so steadfastly to that man, and to my comatose feelings after so many years of dragging both our burdens through the dirt on my own.

There’s a part of me that can’t bring myself to care anymore. It died a long time ago – a good death, and appropriate death, a necessary death – with the person who took steps towards escaping with each summer month that passed.

But at the same time, I know it was dumb to forget. Dumb to lose myself in happy thoughts, and untouchable moments, and unrustable armour, when all the other fraying threads around me aren’t just magically tied up with the arrival of a good thing in my life.

I glance over at Marco, and am surprised to meet his eyes. He smiles tightly, the line of his lips thin and pressed and sympathetic in a way that makes my stomach twist and churn.

I hate this. I hate this chronic hold on me – from dad, from this house, from the dredges of who I used to be, still with claws lodged unfurling between my ribs, causing me to wheeze. I hate not being able to shake it off.

(It can’t be shaken off. It’s not like cobwebs in the hair, or goosegrass stuck to clothes, or words thrown at the back with no meaning. It’s like blood: thick, gloopy, and viscous. It sticks, and it stains, and however hard I run my hands over myself, all I succeed in doing is smearing it thinner and thinner. Streakier. Messier. It turns brown eventually.)

Marco doesn’t reclaim the distance between us on the sofa, and I tumble in cartwheels over the _whys_ and _why nots_. He’s scared. He’s ashamed. (For me? Of me? Both?) He pities me. He doesn’t want to be caught. He doesn’t want the baggage. He—

 _Stop._ I find myself digging my palms into my shivering knees, stilling the headless quiver of my feet drumming against the floor. I glance up at him again, and I know.

He gets it.

He looks sad in that moment – sad like he’s falling, and I’m falling too, and he’s looking for somewhere to press his hands and catch us both, but can find no walls that either of us can reach, and it’s such a cosmic _atrocity_ to see something so plain and unmistakably pained upon his face. In his eyes is something liquid – something fluid and miscible, and it washes over me in much the same way as water will never fill you up, but only make you bloated with something that dribbles through gaps in fingers. 

And I know that he gets it, because I can see the longing. He wants just as much as me to touch; to grab my hand and walk out into the cold, to a place where it doesn’t matter if we’re caught; to curl up in a sleeping bag on a beach under the stars, dreaming aloud to the sound of crooning car stereos.

I watch his fingers curl tightly into his palm upon his lap. He tells me that he’s sorry without opening his mouth. He tells me that he wishes it were different. He tells me that he has frostbite from just one look.

It doesn’t settle me. I picture the tips of his fingers turning black with the cold; I imagine blueness on his lips, and a flush replaced with whiteness in his cheeks. I feel _guilty_.

I feel guilty for being so easily and dramatically shifted by such a small thing – by such a sudden, passing gust of wind. I feel guilty for the unshiftable attachment; for the way I am shaped by cold words and colder shoulders. I feel guilty that I can complain so much and demand so much more when there are people who suffer worse and barely make a noise.

I don’t deserve to say that I have it bad, when I’ve developed a rough-enough skin to let myself be buffeted by storms that come and go.

( _You can’t go comparing_ , I plead to myself. _It’s different. It’s always different. You’ve suffered too._ )

(Heeding my own advice is hard. Shame is like plaster-cast pasted across my skin, and when it dries, it itches like hell. I want to scratch it off, but it doesn’t budge.)

I look at Marco again, and his lips twitch at the corners, weakly. He tries to tell me one thousand silent things, but between blinks, all I can believe is that I must seem so _pathetic_. I know why I never wanted him to see this side of us. Of my father. Of me.

I don’t say a word for near half an hour. My dad doesn’t reappear.

 

* * *

 

It ends when Mina gets restless, and Anita can no longer ignore the way her youngest kicks her legs against the baseboard of the sofa, picks at the glue of her skirt hem, and impudently begins to poke Anita in the kidneys to attract her attention away from my mom.

Mom smiles kindly – and it’s genuine, organic warmth that she directs at Mina as Anita sighs exasperatedly, making a show of checking the fine-chain watch she wears around her wrist. Marco frowns at his sister (and receives a bold tongue poked-out between puckered lips in response), but Anita gives in.

“Looks like this one has decided she’s socialised enough for today,” Anita laments fondly, arching an eyebrow in Mina’s direction accusingly. Mina’s eyes widen innocently, her sneering expression replaced in a flash by innocent hope that this is her mother finally saying she can go and get in the car. “I suppose we should make a move home.”

I could laugh, in any other situation, at the way Mina’s face lights up with unbridled joy at the prospect of _leaving_ – but I imagine the sound my chest would produce to be tinny and hollow and echo tragically between the white walls of the living room.

Mom chuckles for me. It sounds more resolute than anything I could manage.

Goodbyes are said at the front door, and I hang back, hovering too heavily behind mom’s shoulder as she accepts a cordial embrace from Anita. I notice how she has to crouch – mom, that is – just a little, to receive the press of Anita’s cheek to her own, and the murmur of Anita’s Italian hospitality. Anita seems careful, but not delicate. Her voice sounds deliberate and genuine as she tells my mom that the invitation for coffee rests in her hands – even as Mina tugs impatiently on the tails of Anita’s blazer, and Marco, crowded on the steps of our front porch, eyes her reproachfully for it.

There’s something sullen that seems to muffle my ears, pertinent as a cloud that hangs around my head and ladens my arms and legs with the weight of something rainful; a paralysis of parasitical purple that numbs my fingers, yet burdens me to the feeling of air crackling with too much thunderous energy, nipping spitefully at the follicles of my skin. I blink greyly as mom and Anita pull away from each other and smile – or at least I presume a smile on mom’s face, for the way the reflection of her expression softens Anita’s eyes and strips away the concern lodged there quietly. Anita’s hands rest on mom’s upper arms, and it’s reassuring, even if I’m not the one being held.

“I’m sure we’ll be seeing lots of each other now,” Anita says resolutely, a lopsided pull of her lips mixing the sympathy of her smile with something knowing. (We both know what she knows, of course – but the way she phrases it doesn’t fill me with panic or that dreadful longing for clarity. It just makes me thankful for her grace.)

“And Jean—”

I meet Anita’s sincere gaze when she says my name, and am drawn towards her, stepping up to mom’s side despite my involution – or my cloudfulness, as it were. I don’t reel away when she moves her hands from mom’s arms to my cheeks, cupping my face affectionately in her calloused palms – but nor do I feel it fanning the warm longing for that homely feeling once shared. I feel very little; I let myself be manhandled. I want to show her that it _means_ more, but I doubt it flares up in my eyes as more than blankness. I resign myself to be just an extension of her weathered hands.

“—you take care of yourself, _caro_ ,” Anita says, squeezing my cheeks with the slightest mount of pressure. “Don’t be a stranger. _A presto, va bene_?”

Over her shoulder, I think Marco rolls his eyes, the hint of a smile smudging the tautness in his lips – but I have little time to catch it in a net worth considering, as Anita guides my face to her level and plants a smacker of a farewell kiss in the middle of my forehead.

When she lets me go, my haze – brought on by the concussion-like feeling that leaves me stumbling on an even floor – is mingled with the waft of her musty perfume. She smiles at me tightly, and then at my mom, offering one final _thank you_ for lunch, before reaching behind herself and curling her hands around Mina’s shoulders, knowing instantly where her youngest stands with a pout on her face and her arms folded grumpily across her chest.

Anita shakes her head, some exasperated phrase dripping over her lips as they quirk, and she steers Mina away from the porch and towards their beat-up old Honda, leaving Marco lingering alone on the front porch.

There’s something about the moment that leaves me hunched – with a will to curl in on myself, to keep my shoulders stiff and head bowed and eyes cast down. It shouldn’t be hard to look at him with mom beside, but it is, and I hate it.

A pendulum second swings back and forth over the threshold of our house; mom hesitates for a moment I should not notice, and it has the weight of something brass. Maybe I’m meant to be breaking the silence. Maybe I’m supposed to be saying something before her. (Sorry, mom. I don’t know what that is.)

No matter. She covers it up with plaster in a manner she knows well, opening up her arms and inviting Marco into two faux-kisses made either side of his cheeks. (She takes care not to touch him, her hands hovering over his back. I notice that too, and I don’t know if it’s weird, or what has made it weird.)

“Thank you for lunch, Mrs. Kirschtein,” Marco says, stepping back. Mom smiles warmly. “I think mom was glad to get out of the house. I think I am too – for her. She needed this. I really appreciate it.”

 “Any time, sweetheart,” mom says tenderly, and yet she clasps her hands in front of herself, one step away from wringing them with whatever it is that holds her so stiff and plastic. It’s probably the same thing that has me willing to droop. “It was our pleasure. If there’s anything you need – and I really do mean anything – please _do_ ask. Don’t feel like it’s a burden or a problem, now. Jean and I will always be there to help if you just let us know.”

Marco smiles, and then there’s more silence. I am aware of a lot of things: how mom runs her thumb over the backs of her bony knuckles; how my dirty lethargy spreads like a fine film across my skin that I want to pick off, flake by grimy flake; how the floorboards on the stairs behind us could creak at any moment. I look at Marco to find his eyes already on me, a suggestion in the way he tilts his head towards his car, wanting for me to follow.

I don’t want him to see me like this, and yet I want to deserve him enough that it doesn’t matter that he does. He loves me enough that it shouldn’t matter.

But I suppose admitting to a shame you’ve kept under lock and key inside your chest for eight years is a difficult thing. I feel naked as he tilts his head again – and mom obliges, giving us some space – except it’s not a pretty nakedness, or a pink nakedness, or any sort of intimacy that I wish for him to see. I feel like I haven’t washed in a long time, and he’s going to see the dirt on my skin for what it is now. Shame. Pity. The ugliest sort of weakness that you can never really learn from.

He gets to see every part of me.

( _But when has Marco shied away from that?_ )             

He says nothing and I say nothing, and I step out of the front door onto the porch. September smells ripe, as if the heat of summer has finally caught up with the world and become too much, and grown too sweet and begun to rot. There’s something loamy in the air, and it makes the leaves on the front yard’s hedgerow and on mom’s wilting sunflowers grow limp where they should be turning crisp.

I walk shoulder to shoulder with Marco to his car – or really, he walks shoulder to shoulder with _me_ , as he’s the one who matches my stride and lets the sleeve of his button-up brush my arm fortuitously. I keep my hands shoved in my pockets, wondering if mom now watches us from the porch door, or if my father now watches us from a window upstairs.

(As if. He doesn’t care.)

The Honda is pulled up on the curb at the bottom of the drive, clapped-out and paint-chipped, with a small dent beneath the left taillight that hasn’t been buffed out. Anita – already in the front seat – has twisted around, and is telling Mina to put her seat belt on.

Marco stops before he can join them, and it forces me to stop too. I turn to see a tight gulp bob in his throat; he swallows down something bitter tasting.

I feel my own expression contort – away from the perpetual scowl and towards an open-doored concern – because it’s _him_. I ask him without words if he’s alright. He nods, steps closer, reaches out tentative and careful fingers to tug gently on the ratty hem of my shirt that has been crumpled from being sat down so long, and pulls me a little nearer.

I inhale sharply, throwing flightfulness over my shoulder and back towards the house – but there are no parents in doorways and windows, and no eyes watching for things for which they can scold and disown in a heartbeat. I let myself be pulled. It feels like a direction that I don’t have to control.

Marco’s eyes are cast down, focussed intensely on his hands fiddling curiously with my shirt. A frown forms on his face, creasing deeply between his eyebrows as his jaw clenches. I let my arms hang limply at my sides, let my eyes find some natural pitfall between his lips and the soothing rise and fall of his chest, and wait for him to speak.

It takes him a while. He seems to taste each word that forms on the back of his tongue, and then decide against them as he figures he doesn’t like the flavour. He chews hard on his lower lip; he grits his teeth; he bites the inside of his cheek. I do that. I wonder if it’s a habit he’s stolen. (I guess there could be worse ones.)

Eventually, he settles on, “I don’t want to leave you like this.”

I snort bitterly, the twitch in my lips little more than a quiver.

“Like what?” I scoff. My voice sounds harsh, unpolished. Marco almost seems to wince, and pulls me closer to make up for it. The smell of his aftershave is a comfort I wasn’t aware I was needing.

“Like this,” he replies, “Like you’re bruised. Like you’re turning purple and blue right in front of me.”

I exhale heavily through my nose again, but it’s not funny. He’s right – even if the welts that are blooming are not really on my skin, but on my bones.

“I hope that … that it isn’t bad,” he continues, “Whatever your dad has to say.”

I ache – but I guess it’s not really for the thought of what I might be lectured on, or how I might be chewed out for something I’ve done or haven’t done. It’s more because ignoring my father will just make the void between us worse. Because I haven’t yet escaped the aftermath, despite how far I’ve pulled and tugged and _struggled_ to run away from the path of the hurricane. Because I have to cope with seeing Marco look so sad – and so sad _for me_.

“I’m sorry he had to fuck it up,” I murmur, listening to Marco sigh softly. “He ruins stuff. Or maybe I just let him ruin stuff. I’m sorry. It shouldn’t be so big a deal – lots of people have it worse.”

Marco’s eyes rake from my fingers to my face, and he lifts his head, and I find myself whispering against the hurt in his gaze as his pupils become pinpricks against the softening of the autumnal sun overhead.

“You,” I continue. “ _You_ have it worse.” Something small in his face changes; some muscle he can’t control twitches. My voice shakes, but I don’t stop talking.

“This must seem ridiculous. To you, I mean.” My voice is hoarse and gravelly, and my mouth is dry. I’m not sure what it is that I need to feel better, but what I want— what I _think_ I want is acceptance.

Is that too greedy a thing, I wonder?

I want acceptance when I can’t move on from something that I’ve made a mess of with my own two, clumsy hands. I want acceptance when I’m not the one who knows what it’s like to feel a chill – a _real_ chill – in the blood when someone mentions _father_.

I’m the one who wants acceptance when I complain about my father, and yet Marco was left unwillingly by his. I’m the one who has a choice, and yet can’t make up his stupid mind if it hurts more to be abandoned or do the abandoning. Marco didn’t get to decide. Marco’s the one who deserves sorry smiles and warm hands placed on knees. I must be so belittling to the things that still keep him up late at night.

“I don’t want this— my dad— to be … to be a _big deal_ ,” I murmur hoarsely, “It’s not. I know it’s not, and I’m getting there – really. Really, I swear. I know I’m lucky to have—to have—”

I know I’m spoiled. I know I’m ungrateful. And it’s okay if he wants to remind me that I am, because I would get that, I would—

“You think I have it worse?” He speaks slowly – but maybe reproachfully too.

He looks wounded, and oh God, does it sting. It’s as if whatever makeup he – or _I_ – had been covering up his stitches with has been scrubbed away with the passing palm of my misplaced words, but the hurt that I see is not something born from the loss of his father. Rather, it’s from that fear of being pitied that he once confessed to me, a long, long time ago.

How could I forget?

( _Idiotically_ , is how.)

“Of— of course you do,” I stammer, thrown off-balance by the blooming contortion in his eyes, which lets my mouth run away with words I shouldn’t be saying. “Of course you do, your— your dad is— and I’m just— I’m can’t make up excuses as to why this thing with my dad does … does _this_ to me, when I could just stop being a victim in something I can control.”

I made a deal with myself. I swore that I would not have to put-up with being set on fire, just for someone to light their cigarette off the way I burn. I’m not doing that any more. I don’t want to do that anymore. If I don’t burn, Marco won’t catch on fire from being too close. He can touch me without being scorched by all the red-hot things I’ve kept beneath the coals for so long.

_But I’m not quite there yet— but I promise, I promise that I—_

“Don’t say that,” Marco says quietly. “It’s not like that, Jean.”

He relinquishes his paper-weight hold on the hem of my shirt, and I am stripped of the fleeting tickle of his fingertips through the light cotton. It’s cold. I shouldn’t have spoken without thinking.

He doesn’t know what to do with hands. He moves to fold them across his chest, but that doesn’t sit well – he doesn’t know how to pull bravado out of his ass like I do. He tries his pockets, but his fingers barely make it against his thighs before he’s pulling them away again, and clasping his hands in a knot of fingers and thumbs in front of himself. He presses his lips into a very tight line. I’m worried I’ve hurt him.

No, not worried. I know I’ve hurt him. He told me in confidence what he’s scared of, and that’s exactly what I’ve delivered to him on a silver platter. No-one likes this sort of pity party.

“It’s not like that,” he repeats, and each word trickles down my spine like a droplet, cold and disgusting and fearful, chilling me with that same sort of anticipation that once ruled every room and corridor in my house, and every hallway in the university, and every chance encounter with someone who hated me for speaking and doing out of turn in the past. I wait for him to chew-me out. I wait for him to walk away without a word. I wait for him to bleed.

He does none of those things. He’s too good for my worthless expectations.

“You can’t compare us, Jean,” he says softly. He shoulders fall and then heave again, and he urges himself to stand a little taller, summoning some unmalleable strength that he keeps locked away for occasions such as this, when I’m desperate to make a mess. “You can’t, because it’s different. Our situations are different. Everyone’s situations are different. Because there’s someone— there’s always going to be someone who you think has it worse, and maybe there is. But whatever they’re going through doesn’t mean that you don’t hurt.”

He stills the wringing of his hands, and reaches out blindly to catch my fingers in his. He squeezes. I can’t look away, despite how much I want to run with how much my chest feels like eviscerating.

“It doesn’t mean that you don’t count. You’re allowed to feel scared, or confused, or hurt— and if that’s because of your dad, so be it. So be it. It doesn’t matter how I am, or who _I’ve_ lost. You don’t have to be ashamed of how you have to act around your dad. Don’t devalue your own pain. It still matters, and it matters to _me_.”

He deserves more than this – where _this_ is the mundaneness, the fickleness, the contriteness of the reality he has been thrust into, when he should be gifted with the world. No-one should be able to say things like that with a straight face. No-one should care so much about things that aren’t theirs to cry over. No-one should be able to forgive so easily. He deserves pretty words, and yet all the small things are so loud right now, and the best I can manage is a handful of crumpled dismemberments where I forget I have a tongue to speak.

“I— shit, Marco,” I garble, “Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

He runs a thumb over my knuckles and quiets me.

“You did. You said it because you meant it,” he says. “Don’t apologise. It takes time to figure out things like this. Trust me— that’s something I _do_ know well.” I sniff dryly, and his lips become that kind, sympathetic smile again. “Don’t apologise, Jean.”

“What should I say then?”

Marco thinks for a moment, his eyes falling away from mine to flit monetarily across the neatly-trimmed lawn of our front yard, counting the leaves discarded by the hedgerow, before skimming up and over the white walls and sash windows that stand starkly and proudly against the cool blueness of the September sky. He hums to himself, thoughtfully; I tentatively roam my thumb across his fingers, but it feels almost too brave and blasé a thing to allow myself yet.

“How about—” he says, “No more pity. Some things are bad, but maybe— maybe we don’t have to let them be bad. Not if we work on it, and don’t feel ashamed by the times we feel a little too sad. Sound good?”

I gulp, and nod, the tell-tale prickle of heat scampering unwelcomely up the back of my neck.

“I’m still sorry though,” I add, hastily, “About today— it was meant to be nice and—you had to see th—”

Marco tightens his hold on my hand with a vice-like squeeze.

“No,” he says firmly, “No apologies. You don’t need to be sorry.”

“But, I—”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

 “Marco, I mean it—”

“Nope, not listening.”

“Hey, c’mon—”

“La-la-la, I can’t hear you, Jean.”

His lips burst into a brazen smile, a grin all toothy and unapologetic, and it makes me bark with a disbelieving scoff of laughter. It’s an ugly sound for sure – but it’s not hollow. It makes Marco’s beam, first a searchlight, become a spotlight. He looks at me, and I feel like there’s _only_ me. 

He purses his lips around his smile – poorly, because his dimples are carved so close to bursting and he looks so damn _goofy_ – and cups my cheeks in both his palms. But I feel it this time; I feel the warmth in his skin, and the wriggle of his fingers exultantly, and the reverence in how he shakes his head as he looks at me, disbelieving in something that I don’t yet know about, but _will_. I will see what good things he sees in me. What promise he sees. What forgiveness I’m worth giving. I’m getting there.

He fights not to smile, but he can’t help it. It’s too powerful a thing for him, and it suits him too well, and it’s a cosmos of all sorts of things that we both need. Sympathy. Acceptance. Compassion. The shrugging-off of skins we do not need in this moment, and the welding of the armour we do.

He bumps his head against my forehead; his nose against my nose. I can feel my will shaking against my self-wrought tethers. There’s nothing I want more than to take our nakedness and run— to grab his hand and jump in the car and leave. Leave, and forget, and not be wielded as lightning by the cloud that hovers heavy over the roof of my home. I want to stay like this, and not retrace my steps alone to the things I must face and put to bed without him at my side as my crutch and confident.

I can’t do that, of course. But it’s not so much a fever dream as it once was; sometimes you have to carry the burden in order to be an adult. I suppose that’s what I am now. I suppose it’s up to me to change what _I_ don’t like, and dismiss the things _I_ don’t need. That’s not Marco’s decision to be making, despite how eager I once was to pass off decisions to other people who I felt could handle them better, and how comfortable I was with the routine of ignoring and forgetting that now feels so terribly foreign to me.

Some things you have to do alone.

I spare a glance at the house once more; the front porch is empty, the door still wide-open and left to the rummaging of autumn breezes. The sun reflects and refracts in the window panes, and I cannot see if anyone stands beyond the glass, watching the way Marco smoothes the forelock of hair from my forehead and gently nuzzles my slow-cooking skin with his nose.

_This can last just a little bit longer, can’t it? Reality can’t be in that much of a hurry for me. I’m not that important._

Marco’s lips upon mine are resolute, and he kisses me powerfully, smothering all the rampant things inside my head with the way his mouth moves fervently against mine, struck dumb with a breath hitched up on a post halfway between here and those fever dreams. His fingers tense on either side of my face, thumbs pressing into my skin where pliant, with a dull, yet grounding ache. And I don’t know if I was ever someone who listened to the syntax of things, but the whisper of his lips has a rhythm and a riff, and he nudges my chin to the side to kiss my jaw with a hum that has all the makings of euphony, and the parenthesis of his fingers on my cheeks will mean _he’s_ the one who’ll be leaving bruises on my skin, and not the nuances of my father.

My hands hang limply by my sides for a moment – a moment that lets Marco have his way, bending me backwards until I feel the need to scrape my hands across his waist and grip his shoulder blades to keep myself from toppling over – and then there’s little I can do to stop my teeth grazing his lower lip, and the sadistic curiosity blooming behind my fluttering eyes of what could have happened if I had stayed shoulder to shoulder with Marco when my father had walked into the living room.

Marco pulls away, a quiver of his breath feather-light against my chin and swollen lips. He runs his fingers from my cheeks, down the sides of my neck, and rests his palms upon my shoulders.

“I love you, Jean,” he tells me promptly. I know bluescreen flashes across my eyes, and I stumble over the whims of words that stutter between my lips as hiccups. It’s not the first time it’s been said, and it’s probably not the last for that matter, but this is the first time it’s said without desperation to traverse bridgeless gaps.

Marco smiles bashfully, brushing his thumbs over the contours of my collarbones through my shirt; he doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe he’s not expecting – or needing – a response.

“I guess hearing things like that must be scary,” he admits sheepishly, “To have someone care so much about you just for your sake. But I mean it.”

I suppose it is terrifying. Terrifying in the way I don’t know what I wouldn’t do for him in this moment, or any moment.

The words that stick in my throat now have been a long time coming; they’ve stirred in my chest before I could put a name on them, and they’ve hung in punctuated silence on the end of a phone call waiting to fill the hesitance of a breath, and they’ve been meant, but never needed until now.

I feel like I _need_ to tell him that I love him, just so he knows. Just so he knows that it only took five months to fall this deep and get this stuck. Just so he knows that I love him against everything else that is only illusion.

If only I had a tongue articulate to say such things, and not get tangled on all the pretty little possibilities, or swamped down with the knowledge that once upon a time, my father was able to say _I love you_ to my mother, and mean it.

It’s not the fact that someone cares that is so terrifying. It’s the baring of the soul. That nakedness; that vulnerability; that armless flesh that bares itself too openly to knives stuck between ribs and bruises welting on fragile, charcoal bones. I’ve already been exposed to wounds by my father and my mother and my nineteen years. I don’t want any more.

_I love you, God, I love you. But I’m still too scared to say it aloud._

I could cough it out like a hairball, I could. I could spit the burrs that stick to the roof of my mouth out into my palm and present them to him as they are, because I know he wouldn’t mind the deformity. I know he doesn’t expect an “I love you” from me now, and I know he doesn’t need it to justify what this _is_ and what we _are_ , even if I want to give him it – and it’s that thought that keeps my mouth shut.

When I tell him, I want it to be perfect, to be practiced. I want it to be simple, and not prodded and poked by burdening tornados or rain-splattered faces, or muted by the fear I have over clouds that have not, or might never dawn over the horizon. I want it to be like a breath: modest and unassuming. _True_.

Not like this. Not when I feel so queasy.

Marco swipes my hair from my forehead again, and ducks in to press a chaste kiss against my clammy skin. His mouth is soft and eloquent; I offer him a compromise for what is not yet ready.

“Thank you,” I whisper. It’s not everything I want to say – and maybe it’s not even enough, but it’s something. It makes Marco beam warmly nonetheless, so I guess it’s definitely worthwhile. The dimples in his cheeks strike a chord within me: something that feels a little like the sprouts of new, baby-green flowers pushing their way up through the silt earth in my lungs, and dislodging the things that have begun to die.

I pull him into an assertive hug that begs a tiny _humph_ of surprise from his lips, but he melts into my bony arms strapped tight around his back as if I’m not made of sharp angles at all. He curls a palm around the back of my head, and guides me to bury my face in the crook of his neck whilst he peppers the shell of my ear with tiny, clandestine kisses, his nose in my hair – and it’s _sweet_.

Sweet – but not like you would call a grade school boy dropping love notes in his crush’s locker, or some young man offering his bicep to an old lady trying to cross the road with arms laden with groceries. Not that sort of sweet.

Not even sweet like honey, sticky and saccharine. But like clarion flowers; rosebuds in the spring; wild meadows in the autumn that taste refreshing like a dew that has bathed in the straw-hat months being clung to. Soft as down; humid with that tender thing that exists outside, on the front drive of my house with my face to the door amidst the trundlings of fall.

I let my fingers crumple in the fabric of his shirt, knowing full-well that my white-tight knuckles must be pressing into his firm skin through the cotton. I press my lips together, and tuck a poor man’s kiss against his jugular; and he pauses, for a moment, as if to consider the burning tickle that I reward him too rarely yet receive from him so greedily. I think he hums a happy note. I kiss him again. Yeah, he does.

I could crumple thinking about who I used to be before I met him. I could curl up and sink into the mud and never move again, remembering all the things I once put up with, before he came along and told me that I shouldn’t have to. I could hate myself for many years to come over what needs doing and what needs fixing and what I could so easily duck and dodge and dive away from, if he weren’t here to point me in the direction I need to go.

This is why _thank you_ is not enough. Two words can’t sum up what he’s done for me; how he can turn the fear that once rooted me to the spot and tied my lips together with zip lock, into something that spreads like dawn out across the rippling water of a river that needs to be crossed – towards the things that I’m afraid to do – and still leave me knowing that I have to do it.

Falling in love with someone like this is without compare. And maybe it’s just because I can’t compare – he’s the first, _my_ first – but I doubt anything can be this iridescent. I am stained by it. I am not the same any more.

We rock back and forth on the spot for a moment – a long moment that has me feeling the solid ground of slate-like brick beneath my feet, and the stillness of the air that seems to have lost its waltz, and the way I can hold my ground against the waves of change, providing I hold on tight enough to what I want.

I clench my fists a little fiercer in Marco’s shirt. Behind me, I hear the glassy squeal of a car window being manually cranked down, and a small hand being smacked impatiently against the tinny body of a car door, telling us to hurry it up.

I feel a chuckle rumble through Marco’s chest, and it makes me feel warm.

 

* * *

 

I dawdle on the driveway, eyes tailing the license plate of the grey Honda as it labours down the street and takes a right at the junction at the end of the road. Marco had passed me a sympathetic wave as he had slipped into the driver’s seat next to his mom, and it had stung, reminding me that it’s far easier to say you can let something go than actually stand by and see it drive away.

It’s like waving goodbye to the dream, only to wake painfully to the reality that I’ve fallen asleep to forget. And now— and now I am left to the big, white house, and its big, white walls, which I need to start to pull down with my scrawny, meansless arms.

The street is empty, but I don’t feel alone. There are no people walking dogs, no mothers pushing prams, no runners bouncing on the soles of their feet to whatever is hooked over their ears – but there’s something. It’s a strange feeling, as if all the closed windows of the houses facing me shield people who have been secretly watching us upon the stage. It’s invasive.

I stand for a moment, and let myself be seen, opening up my chest as I lift my arms, lacing my fingers on the back of my head. I breathe in deeply, and let the air whistle out again from my lungs. I still feel heavy, but not immovable.

I don’t want to do this. But I don’t really have a choice.

I walk up the driveway slowly, meandering around the back of mom’s car to crush discarded leaves under the soles of my shoes, hoping for a satisfactory crunch – but there’s only so long I can dawdle, and I feel the weight of the walls pushing down on me the moment I step foot on the front porch.

The door has drifted shut, but the latch hasn’t caught, so I push it wearily, fingers spread span across the lacquered wood. I start a little when I see mom still waiting in the hallway, leant against the dresser, toying with her hands as she wallows in deep thought. Her face is drawn; there’s no smile upon her lips. I guess the reality must be dawning on her too.

What’s it like not having it be a chore to talk to a parent? To not be at risk of dodging knives when trying to get a word in with your own father? What’s it like to not have to watch everything you might say, in fear of inciting something that will only make you feel all the more distant to the person you thought you knew, but were only bound to by such a weak thing as blood?

I sigh, chuckling darkly.

“What else can he say to me?” I breathe humourlessly, with a defeatist shrug of my shoulder that draws mom’s attention to me snappishly. The look in her eyes is not something I recognise – it’s wide, but not sympathetic or even pained; just different – but I shrug it off. “What more can he want?”

Mom swallows thickly, and goes back to watching her hands as she fiddles with the ring on her fourth finger. The air feels thick, and she looks awkward. 

“Just don’t make anything worse, Jean,” she says quietly. I grimace. It’s a fast U-turn from the audacity she had to sit in his chair at the head of the dining room table, but I know that it’s last summer she’s remembering. “He’s your _father_ , after all. Even if that might not mean as much as either of you would like. He’s allowed to want to talk to you.”

I feel my jaw tense, but I know not to act on it.

I wonder, wordlessly: _what’s that supposed to mean?_ – but it remains just that. Wordless. It’s not going to help if I call her out for taking steps back when she feels she’s become too bold. She hasn’t. I know it’s hard. I would be a hypocrite if I accused her otherwise.

“I better go see what he wants,” I say grimly, nodding towards the base of the staircase, yet unable to will my feet to move just yet. (I frown down at them, accusatorily.) Mom doesn’t say anything more, still fixated on her hands. She doesn’t move, and she doesn’t look at me.

It’s enough to give me the push I need, if only because I don’t know what to say or what to ask when she’s like this, and I’m good at running away from awkward situations. I straighten the bottom of my shirt, even though I shouldn’t have to, and test how it feels to square my shoulders. It’s not so bad.

It feels less like a walk to the gallows than I expected. Maybe it’s Marco’s words guiding my hand on the bannister, or my own volition driving my feet, or just the thought of mom’s eyes upon my back the moment I turn away, and the fact that if she can’t do this, _I must_.

I’m seven steps up when I hear mom turn away, her heels clicking on the hard-wood as she disappears into the kitchen; I grit my teeth. The only reason that I’m still balancing on the lip of this diving board is because of mom being too afraid of the way it wobbles – but I think (stupidly, I imagine), if my father were to stomp on it now, I would be able to take the leap I need to take, and not be left clinging to the edge above the water.

The photographs in the stairwell stare back at me through the film of emulsion that has faded over the years; the bright-eyed happiness of three-year-old me upon my father’s knee only roasts my skin more thick and calloused.

I don’t feel delicate. I don’t feel like my skin is fragile, and all too-easily breakable by the rush of that hurricane of a man, only to be left to shatter on the floor.

And yet, I guess it’s a different feeling to wearing armour. It’s my skin that has become tough, and it’s not the silver-metal of words I might strap to my chest that’s forcing me to walk.

The floorboards of the landing creak under my weight, but I don’t try to dodge them like I normally would. I hope he hears me. I hope he hears that I’m angry – because I am angry. Not about him. Not even about us and every damn crevice between. I’m angry because he said nothing just now in the living room, and still left me reeling, and Marco dangling, and Anita having to breech the gap of strangers that shouldn’t have to exist between a father and a son, and shouldn’t have to rear its face in the presence of friends.

_So, you’re more angry at yourself, than at him._

I stop abruptly in front of the study door, and find my fist hovering above the wood, knuckles unable to knock. I hear the clatter of a keyboard beyond the door, and the squeak of his desk chair as it complains under dad’s weight. An anxious flare tastes like bile at the back of my throat, and I hate myself for what this has become.

I try to be proud when I knock. I try to stand up straight, and imagine how it would be if mom’s words didn’t still linger on my peripheral, and I could march straight in there without having to announce myself like some child at the headmaster’s door. But— the sound of my knuckles on the wood is weak and hollow.

“You can come in.”

I don’t know if I expect him to sound gruffer. I don’t know why he would. The sound of fingers rattling over the computer keyboard doesn’t stop, and I don’t have to be slipping through the door to see his back to me, to know that I’ll never quite have his full attention.

I wish my entrance could be grander, bolder, prouder; but I can’t stop myself from squeezing through the smallest gap in the door, and plastering myself against it once it closes. Maybe it’s habit. Maybe I just fall down when it really matters. I press my palms flush against the wood behind my back, and wait for him to finish typing before he turns to me – but he’s still not facing me, not completely. He’s still angled towards his computer, even if he doesn’t realise it. I guess I can’t be afforded that liberty. (I’m not surprised.)

I let my eyes skirt illiberally up the side of his face that I’ve been offered.

He looks older. I didn’t notice before, when he was stood in the living room doorway – I wasn’t looking at his face, and he wasn’t looking at mine.

And it’s not a noble sort of older. It’s a _grey_ older, a _fatigued_ older, a _weary_ older that lends itself to drawn-out lines around his eyes and a heavy-set to his jaw. It’s a stark contrast to the way he is so immaculately put-together still; there’s not a trace of shadow upon his chin, nor a crease in his slacks, nor a hair out of place. Somehow, he’s gained ten years since I saw him last.

It makes me think that he doesn’t know how tired he looks. Or that it’s a secret.

Or maybe I’m the one who’s never noticed, considering how strange to each other we’ve become. When was the last time I met his eye, and didn’t stare dumbly at his feet? When was the last time we shared a conversation that wasn’t just guttural grunts of passing in the hallway?

Dad nods towards the other chair in the room, propped up between two filing cabinets.

“Take a seat, Jean.”

“I think I’d rather stand.”

I think dad is taken aback; there’s a twitch in his eyebrows and his slate expression sours minutely. I expect him to lean back in his chair, to fold one leg over the other audaciously, and fix me with a diminishing purse in his lips – but he does none of those things. It’s unnerving how he doesn’t move, except to check me with a stare I cannot get a read on.

“It feels like I haven’t seen you in weeks,” he says slowly, and the vitriol I long to imagine should be curling over his words by now – but it’s not. I tense my fingers against the door, and remain stock-still. “Have you been doing much?”

“Yeah,” I reply tersely, thankful, at least, that my own voice doesn’t waver. It matches the lead I feel vitrifying within my legs. “Been seeing some friends. Preparing for school. Stuff.”

“Stuff,” dad repeats distraitly, before recollecting himself once more, “And school? The new semester must start soon.”

“Thursday,” I say curtly. Dad nods.

“Have you sorted all your classes?”

“I guess.”

“Which ones did you choose?”

I don’t reply, but I feel like my silence answers the question succinctly. Dad knows. I see it in the way his eyes narrow, and he gives everything away to me without meaning.

This feels like an interrogation, and whatever spotlight that shines upon me is just enough to make me feel like wincing. (But I can’t wince – not in front of dad. So I run the risk of letting my eyes threaten to water.)

The silence is awkward, but not lumbering. It seems to prop itself upon a knife edge, tentative and brittle, and I’m all too crass in pushing it willingly over the precipice.

“Is this what you wanted to talk about?” I say, knowing that I sound just a little too caustic. “Or do you just want me to tell you straight what you don’t wanna hear?”

Dad straightens up in his chair and sighs deeply, resting both his hands upon his knees disdainfully. He’s not impressed with my attitude, but I’m more at ease with this one of his. Seeing derision knit itself into his heavy eyebrows is something I’ve spent years learning how to suffer.

“When was the last time we had a _proper_ conversation, Jean?” he says severely, frowning up at me. I keep my lips pressed together in a tight, immovable line. “Six months? A year? Two? We live under the same roof. I want to know about what you’re doing. I want to know what is happening in your life. Forgive me for _trying_.”

He could’ve tried sooner, or maybe not tried at all. I think that would be the better prospect now. To cut the ties before they get tangled with forcing too much into too little. I don’t want him to _try_ when it means nothing in the long term. I don’t want him to pretend that he cares, because the pretence is sickening.

I suppose dad and I are alike in the sense that we both don’t always know when less is more, or how to not dig a hole any deeper.

“Would it matter if you did?” I say quietly, and now I can’t fight the grimace. I wince away from his gaze, turning my head to the side and staring plaintively at the wall. _If you did try._

“ _If I did_ — don’t give me that, Jean.” I recognise the flare of aggression in the way his face contorts into something trying too hard not to be uncivil and insulted. But still, he doesn’t shout, even though I can hear the tether wavering where he wants to raise his voice and make himself be heard over nothing. I know his words are about to border upon the blind. “I’m trying my God-damn best here. You’re the one who gives me nothing. You’re my _son_. I want to know who you are these days.”

“It’s none of your business,” I murmur. It’s definitely the wrong thing to say. Dad’s jaw tenses, and I see the ripple of muscle in the line of his throat as he swallows thickly.

“Of course it’s my business,” he replies, severely. “Your mother and I have given you everything, and I’m allowed to know what it is that you plan on doing with that—”

“N-no. _No_.”

I don’t want this to become a shouting match. I have to put this in the ground, and bury it if I can.

“No?” he asks, but it simmers, rather than burns. I take my chances with the heat.

“No,” I repeat, swallowing thickly. I straighten up, even though my shoulders beg to slouch, and my back to hunch, and my fingers to pretend like they’re not ready to shake if they weren’t digging into the door from which I haven’t moved. “No. N-no, you don’t get to play the guilt card, _dad_.”

“The _guilt_ card?”

I would throw my hands up in the air if I felt like I could move that boldly. Instead, I grit my teeth around my words.

“Yeah, like I’m not obligated to explain myself to— to you just because … just because you decided to have me— just because I’m your son – it doesn’t _work_ like that,” I stress, “I didn’t choose this. I didn’t choose who my parents are, or what you wanted of me, or what you would be disappointed in, or—”

I didn’t choose for it to be this God-damn difficult, but here we are. Side-stepping around another shouting match, and pretending like whatever arrangement we once had didn’t fuck us up just a little too good—

“So, you’re still going to be stubborn about this.” He phrases it as a statement, rather than a question. I still don’t know why he won’t raise his voice. Maybe if he leapt out of his chair, and berated me with the spittle of red words, I would know how to react, and not struggle awfully against the feeling of something pushing me back by the shoulder when I’m trying so hard to wade forward.

“Yes.” I hate the quiver of desperation that rounds out that word; it undermines the callouses in my skin with squishy, pinkened flesh prone to the sort of bruising I don’t want to endure again. “Yes, I’m going to be stubborn.”

I’ve lived for nineteen years in an environment where I’ve always been told I’m wrong; for choosing the wrong kids in the playground to play with; for picking up a crayon when I was ten, when I should’ve been picking up some pride; for deciding on a university that didn’t antiquate itself in red-brick walls.

For falling in love with a boy to whom dad wouldn’t spare a second glance.

There’s always been something of a chisel lodged in my side, somewhere between my fifth and sixth rib, and a hand has been using it to chip away bits of me until I’ve made an existence out of defending myself from others before they reach the vulnerability of my heart – and now the exhaustion is finally creeping up on me.

Maybe _stubborn_ is too far-reachable a thing for me now – too tangible and concrete a thing for these tired bones to make a grab for – but I know what I don’t deserve any longer.

I know that I’m not tired because I was scared. I’m tired because I _tried_.

Dad’s simpering anger has liquidated. He is watching me in stony silence – perhaps my thoughts resonate too loudly to be ignored – and I think his face softens. It doesn’t become affectionate – (I don’t think I would know how to recognise that on him) – but the frown set like a crag between his eyebrows erodes.

“Fine, Jean,” he says, his words saturated with a defeated sigh. He shakes his head, turning his palms skyward in a sign of submission that settles figmently. “Fine. I’m not going to fight you any longer. This has been going on far too long, and I’m tired. I’ve had enough of quarrelling with you. I’m not going to try and persuade you differently. Just do what you have to do – and if it doesn’t work out, then—”

“—then don’t come crying to you? Don’t worry, I know the drill.”

“Yes. Don’t tell me that I didn’t try to make it easy for you. Because that’s _all_ I have done for twenty years, and you might not like it, but you’re my son, Jean. My _only_ son. What’s mine is also yours, and you’re going to have to deal with that one day, so don’t lose yourself in over-optimistic _daydreams_.”

I tense.

“I won’t need that,” I say curtly, “I _don’t_ need your stuff or you help. I don’t need that.”

For a second, I think that’s the end of it. Dad twists away in his chair, back towards his computer, and presents me with the broad expanse of his back, and I think that I walked up here to be chewed out by a brick wall, and gain no ground either way. He rests his hands on the edge of his desk, pinching the wood between his fingers and his thumbs, and I open my mouth to say something scathing that will undoubtedly only rub the scabs off old wounds— but he hesitates from his keyboard, and spins back around, leaving my slack-jawed with ill-prepared words.

“You know as well as I do that that’s naïve, Jean,” he says, and his voice is low, tractable perhaps, even if he can’t quite shrug off the vein of order. I suppose it must be too deeply ingrained within him to ignore. “You’re lucky. Luckier than most. I worked hard when I was your age to build what we have, not so that I could lecture you, but so you wouldn’t have to know that struggle when you were growing up. Don’t throw that back in my face. I want us to be civil.”

“So you don’t mind that I switched my major?” It comes out too fast, but once it’s there, it’s irretrievable. I wait for the red flare – and maybe I do catch a change of angry colour bursting like a vein in dad’s forehead – but it burns itself out before it can even scorch.

“Of course I mind,” he grits, “But what else do you expect me to say to fix this and make you see sense?”

His words morph into a bitter sting: that acceptance I crave is still a far-flung dream – as it always was – but now instead of misguided fury from this man, I have apathy.

Dad just doesn’t _care_ anymore.

I think that’s worse.

No, it _is_ worse.

It’s not like being told I’m wrong, and being worn down to nothing fighting my own corner – no. No, it’s like being left to the deep end of my own choices, and suddenly it _terrifies_ me beyond measure. I’ve grown too used to having him there to push against when I needed to pull, and now I’m surrounded by too much space and am going to stumble with that same, fruitless panic that descends for a moment when you’re climbing the stairs in the dark, and figure there’s one step more than there actually is, and your foot plummets through a petrifying nothing.

It’s like that, but it’s more than just one step.

I stare at dad, but he doesn’t hold my gaze for more than a second. He looks away.My voice isn’t even a whisper – it’s just _pathetic_.

“What … what do I have to do to make you _care_?”

Quiet. It lets me linger in the feeling that I’ve not only taken three steps back, but tripped over my own feet on the way. Maybe I’m tumbling all the way down the stairs now. I can feel the bruises blooming like poppies on my ribs.

Dad unhooks his reading spectacles from the pocket of his shirt and unfolds them meticulously in his palms, before nudging them up and over his nose with his index finger. He closes his eyes, as if gathering himself, as he lets his palms fall back upon his lap.

When he looks at me again, it’s over the rims of his reading glasses, and it’s all too measuredly.

“If you think that I don’t care, Jean,” he says deliberately. “Then you still have a lot to learn.”

It’s as good as any slap to the face – and maybe I would have preferred that. I don’t know what to do with this— with _this_. Christ. With more than him not caring. With more than not knowing if I can believe him after all the mud we’ve been dragged through. With more than just being told to _get on with it_.

I don’t know what to do with the fact that I can’t decide who the real villain is here: _him, or the way I’m afraid of being judged and left alone_.

Because if it’s the latter—

It has its claws in real deep, and that’s not exactly a wound I can let bleed out with the relief of realisation.

Dad twists around in his chair and faces his computer again, and this time lets his fat fingers fall heavy against the keyboard as he opens up his emails. This conversation is over now.

I finally unstick my sweaty palms from behind my back – and all I want to do is run my fingers frantically through my hair, or across my face until it is red raw – but all I can manage is two, irresolute fists at my sides.

There’s so much more that I want to say, but I’m scared of giving away every little secret I might still cling to, and—

And, yeah. There it is. I am still _scared_ , after all.

Would dad pity me? Does he even know what pity is? If I didn’t want Marco’s pity, what makes anyone believe that I would want his?

_R-right?_

I squeeze my eyes tightly shut – it doesn’t matter now that I am weak, not with his back to me and his fingers playing keyboard keys like a piano staccato – and pull in a deep breath. Steady.

_You weren’t supposed to let this affect you._

“What was it that you _really_ wanted to talk about?”

Dad doesn’t even bother to turn away from his monitor screen. His voice is flat.

“I didn’t have an ulterior motive, Jean. That was you.”

 

* * *

 

I don’t even make it as far as the top of the stairs before I have to stop, one hand gripping the bannister with a white-tin fist, and the other as fingers tight upon my side, as if nursing the twinge of a stitch after too much running.

Ah, but it’s more than a twinge – it’s that chisel again, but this time, instead of chipping me away, someone has jimmied it around between my ribs, stirring up all sorts of mangled feelings that are beginning to seep through my clothes.

I grit my teeth with a growl that pulls my insides up through my stomach, and makes my throat contract with a dry, not-quite-there sob that has no substance. I clench my fingers harder around the wood of the bannister, my blunt finger nails leaving crescent-shaped grooves in the underside.

I am angry at myself. That hasn’t changed – and I doubt it ever will. I am angry that this happened. Angry that this had to spoil a day that was going so _good_. Angry that things are still shitty, when I was so, _so_ sure they had been improving— or at least I had gained the strength in my legs to walk past them, to forget about them, to—

 _God, it was stupid to forget_. It’s an echo from earlier, but now it stings with more than just a day that was ruined by the fact I can never let go of what a tangled mess of strings this family has become.

The thought stings with the _hatred_ I hold for myself over how I left it so long between my dad and me, to the point that I learned to blame the idea of a person for my desperate plea for villainy, so that I could have an excuse for feeling this way; to the point where I lost sight of how much of that villainy was my father, and how much a fantasy. A projection. A pretend.

And I don’t know what hurts more: the shock of what just happened, or the ache of what never will.

_I’m not afraid of him. I’m afraid of how he sees me. I’m still crippled by it._

My knees want to buckle, but I don’t let them. I force myself to remain standing.

Just a moment. I only need a moment.

_You told yourself you had enough of pretending, didn’t you? Sort yourself out._

I feel like I’m shaking, and the quivers are made all the more spasmic by the sweat that precipitates in the cups of my palms and the crook of my neck.

It’s more than just dad. It’s more than just the culture-shock of the backhanded smack he carries with him everywhere he goes. It’s more than just anger.

It’s the dawning realisation of loneliness – and not just that, but _aloneness_ too.

 _Do what you have to do_ is not a freedom or a liberty to be given, and nor is it a guidance. It’s fumbling in the dark, and trying to make sense of things that are too big and too grand for the way I’ve grown used to be shoe-horned all my life. It’s reigns being thrust into my hands that I don’t know how to wield. And it’s still an order.

 _Do what you have to do_. I don’t know what that is.

I feel the lash of a riptide that spits and snarls around my ankles as too many things to think about at once.

Thinking about the future makes me nauseous; it burns acidly in my gut with all the thoughts of graduation ceremonies with empty chairs, and cheques that cannot be balanced with paintbrushes, and taxes that cannot be paid with charcoal on my fingers. I think about mom having to pawn her jewellery to make ends meet, and me having to choose between my car and piles of job rejections on the table, and figuring out how to tell Marco that I love him enough whilst everything else is falling down around us.

I am not worth anything important.

I don’t know how to persevere without crumbling.

I don’t know what to do when I’m given control over what I’ve always wanted – _and it terrifies me_.

I know the feeling of spiralling well.

I’m not sure how long I stand at the top of the stairs, unmoving, caught in a momentless moment that prevails as blankness behind the eyes. I stare dumbly at the photographs adorning the walls – and I see colours, and I see glass, but I don’t see pictures or people or the pretence of something that means anything.

The sound of silence sings out loudly like a shriek submerged beneath the skin, and I prickle with the shrillness of something I think I can hear, but can’t quite comprehend.

I think I should feel relieved. I should— _shouldn’t I_? I should feel relieved that talking to my father didn’t end in the barrage of screaming and slammed doors that it always does. I should feel relieved that we’ve shifted. I should feel relieved that he didn’t shove into my hands a letter from my school with his signature, telling me that my classes have been changed by him for the better.

I should feel relieved that he didn’t pin me against the door with accusing words about pool boys and invasive questions about friends who are more than friends.

He mentioned nothing about Marco. I should hold onto that – _because it’s something_. It’s something, it’s—

Did I want him to notice? Do I still want him to notice, in the same way that I sat in the living room and begged mom silently to understand what she was looking at, and see Marco as more, and us as more, and me as _more_ —

As if. Why would dad even notice to begin with? It’s not important to him.

I should feel relieved, and I feel _guilty_ for not.

 

* * *

 

I head for the kitchen when the hot coals of searing thoughts I trample over have burned all the feeling from my feet, and my footsteps upon the stairs become soundless. I feel detached; dissociated; numb to things like the hard-cast beat of my heart that seems to strain agonisingly with each palpitation inside my chest.

I feel the whiteness in my face seeping into my insides; into my blood; into my bones, and making me translucent and blank and _nothing_. I am turning pale inside and out, and I wonder if soon I will be white enough to match the colour of the kitchen cabinets and the tiled floor, and fade into them without ever being seen again.

I stop in front of the coffee machine in the kitchen and stare dumbly at the condensation that has formed and cooled in the inside of the kettle, bleeding into the trickle of coffee still left in the decanter and making it weak and watery. I stab the buttons blindly, hoping to get the water boiling once more and the smell of stale coffee biting bitterly at the inside of my nose – a feeling of _something_ – but as the water begins to simmer, I cancel the cycle with a dredged-up sigh. I curl both palms around the edge of the counter-top, and let my weight fall on my arms, my head bowed.

This is a new form of greyness, but it’s greyness that I know well, after all.

“Jean?”

I don’t turn around to the sound of mom’s heels skittering on the kitchen floor, but I can hear the hesitance in the way she stops some metres away from me. In just the vowels of my name, I can hear the whole story: that she’s still shaken, that she’s still afraid, and that she’s still dipping her toes in the deep-end before deciding not to dive into the things I’ve willingly let myself drown in.

I feel every muscle in my back contract, my shoulders shifting, and stiffening. I clutch the counter-top a little tighter.

“Are you okay, baby?”

When I breathe in, everything seems to tremble, and the air seeping down my throat seems to vibrate with a wet-threatening quiver. I bite down hard into my lower lip, and cast a glance back over my shoulder – for her.

“I’m fine,” I lie. “It’s fine.”

Mom’s eyes are wide – and made to look wider by the frame of spidery lashes doused in mascara that create feathery, black shadows on her cheeks. She clutches both arms to her chest, palms curled over her elbows. She seems small and breakable and flightful, and the expression on her face is caught on an edge of all that: mingled with the relief that there are no tears in my eyes or dried upon my face, and yet torn-up by the way I still somehow appear even more shaken than her.

I can see the muteness that snags on her lips; she doesn’t know what to say, but she’ll try and say something anyway.

“Did he … ask about Marco?” Something is off about her voice.

“No,” I reply. _He didn’t even notice_. “About school.”

“ _Oh_.”

Her _oh_ is both far too explanatory, and not nearly enough to cover all the things that need saying, should either of us ever figure out how to do that eloquently. I let my shoulders slump, and the rigidity in my arms dissipates with a tired huff from my lips. I turn fully to face mom, leaning back against the kitchen counter, but she doesn’t try to come any closer. A crevice of space has been excavated between us, and its depths are echoed in the way mom still holds herself together with fragile arms and shifts her weight from hip to hip as if biting her tongue.

There’s something more than _just dad_. She can’t quite look at me – but it’s not because she’s fearful, or ashamed, or angry, no – and I wonder why. I don’t know how to pin it down.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. I shake my head, and stare firmly at the floor.

“No, it’s fine.” _I don’t want you to see that side of me._

“W-well, do you want me to go and talk to him? Maybe I could—”

“Don’t do that.” _You don’t need to suffer that as well as me._

“How … how about a drink then?” she says, and I hear a pang of something strained – like someone desperate for a foothold on a sheer cliff face – within her voice. I glance up, and catch the twisting of her thin eyebrows into something fraught. My monosyllabic answers aren’t helping. I feel bad. “I could make lemonade. We could take it outside. The weather is nice today.”

She’s trying. She’s scared, and she doesn’t want to fight, but she’s trying. That all I really deserve to ask for.

“Okay,” I murmur, “Okay, yeah. That’d be nice.”

I don’t move from the counter until she moves, and so we face a stalemate of stillness for a few moments more than comfortable. It leaves mom skittish and shy when she’s forced to cross my path to get to the kitchen cabinets.

There’s a pitcher of lemonade in the fridge – prepared, I figure, for sharing with Marco, but left untouched long enough for its cloudiness to have settled as a film of pith at the bottom of the jug. Mom says nothing as she pours two glasses, and hands one to me with a tight press of her lips into an uneasy, unwarmed smile – my _thankyou_ is a nod, just as silent.

I hold the backdoor for her as she leads the way outside, and neither of us is able to prevent ourselves from sparing a sidelong glance up at the second floor, where the autumn sunlight refracts across the windowpanes to make them mirrors. It’s not like dad’s study has windows overlooking the back yard. I don’t know why we’re looking.

Mom heads straight for the patio table, dappled in the streaks of afternoon sunlight that peer over the hedgerow and next door’s roof, but I dawdle, distracted for a moment by the number of discarded leaves that float – and sink soddenly – like tiny sail boats in the pool. It’s been a while since I’ve spared it even a glance, and by the looks of things, nor has anyone else.

Or perhaps the autumn is just descending upon us that quickly. It’s hard to tell when the sun is still brackish and bold and summerlike, and the garden still blooms in shades of green, even if that green is beginning to wilt. The only thing that suggests the coming fall is the marauding of the breeze like a waltz that has something cold breathing down the back of its sonata as it plucks leaves from the hedgerow and scatters them carelessly across the lawn and water.

“It sounded like Marco was quite set on going back to school,” mom says, and I tug my gaze away from the gentle lapping of the water’s surface. She’s sat at the table now, one leg crossed daintily over the other, and her fingers curled around her glass, but not drawing it to her lips. Her eyes fall on me, and then on the pool, and then on her lemonade as she swirls it thoughtfully.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I suppose you were right when you said he wouldn’t be coming back to work,” mom continues quietly, “I’ll miss having him.”

“He’ll still be around,” I say curtly. I’m caught again by the mass of leaves that has clumped together at the pool steps, and now cannot be dislodged by the rippling of the water. The leaves stick like sodden newspaper to the blue mosaic, wrinkling and unwrinkling as they’re sloshed by gentle waves.

Mom seems to hesitate – and I become aware of it – before she offers just one, quick word. “Quite.”

I can feel how nervous she is; how she’s sidestepping cautiously around elephants in the room that we don’t want to startle, but should be addressing— if we only knew how.

I try to tell myself that it’s better that we’re trying – because if it was like before, before we decided to be _honest_ with each other (even if that’s easier said than done), we both would have swept this under the rug with all our other insecurities, and pretended like there was nothing wrong. Perhaps there wouldn’t have even _been_ anything wrong – because raised voices and tails tucked between legs were the norm back then. We were used to it.

At least we’re both trying keys in the locks of our cages now; rattling iron within iron; jimmying the bars that might feel a little loose and a little wobbly.

Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it? This awful awkwardness? It’s about dad, right?

I meander over to the patio table, resting my glass on the top as I pull out one of the recliners with a screech on the flagstone that makes me grimace. I spare a glance at mom, and she winces too.

It strikes me that it’s not just because of the noise.

Maybe it’s not just the aftershock either. She can’t quite look me in the eye. There’s something more to this.

I let myself fall into the recliner with a stiff huff, and the wood creaks beneath my weight. Mom stares at the table, and I stare at her, confused. I suppose she’s always been a master of disguise.

“What did you think of Anita?” I ask bluntly, unwilling to let us dissolve into sore and itching silence, despite the way I still stew in bitterness and shock. I don’t sound as I mean to; my tone is too abrasive and demanding for the way it falls like a murmur. Mom swallows thickly.

“She was lovely,” mom admits, “She’s been through a lot.”

“Yeah,” I agree, “But you wouldn’t know from looking.”

Mom’s mask slips for a moment, and I see her lips contort with a sad, but knowing smile.

“I think you would,” she says carefully, as if mulling over the choices in her words diligently. “I wouldn’t think you become so attuned to other people if you haven’t suffered yourself.”

She looks at me then – and I wonder if it’s as difficult as it is for me to look at her, struck by the way her gaze levels me with something that tremors with the timbre of regret, and something more— is it jealousy? Not bitter and biting and spiteful, but— sorrowful, perhaps?

I think about how it felt to have Anita’s hand on my knee. I wonder if mom wishes that could have been her.

“I can see why you like her,” mom adds quietly, “She’s a lot like Marco. They’re both very caring people.”

“You should take up her offer for coffee,” I find myself insisting, “Get to know them more.” _You can be around them more. You can feel what I feel._ “Anita would like that.”

A small frown appears between mom’s thin eyebrows as she looks at me and then back at her glass as she swirls it. I wonder if I’ve said something she didn’t want to hear, or something she didn’t want me to say.

“Yes,” she says after a moment’s pause, “I would like that too.”

What opens up before me is an empty hallway of a moment: eerie in its silence, and heavy in its awkwardness, where my footsteps – which in this case are the clumsiness of my hands bringing my lemonade to my lips – are too loud and booming. Something about mom’s choice in words stops me from replying: an echo of finality, or perhaps of weight that prompts no response that could be deemed natural. It must be a gift parents have.

I cast another glance at the upstairs windows, expecting, almost, to see a figure on the other side of the glass that I might blame for my discomfort. There is no-one there – not that I can see, at least.

It makes me wonder why the air I’m breathing feels so suddenly thick with it. _It_ , the feeling of being watched, of being scrutinised, of being picked apart for answers. It’s much the same feeling as wading through something viscous – mud, water, snow – and it pulls you back with more might than you can surge forward with.

Perhaps it’s dad’s words lingering. (As if it isn’t.)

Perhaps I’m still spiralling out of control, way, _way_ out of the orbit I want to be in.

Perhaps it’s the way that when I catch mom looking at me curiously, she is all too quick to unstick her eyes, embarrassed for the same reason all her words seem so coated with wariness.

I open my mouth to ask her what it is that she can’t _bear_ to look at – but she beats me to words.

“Would you like to go for a walk?”

I blink owlishly at her, and then recoil with suspicion into my seat. I fold my arms, distrustfully.

“ _Why_?”

“Just because,” she says, before adding meekly, “I have to take a cheque over to Vicente’s. I thought we could go together.”

I blink again, arching an eyebrow in disbelief.

“Please tell me that’s not your yoga instructor’s name,” I deadpan.

Mom’s smile – although guilty – is more genuine, however hard she tries to keep it secret. She curls a strand of hair behind her ear shyly.

“Will you come?” she says again, bashfully, “Just for a little while.”

I can’t help but snort, and mom is startled by the bark of my laughter erring on the bitter – but she doesn’t need to be. I shake my head with a sigh of expelled weariness.

The thought of escaping the lauding presence of white walls, and opaque windows, and stifling memories, and dawdling _panic_ sounds good. Maybe it’s these things that are holding us both down – by the neck, against the ground.

“Alright,” I agree, and am eased just a little from the splintering of my self-imposed knife edge by the smallness of a smile she offers me. “Alright. For a little while.”

 

* * *

 

On that very first day in April, when Marco pulled up to the curb outside our house with a van full of pool nets and chlorine tablets, I wonder if he got lost. I wonder if it had taken him ten more minutes than expected to spot our house number from the roadside, squinting through his driver’s window. I wonder if he had picked the wrong road, and driven around the block two, three, four times, because he doesn’t have Satnav and everything must’ve looked frustratingly the same. I wonder if he colleagues had jostled him that morning and told him that at least the people in the plastic neighbourhood can afford to _pay_ in plastic.

All the houses in my neighbourhood look the same. All the streets are carbon copies of one another, laid out in a grid that all too easily becomes a sense of déjà-vu with every white house passed, and every Chevrolet Suburban that glints in the sun on every other driveway. Hedgerows are uniformly trimmed, and front lawns artificially green amidst September, with the feed of sprinklers that we can’t afford to run given the dryness of the summer passed. Mothers hold the hands of kids that are not allowed to ride bikes in fear of dirtying the knees of their cream-coloured trousers, and joggers bounce effortlessly on their toes down the street, whilst barking orders into Bluetooth headsets strapped to their ears and connected to faraway offices. The sidewalks are spotless, free of chewing-gum and cigarette butts, no doubt blasted by high-pressure washes late at night, so that people might open their curtains each morning to a perfect lawn, a perfect street, and a perfect view.

There’s something about the streets that reminds me of a model village: a town of showcase homes that no-one lives in, and that smell just a little too strongly of acrylic and fresh paint. It’s a far cry from where Marco lives, where the roads are a patchwork of different coloured asphalt, and there are weeds sprouting up through cracks in the pavement, and each house looks like a guy-next-door, rather than a silicon clone of its neighbour, right down to the arrangement of flowers in the front yard’s flowerbed.

I wonder if Marco sees me in this place in the same way that I see the essence of him in his own home. I wonder if he seems prim and proper and _regulation_ , unwittingly afraid of growing five centimetres too tall or letting oneself grow brown with time.

I certainly see mom in this place. She walks half a step ahead of me now, the silence between us comfortable enough for her to be appreciating the blooming of autumn weather, and me to be watching the way her heels and pencil skirt would look ridiculous in any other part of this city.

It’s not a bad thing. She can love pressure-washed tarmac, and matching gardens, and neighbourhood alliances if she wants to. They’re simple things, but I think they make her happy.

I can feel myself condensing – becoming water again from where I had evaporated in a red-hot steam of panic – and the further we walk from the slate-grey roof of home, the easier it is to drown my unease into submission. Home is like a bubble, and its walls are coated with the thin, but slimy film of detergent that reeks a little too strongly of bleach: eager to discolour, easy to become trapped within, and oily on my hands. (Does that mean I leave traces of home upon everything I touch?)

I unconsciously wipe my palms down my thighs.

It’s easier to put things into perspective in the context of the wider world beyond the bubble. It’s easier to see what matters, and what doesn’t matter, and what hurts more because you’re trapped within something that needs puncturing.

I won’t feel this way when we go home again. This is what happens: it’s a never-ending up-and-down, back-and-forth rollercoaster of sorts that has me optimistic upon its ascents, strikes me cowardly with whiplash on its plummets, and winds me on its corners.

I’m managing now, because fresh air and sunlight and a muffled quiet is not _being scared of what I have to wake up to alone tomorrow_. I’m managing now because I’m not leant up against glass walls, smearing oily palm prints down the panes with the slick squeak of my fingers. I’m managing now because I’m doing what Marco told me _not_ to do: _ignoring what hurts_.

I probably won’t be managing later. I try not to think about it. I try not to think about anything.

It’s easier this way.

(I wish the simple things could make me happy too.)

Mom and I reach the end of the street, and she holds her hand out to make my pause on the kerbside and looks both ways, even though the road is deserted of any cars. I glance at her disdainfully, but she doesn’t seem to notice, ferrying me across the asphalt with a wave of her hands.

Sometimes I wonder if she ever sees me as more than a child, or if I’m just a five-year-old inhabiting some really long limbs and a slightly morose view of the world to her.

It would explain a lot of things. Like the way she thought I was too young to notice that she hadn’t held my father’s hand in public for years; like the way she kept on believing I was naïve enough not to understand the game she was playing, avoiding the very person she slept next to at night; like the way she still thinks I don’t notice the little things, the secret things, the involuntary ticks and quirks of herself, such as the way she pretends she’s not watching me from the corner of her eye, only to glance away furrowedly every time I return it sceptically.

Maybe it means that she’ll never truly understand how much it hurts to be abandoned by your parent, when all you’ve ever known is coddling. She’ll see the fear in my eyes, and hear the way my voice trickles away like water down the plughole in the coming days, and be the one who has to stand over me when I won’t want to move beyond a blanket on the sofa, but maybe she’ll never quite know—

Because I’m still small to her. Still loved by her. Still _hers_ inherently— and not thrown to the dogs of indecision and chameleon futures.

I’m an entire pace behind her when we hop up onto the sidewalk on the other side of the road, her floating ahead of me as if the threat of her heels falling between the gaps in the paving stone means nothing, and me dragging my feet as if I’ve got shards of that concrete within my shoes – and I try to catch up with a poorly-timed lope in my step.

Mom stops in the middle of the sidewalk, and I all but walk into her as she turns to face me. I choke over some sort of surprised garble.

“ _Mom_ —!”

“Would you tell me if something was worrying you?”

I blink myopically, caught off-guard by her forwardness.

Sometimes she’s the one who’s like a child. There’s innocence, and an impudence to her words; she’s direct without realising, she’s naïve without understanding how it’s not so easy for me to come out with what might be on the tip of my tongue, and she’s willing to prod and poke me in the _middle of the street_ , because she’s decided she’s had enough of averting.

“W-wha—?” I choke, taking a step backwards, “Mom— middle of the sidewalk is _not_ the place, c’mon, let’s—”

Mom’s thin shoulders fall with a gentle sigh, and she clasps her hands together, fiddling with her wedding ring. She twists the gold band around her finger once, twice, three times, summoning some sort of strength that I don’t think she gets from looking at that over-zealous jewel.

When she looks up at me again, her jaw is tight, and her gaze level.

“Do you … do you feel like you can trust me, Jean?”

I frown.

“What’s this about?” I gripe, “’Cus if this is about dad, I said it’s fine, and I just wanna— _of course I trust you_. I just—” I hear my voice waver with the sound of my lie, and become quieter. I grit my teeth around my words. “I just … don’t wanna talk about it.”

I walk past her – not that I know which turning I’ll have to take at the end of this street – but stop after five or six steps when I realise she isn’t following me.

“Mom?” I say, looking back over my shoulder to see her still with her back to me. “Mom, c’mon— you’re being weird. I told you, I’m fine—” I retrace my steps in a march, and turn her around to face me with a firm hand on her skeletal shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

I’m not that much taller than her – especially not when she’s in six-inches of scaffolded heels – but I feel like it’s a long look down at her face when she turns to meet my scrutiny and impatience. She seems embarrassed again.

I don’t understand why she looks that way. It makes me panic.

“Mom—”

“Is there … is there something you’ve been thinking about telling me, baby?”

I let my hand fall from her shoulder as if struck, cradling it against my chest.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I murmur, and, for a spinning-top moment, I really _don’t_. It’s obviously more than just dad arriving home in a gust of unnatural silence, and it’s more than her worrying over what he said to me, and it’s not even buried-deep worries I have about her not liking Anita, or Mina, or Marco as much as I—

Oh. _Oh_.

 

It’s surprising how quickly I can do a one-eighty on something I had only been on my knees _begging_ _for_ mere hours ago. But the second the thought rears into my head – ugly and hulking and braying – I want nothing to do with the idea that she _knows_.

“Jean,” mom reiterates, but it’s not an order. (I know what orders sound like.) It’s just a little bit pleading. A little bit desperate. More than weary enough. “Please. I know there’s something—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stress, this time backing away and pressing my palms out towards her in defence. I was careful. I was _careful_ , and she’s so blind – she still thinks I’m a _child_ , for Christ’s sake – and she shouldn’t have noticed that I—

We’re not having this conversation on a _street corner_. We’re not having this conversation _now_. Not today. Not after what’s already happened, not after—

Mom reaches out and grabs my hand, curling her thin and bony fingers around mine with as tight a squeeze as she can manage. It’s not viceful, but it bites into my skin in all the wrong ways. She doesn’t let me run away.

“Jean,” she repeats, her voice drained to barely a whisper, “Baby, please. I just— you can trust me with what’s going on in your life. We made a deal, didn’t we?” She swallows thickly, and so do I. I am caught on staring at her hands clasped around my fingers, and can’t let go. “Is there something that you want to tell me?”

I feel the glare of the spotlight pinning me to the spot, sucking sweat from my skin and drawing all the feeling in my legs into the earth. I don’t think I’ve ever quite stared in terror and in awe at something quite like this, besides the sea.

Mom’s expression becomes pained. I wonder if she’s going to try, whatever my answer might be. Masochistically, I almost want to find out. Almost.

“There’s nothing,” I say, and my voice does break, “It’s— it’s just—”

A car rumbles past us on the road, tooting its horn at mom in a way that would make me scowl and throw curse words like stones at their rear-view window, if I weren’t splintering with all sorts of cavernous fissures. The car billows up a wind that ruffles through mom’s hair – and the spell is broken as she tucks misplaced strands back behind her ears and I think _that’s it_ , she’s going to leave it, she’s going to let me run again, nothing has changed—

“I saw how you touched him at the dinner table,” she says quietly, and I almost lose the sound of her voice to the rumble of the car engine disappearing around the junction we’ve barely just crossed. “I saw the way he was looking at you, baby.”

My only response is to shake my head. Words, not my own, apparate like a whine.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It sounds so weak, and both my ears and hers are deaf to petty excuses that mean nothing and matter less.

I don’t want to lose all the things we so tenuously have hold of. I’m afraid to even blink. I want to deny it all – but I guess there comes a stage where standing in front of foaming waves and trying to push back the tide gets you nowhere, and leaves you looking like an idiot.

I think I want her to know more than I want to run – and I want to run _so bad_ , like there’s something dangerous snapping at me heels. I want her to know, because I think I’m partial to just a little bit of ruin. But knowing that doesn’t make me any less terrified of the sympathy that blooms anemonically behind her eyes.

I want her to know, and I agonisingly _don’t_.

“I see how you look at him,” she whispers, and then with a rueful, sucker-punch smile, adds, “I saw you kiss by the car.”

She takes a step closer to me – and still she cannot mask her hesitance – and with the hand not crushing my fingers between the bones in her palm, she cups my cheek gently. I can barely feel her fingers – perhaps she’s forgotten how to touch me without it being amassed from all the reasons I feared coming out to her – but it means I can’t look away. Shit.

Shit, _shit_. I—

“Friends don’t kiss friends like that, Jean,” she laments, “But it’s okay. It’s … it’s okay.” I try to pull away from her hand, but she holds my jaw firm, keeping me looking down at her. The croak that dapples her voice only makes me want to thrash around _more_ , but— but I’m left to bottle up that feeling in my arms and in my throat, twists of panicked energy tied up in coils and knots that beg to spring free, and the pressure against my skin from the inside sears me good and proper.

 “He’s a nice boy. It’s okay,” she repeats, “It’s … it’s going to take me time to get used to it, but— it’s okay.”

And then, quietly, she adds, “We … we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

I feel like it’s happened too fast. I feel like I’ve stepped out into the road and been hit by a passing car, before even being given the chance to look both ways before crossing the street.

I wanted more time to figure out how I was going to react to this. To telling her; to her knowing; to things changing. I wanted more time to realise that this was even something I _wanted_ to figure out.

I was too caught up in wanting her to know, that I hadn’t planned how I would react once she did. And now she does.

And I’m left with a sandpaper throat, and a mouth that feels like ripped-up asphalt.

She lets the hand that’s cupping my cheek fall away, moving to cover her other hand, already holding mine, so that now my eviscerated fingers are trapped between both her palms. She says nothing, holding my gaze with anticipation that seems all too finely wired, prickling with the thought that it’s just will power stopping her from shaking.

She’s far, far out of her comfort zone. I can see it in the tension in her fiercely-clenched jaw. This is not waving to neighbours over hedgerows, and sharing lemon-drizzle cakes with other moms in the neighbourhood, or gossiping around a coffee table about yoga instructors with dreamy Spanish drawls.

Boys that kiss other boys don’t fit in with her paradigm of sprinkler-fed gardens, an invasive sense of community, and white-picket suburbia.

She’s out on a limb, waiting to see what I’m going to do— _what am I going to do?_

I can stare back at her with wide eyes that have nothing behind them but a bluescreen of death, and can relay over and over and _over_ in my head the story of Historia’s parents isolating her for her sexuality, and Ymir’s frustrations about never being able to be part of her girlfriend’s family, and Marco having taken years to muster up the courage to tell his mother and his father that he likes boys, and— _and that’s not doing anything_.

Mom’s electrified patience seems to slip and I see worry flare up beneath, the longer I remain dumbly silent.

“W-was— was that the right thing to say?” she says, tepidly. “Should I have— have told you differently? Did I say something wrong?”

Oh, _mom_.  

_I don’t even know how to answer that._

Her fingers go limp as I gently prize my hand from her grasp with a shake of my head. She hangs on the heavy pendulum of silence, as if it’s the only thing holding her up above the holes in the ground that I’ve been left alone so long to navigate.

Standing on the edge of an abyss like that, I only know how to stop myself from falling in. I only know how to hold myself back from plummeting, even if it’ll only matter for a moment longer.

I don’t know how to give in. Dad was right when he called me stubborn.

I see mom’s face fall pre-emptively. _I’m sorry, mom. I don’t want to— I can’t talk about it._

“S-so,” I say, and I hate myself for it. I know I’m panicking. One day there’s going to be nowhere left to run. “You gonna show me this yoga teacher is, or— or what?”

Yeah, I know.

Just let me be for a little while longer.

 

* * *

 

It’s hard to describe something as the worst silence of your life when strong contenders keep leaping out of the woodwork – especially with all that has happened today, let alone this _week_ – but the minutes that follow are the worst silence of my life.

And it’s far worse than any regular awkward silence – where the air is chock with tension and suspense and enough electricity to make your skin prickle with an sizzle – because this is dirty, squirming with the feeling of not butterflies and chirping crickets in my stomach, but worms, slugs, maggots, disgusting things that wriggle and slither and _rot_ within the hollow of my gut. It’s like an itch that doesn’t just need tickling – it needs scratching, clawing until my nails draw blood, peeling skin away strip by strip in the hope that discarded parts of myself will make everything better. (It never does.)

Mom and I walk so far apart on the sidewalk that someone passing through the gap between us would think us strangers. We’re not, of course – but we’re magnets. We’re meant to wander back to one another, we’re meant to stick together, we’re meant to attract other things cast of iron and entice collisions; that’s our purpose. But it feels like we’ve been turned pole-to-pole beyond our own volition, and however much she or I might want to bridge the gap between us, neither of us can withstand the bulbous, dipolic repulsion that drives a wedge between our steps.

It makes me feel like I don’t want to push at all, too afraid of being propelled backwards by that torque, and sent spinning.

( _Well_ , I reason, as I stare hard at the sidewalk beneath my feet, _your head is already spinning. A little too late for that_.)

Mom is too proud to stare at the sidewalk – or perhaps too noble. She walks with her head held high, even though her lower lip juts out every time she swallows, and her white fingers seem to clench into worried fists every few steps, only to unfurl again as she smoothes away creases in her skirt.

I’m not looking. I stare at the pavement again, tracing cracks in the concrete. I don’t want her to catch me looking.

(It’s almost as if I want this impermeable silence to continue. Just so I can writhe and suffer a little bit more. God-fucking-dammit.)

It’s easy to say that the space between us is the wake I have left in my back-peddling. It’s me being too scared to confront what I need to confront, and it’s the compression of being _bombarded_ with too much in the space of one day that makes my shoulders want to crumple. It’s the fact that my automatic response to surprise is to want to flee.

It’s easy to say that. It’s easy to say that, just like magnets, we’ll collide, and then we’ll align. It’s easy to say things will return to normal if I give it time and ignore it hard enough, and mom confronting me on a street corner over kissing our pool boy will become just a blip on our radar that is construed with so many other things more concerning.

But it’s _truthful_ to say that the reason I walk so far away from her is more than just being thrown off-kilter.

It’s the fact that the repulsive force between us is _this gay thing_ intrinsically. Or, well, this bisexual thing, I guess I should say – but I doubt it’s going to shorten the gap in any way measurable if I specify. It’s this _I like kissing boys_ thing. It’s this Marco thing. It’s insurmountable. It’s absolutely massive. It’s a hilltop that disappears into the clouds, and every time I reach a ridge that I might just believe is the summit, I see another scramble appearing out of the fog.

I don’t know how to tell mom that she _is_ right – what she saw _is_ right – and not be changed by that.

Maybe it’s because a casual _yeah mom, I do like boys_ is little more than a drop in the ocean of how ass over teacup I am in love with Marco Bodt, even if I’ve told that to a grand total of only myself. It’s too casual; too demure; too not-enough. It’s too transformative a thing to confess with a casual shrug of my shoulders. It doesn’t explain the magnitude of— of this. Of _me_. Of how I can still be _just Jean_ in her eyes after admitting to it.

I might have begun to recognise the newer me, but that doesn’t mean she will – or anyone will, once I tell them. I don’t want to be reintroducing myself to the universe all over again.

I realise that I don’t want to be treated different because of who I’m in love with, and who knows it.

I almost don’t notice when mom stops walking – and there’s a hitch in my throat when I figure she’s going to say something more, something damning, about how I won’t say a word – but as I turn to her reluctantly, she just points wordlessly to a house across the street, and her tight-lipped smile is clear enough.

I nod at her, and that’s our conversation; she leads the way across the asphalt, hopping up onto the sidewalk with a burst of new enthusiasm – how forced it is, I couldn’t say.

I follow her more drudgingly, eyes scanning over the house that sits a little way back from the kerb. At first glance, it’s not much different to home – a little bit smaller, maybe, but it’s quaint, and idyllically suburban in its hedgerows and its garage door left open to the sun, without fear of being burgled. The houses on this side of the suburb aren’t so white and aren’t so big, and the SUVs on the driveways have been replaced by Chevrolets with a few years under their dashboards, and something a touch more human.

There’s a man in the front yard, dressed down in sweats and a sleeveless shirt, pushing a lawnmower that rumbles with need of oil. His dark skin glistens in the sun with a fine sheen of sweat that doesn’t quite discolour his clothes, but highlights the ripple in his biceps as he hauls the mower around the corner of his mailbox. His hair is wavy and dark, flipped to one side in pretentious disarray, and his jaw is peppered in dark stubble, gallantly straddling the line between scruffy and heartthrob.

Mom makes bee-line for him without sparing me a glance, calling out something that is lost to the grumble of the mower, but apparently not to him. He looks up – face erupting into the most offensively crooked grin – and kills the power on the motor.

This must be the yoga instructor.

I can see the appeal.

I let myself drift to a stop on the sidewalk, not quite feeling that the invitation to stray upon this stranger’s front lawn has been extended to me, and find myself folding my arms defensively across my chest as I watch mom and him – what was his name again? – greet each other with broad smiles and cheek-warming uncertainty as to where hands should be when mom leans in to peck him warmly on the cheek.

The man – Vicente, his name was, is Vicente – laughs brightly when mom unabashedly pulls a cheque from the neckline of her dress and presents it to him, coyness oozing from the dainty flick of her wrist as she flirtatiously buffets his nose with the piece of paper, and then giggles herself.

I can’t hear what’s being said, and in a way, it seems too invasive to just stand there at the foot of his drive and try to drop eaves – but then mom laughs a little louder, and I can’t help but poorly mask a stare.

I wonder if it’s like walking into another world for her. I wonder if getting out of the house matters as much to her as it does to me. I wonder if being able to escape from the prison of watching what is said and done, and forgetting herself in a coy chuckle or a harmless flutter of her eyelashes is what is needed to cope. I wonder if she’s swept away with the same feeling as when I’m with Marco.

I wonder if she thinks about the promise of _one day_ just a little more boldly.

When was the last time I saw her smile like that? Not just a happy smile, but a weightless smile. When was the last time someone _paid her a compliment_ that could prompt a smile like that?

It wasn’t dad. He’s forgotten how. It wasn’t me. I never knew how to begin with.

They laugh again, and I see mom swat Vicente on the shoulder with the back of her hand. He grins brightly, and says something that makes mom scoff.

I feel bad – for the fact I can never give mom a conversation that lights her up like a sunrise because of the way we’ve both been forced to become shadows – but at the same time I feel so, so— so _glad_.

Is that the right word? Something swells in my chest, and I’m fucking thankful towards a man I’ve never met. A stranger. _A different sort of stranger_.

Mom chatters animatedly, and Vicente grins, and then they both turn in my direction – my name clearly passed from mom’s lips to his ears – and he holds up a hand in a wave, smiling in a way that I can’t quite put my finger on. (The lopsided quirk of his mouth feels much the same as a being elbowed familiarly in the side by a friend, with a cheerful _you alright, bud?_ tossed around flippantly in greeting.)

It’s odd. I thought I would be more jealous when it came to this. I thought I’d be less willing to share. (But I suppose that was dad rubbing off on me. The thought of mom having to be bound to the things neither dad nor I can oblige is hypocritical. I’ve shrugged that mantle from my shoulders and abandoned it on the floor to be trampled as it deserves.)

I wave back at Vicente cautiously, but not reluctantly. He grins. Nods his head. It’s odd.

I wonder if I want mom to know about Marco in the same way she was willing to let me see this.

I decide not to impeach upon mom’s moment after that.

They talk for a little while – long enough for my feet to get restless and my legs to get tired of standing still. I fold myself up on the kerb edge, and wish I had brought my phone with me when we left the house, because now I’m left to the dredging of things I’d rather smother and ignore.

I feel tired. I guess that’s what happens after things have slipped away and settled like dirt in the soles of my feet, and I’m left to be an aftermath.

I don’t feel like me. I feel like I’m floating above a carbon-copy of myself, watching him squat on the kerb and rest his chin on his knees and sigh every time the breeze muddles through his hair, but not quite believing he and I are the same. Maybe it’s easier to cope like this; easier to depersonalise; easier to separate myself from the person I have to be and pretend he doesn’t quite exist by watching him from afar like one would an actor on the TV.

The Jean Kirschtein on the television screen looks lost. He looks like the blow of dad’s harsh words and mom’s confession have winded him, and he’s been left suspended in the shell-shock of it all, void of anything worth hanging on to, and not quite sure what to do with himself. He doesn’t know how to have a strong emotional reaction, because whatever strong emotions there were on his palette have been washed away down a drain.

He looks tired too. That’s one thing that connects us. One thing that reminds me that _I am him_.

He’s tired of being backed-up into corners. I’m tired of corners too. We’re both tired of not knowing what to do. Of running. There’s not even a finish line.

“Jean?”

The sound of my name dawdles tentatively from over my shoulder. I twist myself to look back, and mom is there, standing just a few feet away, a hand clutched to her chest as if she had extended it to touch me, but then decided against it. Vicente is gone – I hear him pull the cord on the lawn mower again, and its motor flares up like a growl. It’s loud; I flinch.

“Shall we … shall we head back?” she continues as I pull myself to my feet, dusting away imaginary dirt from my thighs.

I don’t want to head back. But I also don’t want to _not_ head back.

I don’t know _what_ I want.

(That’s probably a lie.)

I give her a shrug that’s not quite a nod and not quite a shake of my head, and I figure that I’m going to stumble either way.

And maybe it’s better to fall when walking, rather than running after things you can’t predict. I square my shoulders, and turn to face her directly. Her automatic reaction is to take half a step backwards – and I resent it for what it means has been ingrained within her – but I can’t let it trip me.

I did my duty. I put off the falling for as long as I could. Might as well see what the abyss beneath my feet has in store for me.

“I want to talk about it,” I say bluntly.

I’m tired. Too tired to care about what could go wrong anymore.

“About Marco,” I continue, “About _me_. We should … we should talk about it. Now.”  

Mom blinks in surprise, and an anoetic “ _oh_ ” slips from her lips without regard. She can’t help but cast a cursory glance back over her shoulder, at Vicente – at the _audience_ – even if he isn’t looking, and I’m not caring.

“We—” she says tentatively, and I wonder monetarily if _she’s_ the one about to retreat now, regretting ever saying anything. “Okay. We— _uhm_ — should walk and talk.”

I nod sternly, clenching my jaw. Mom flails flusteredly, but when she realises I’m all but sewn to the ground on which I stand until she makes a move, she quickly takes a step in front of me and leads the way. I follow in a jolt, my strides forced and immobile with legs too stiff and knees not bending as much as they should, and neither of us looks back over our shoulders.

The silence resumes very quickly – tense and reverberating with the hum of the lawnmower motor as it fades down the street – but it doesn’t permeate. It sits very embolically on the surface of everything that is about to change.

 We’re two blocks down the road when mom finally decides upon what she wants to say – or ask, as she must be brimming with questions as much as I am stewing in the twisted solace of weary surrender.

“Do you think you’re … _gay_?” she says, and she sounds strained – but I think it’s because she’s unused to the words she’s confessing. “Is that why you never liked Sasha in that way?”

“No,” I say firmly, staring at our feet until our paces match. We’re walking very fast, and I don’t like it, but the ember-burn in the backs of my calves is something tangible to cling onto before I float away again. “No. I’m not— I don’t _think_ I’m gay. I still like girls. And boys too. Just … not Sasha.”

“Oh,” she says slowly, “I see. And— and how long have you— _uhm_ — known that you like boys?”

I swallow thickly, and can’t quite stave off the nervous twitch of wanting to shove my hands deep into my pockets and hunch my shoulders defensively. I grit my teeth, twisting my mouth into an uncomfortable pucker.

“Not long,” I admit, “Two months, I guess.”

Mom nods reservedly, the tight clamp of her lips telling me she’s mulling over something steep. I try to slow our pace, stretching my strides out longer; she’s not paying attention, and allows herself to be dragged back into an amble. I find I can breathe easier, and I hope she can too.

“Are you— do you think you are—” she starts, before trailing off with a self-inflicted scowl of frustration at herself. I drag out the length of my strides even more. She continues in a very small voice. “Are you … _ashamed_ of bringing a boy home? Is that why you— you haven’t before? Because of— me?”  

I have to force us to stop, just so I can stare at her with my heart dredged up from my drowning chest and slapped precariously onto my sleeve.

 _Does she really_ —

Mom’s eyes are wide, and I’m worried she might cry. She’s never been good at holding back the floodgates, but I’ve never managed to grow used to it. The thought of moisture glistening in her eyes, clumping together her mascara and trickling along her waterline still terrifies me, in the same way every other child is scared shitless of seeing their parent cry. It breaks the façade of strength that you never quite realise you depend on for everything.

I feel like I’ve been shocked back into my body with a fierce bolt of lightning laid flat against my spine. No more hovering above my head – I’m staring at mom through my own eyes now, and she’s staring back at me with something akin to desperation making her worry her lower lip.

“Ashamed?” I repeat in a hush, and she nods. She’s so fragile. She shouldn’t be made to have these conversations. “I’m not— I’m not ashamed, I— like I said, I— it’s only been—”

_I’m not ashamed of telling you. I was scared – of course I was. I still am scared. But I’m not— not ashamed of you. How could I be?_

I steel my voice, hoping that it’ll lend us both an ounce of ferrous strength.

“Marco is the first,” I whisper croakily, “I didn’t know I was— I didn’t know I was _this way_ until him. I’m not— I’m not ashamed of telling you about us. I’m _scared_ , mom.”

There’s something about telling a truth both a long time concealed, and a long time coming, that’s liberating. I taste the autumn air for what it is, at last, in a diver’s gulp.

Mom looks sad.

God, she looks more than sad— she looks like she’s realising too many things at once not to be bowled over, and she’s hating herself for not understanding them sooner. I don’t want her to hate herself. I know how that whittles you away bit by bit. I could never want that.

She loses hold of a tear, and it makes a break from freedom down her cheek, cutting a sharp track through her foundation. She wipes it away with a flick of her hand and a loud sniff.

“Why are you scared?” she whispers.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being stripped, like paint, down to your bare bones. It’s a fresh sort of hurt – not dirty, not dishevelling – pure, in a way.

It hurts very simply. Very easily.

“Of you seeing me as a different person,” I choke. _No, Jean, you can’t cry too. Pull it together, God-dammit. Pull it together._ “Of— of it changing _even more_ stuff.”

She seems to splutter with the sound of a sob – horrid and wet – and is appalled by it, her hand flying to cover her mouth in an instant as she turns her head way. There are more tears rolling down her cheeks. It’s an ugly thing. I feel helpless.

“Mom—” I say. “Mom—” It’s the only thing that will leave my lips: imploring repetitions of her name. _Don’t cry because of me, mom._ “Mom, I—”

She silences me with a wave of her hand, shaking her head as she tries to smother her tears with rapid blinking and loud snivels. A small whimper betrays her. She shakes her head again, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Jean, baby, I—” She’s broken off by a sob that mutates into a damp hiccup. The sardonic part of myself hopes no-one is out on an afternoon stroll and sees this, and calls the police. Mom all too quickly dissolves into a mess. It can’t look very reassuring.

Mom cries as if she’s been told all her life to never be heard – and I suppose that’s true in some respect. She flaps her hands and shields her faces, and her sobs are so small, so tiny, so _regretful_ , and she tries to conceal it all behind a mask that is steadily disintegrating – and it weeps like a knife wound in my side to think that she’s been told she shouldn’t be so sentimental.

I know why she’s crying. I’m not blind. I’m not stupid. She’s not disgusted or appalled.

It doesn’t mean I can bear it.

“Mom, I’m in love with him,” I say, because it’s the only thing I _can_ say, without doubting myself or changing my mind five minutes’ down the line. It’s the only thing that I can depend on, and it’s the only way I can think of stopping her crying for what she and I did wrong. I want her to cry for what I’ve done _right_. “I’m in love with Marco.”

That’s the first time I’ve said that aloud.

It has the affect I hope for: mom hiccups loudly, and her eyes fly wide, her hand in front of her lips, shielding her contorted expression which falters for just a second.

“You only know a part of him, mom, but— but, God, I wish I could— I wish I could explain what it’s like. What he’s like when— when he’s around his sister, or when he was with his dad, or when— or when he’s just humming along to the radio when he’s cleaning the pool and he thinks I don’t notice, but I do, and it’s ridiculous the way I want to smile because it’s so cheesy, and— _God_.”

I run a hand through my hair desperately, eyes all over the place as I try to piece together words to match the speed of my pliant tongue. My heart hammers in my chest, threatening exertion and drowning me in adrenaline that makes my cheeks burn and head swim. Mom has stopped sniffling. She’s silent now.

“I’m … I’m serious about him, mom. I really am. He just— he just gets how I work. He knows what to say. What to do. And— and I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you, and that I tried to hide it, and— and I’m terrified _shitless_ of what it’s going to mean, and how it’s going to work out, and what’s going to happen when dad finds out, and— and thinking about it makes me want to never get out of bed ever again, but I— but he loves me, and it makes it okay. Because when I’m with him, I feel like— like _me_. A _good_ me. It makes it … _okay_.”

I exhale heavily, the breath shaking unequivocally as it leaves my lips. I glance down at mom. Her eyes are still dewy, but her expression has changed. I don’t know what it says.

“Are you—” I wheeze, unable to meet her eyes, “Are _you_ okay with that, mom?”

She takes a moment before she speaks – but I don’t think it’s to decide what she wants to say. The quiver in her lips envelops a weary, wobbly smile.

She sniffles.

“I’m okay if you’re okay, sweetheart.”

I mentally palm myself in the forehead, but all that I can produce is a weak scoff. I guess it’s something. It’s _something_. I can almost feel a derisive twitch in the corners of my mouth.

“That’s not an answer,” I gripe.

“It is an answer,” she insists, and her sodden smile grows a little broader and a little bolder. She wipes her fingers beneath her lower lashes, collecting smudges of mascara on her fingertips as happy creases begin to form at her apexes. “It’s a mom answer.”

I can’t help but shake my head in disbelief – and it feels quite unreal to be fighting back a smile of my own.

“That’s the biggest load of BS I ever heard,” I snort dryly. _You made this too easy as you always do. Haven’t you seen the movies? It’s not meant to be so … painless._ “You’re ridiculous.”

“And you’re _in love_ ,” she counters, and I splutter, choking on my own saliva ungallantly. It’s still a little delicate, but she giggles. _Giggles_.

“Sh-shut up,” I flush, “I retract all previous statements. I lied. Not in love. Don’t know w-what you’re talking about.”

Her smile becomes a grin, and my cheeks flare up hotter and more pervious, and I think I might have whiplash from how quickly she can pull things a part and stitch them back together at their most simple, and—

And I’m reminded of a conversation we had a week ago, which sounded much the same.

_“It doesn’t matter. I love you, baby. That’s the only thing that matters.”_

I guess it kinda _is_ a mom answer.

Mom sniffs heavily again, the sound snotty and nasally, but it’s happy crying. It’s happy. She wears a gushing smile, even if she worries her lower lip, and her eyes are still a little misty, and her crying has left a smear of black kohl down one cheek to the extent where she looks a little like a clown, and neither of us can be said to be standing steady— but standing we still are.

Maybe I’m a little surprised by that. I’ve been buffeted by the winds of people so much today that I was fearing all it might take was the smallest gust to knock me over at last.

Maybe I had already been knocked over – maybe _that’s_ the feeling of spiralling that had me spinning, and still will have me spinning yet. I hope the nausea will hit me later. It’s all I can ask for.

 “Mom, d’you have a tissue?” I laugh wearily, motioning at my own face to mimic the smear of makeup across hers. “You— you need to clean your face.”

She pats her dress down, and then looks at me with a pout of her lower lip.

“I didn’t bring one,” she confesses, “You’re going to have to be embarrassed of me all the way home.”

“—Like that’s anything new.”

I earn a hasty slap to the shoulder that is probably more than well-deserved, before mom sticks her nose in the air and continues to walk, playful haughtiness in the way she deliberately places one foot in front of the other. I snort, shake my head, and jog to catch up to her side.

 

* * *

 

We walk the rest of the way back to the house in silence – but it’s not permeated by feelings needed scratched off like ugly, scabbing scars. I figure mom is still too nervous to poise any questions she might have, thanks to that stupid fear she has of saying something _wrong_ – but I can cope with that. It’s not unbearable, and it saves me from spouting gushy crap about Marco that simmers too close to the surface for safe keeping. She’d probably just giggle at me some more.

I am grateful to be able to keep my dignity intact.

When the slate-grey roof of home comes into view, we follow the hedgerow around the back, neither of us overly eager to ring the front doorbell, considering neither of us remembered keys and dad’s car still hulks in the driveway.

My hand is on the latch of the back gate when mom says my name.

“Jean—”

I stop – my immediate reaction is to glance up at the house and check the windows for any spectators where there are still none – and I pull away from the picket gate, turning to face her expectantly. Her smeared makeup still looks ridiculous.

“Yeah?” I say, eyebrows raised at the sudden meekness in her demeanour. She scuffs the toe of her heel on the sidewalk in the same way that I would with my sneaker, and she stares at the floor. “What?”

“I—” She sheepishly tucks a strand of hair behind her ears that has fallen free. Her diffidence reminds me of a child again. “I didn’t get to tell you that— that I’m happy. For you, that is.”

“Well, you didn’t chew me out, so I figured you weren’t _totally_ distraught by the news,” I deadpan, without pausing for thought.

Mom scowls. I know what she means – that’s why I can laugh about it — but she explains herself anyway.

“No, I mean— I’m happy for you. I’m _proud_ of you— I’m proud that you managed to make yourself happy.”

 _After the year that you’ve come through_ , is how that sentence ends, but it doesn’t need to be verbalised for both of us to hear it. I get it. I understand. It’s true.

 “Don’t cry on me again,” I say, laughing awkwardly, but mom’s face becomes sentimental again. “Oh Christ, mom—”

She was never made for shouting matches, or for headstrong people, or for heart-to-hearts – or maybe she was made for those things all too well. Maybe she cries too easily, or maybe she cries just enough for the pair of us. Maybe she cries because she’s not apologetic about _feeling_. I would want to protect her either way.

I take a step towards her, and find myself opening my arms to her small frame. I’m not usually so forward, but it feels necessary – and maybe I need it just a little bit too. She sniffs a little, tries to pretend that she’s not growing misty-eyed again, but doesn’t shy away from burying herself into a hug. She can’t think I’m still five years old now, can she?

Mom wriggles in my arms and cranes her neck up, pulling my face down to press a kiss to my temple. She strokes the side of my head fondly.

“I’m sorry I didn’t notice sooner, baby,” she hushes, “I’m sorry you got scared of telling me. It’s not going to change anything, okay?”

“Yeah, I know,” I murmur, and even if I don’t sound resolute, I find myself believing it nonetheless. Yeah, I _do_ know. It’s the first time I’ve stood in the shadow of the big, white house and felt any semblance of _free_.

 _Do what you have to do_.

My heart clenches. I try not to think about what dad said. It should have nothing to do with this, but of course it does.  

“I’m going to try harder,” mom says softly, “I’m not going to let anything that I can stop ruin this for you.”

She reminds me that my freedom is only fleeting.

I guess I know that too.

It’s funny how she and dad can tell me the same thing in two so different ways.

I pull away from hugging her, and let her fuss motherly over smoothing-down wild cowlicks of hair that shoot from my head, untamed. I let her pet me without complaining, quietly following her eyes with my own, and finding that silent, homely feeling that swells within my chest now to be called trust, despite everything.

“I don’t want to tell dad,” I admit then. “I know I don’t have to tell him. But I think I still should.”

I think I need that closure.

Or maybe I need more of an excuse for justifying the attention he doesn’t want to give anymore.

Both could be true.

Mom paps my cheeks affectionately, but her eyebrows have pulled together into the prelude to a frown, and her expression has vitrified from the wobbly mess it was just moments ago, into something mineral.

“Not yet,” she says, “Not yet. Keep it quiet for a little while longer. We’ll figure out the right moment – if that’s still what you want to do. I’ll fight your corner with you, Jean.”

I’m not used to hearing her fighting spirit. It both invigorates and unnerves me.

It makes me think about the future again.

 

* * *

 

I tell my mom that I need some time alone for a while – and she gets that, with a sympathetic smile and a nod of her head once we’re back in the kitchen and pressed unwillingly back into the moulds that have been cast for us by the walls of home.

I tip-toe up the stairs, dodging the creaking floorboards, and whisper my way along the landing, taking care to muffle the sound of my bedroom door opening and closing, catching it before the latch hits the wood.

I doubt dad would want to talk to me again – I reckon we’ve both had our fill of each other to last us at least a week now, if not longer – but it doesn’t stop me from listening out with baited breaths for the sound of the study door being heaved open, for a few moments after falling onto my desk chair. It sags under my weight in the same moment as I deflate, squeaking in need of a good oil. Maybe I need a good oil too. My arms and legs feel heavy the moment I sit down.

The crest of the wave I was riding after my admittance to mom doesn’t last long. Her silly giggling and messy makeup are only sustenance for a little a while, and the promise of escaping home dies a quite death as the evening creeps in. Bad things beg at the back of my mind once more. I try to suffocate them.

I scroll mindlessly through Facebook for a while, scanning over Sasha’s statuses and Reiner’s post-season training photos that he’s just put up, and Ymir and Connie obnoxiously exchanging memes from the depths of the internet across my feed, and— and I want to focus on it. I really do. I don’t want to let myself sink and stew and tumble down the other side of the wave to be caught by the wash.

If mom calls me for dinner, I don’t hear it. She doesn’t come looking for me either, so maybe she’s lost track of time as much as me, deliberating somewhere downstairs over everything that was said and learned today. The sky grows dark – the sunset is not spectacular tonight, the sun extinguished in no flash of colour that has me dreaming of paints on a canvas.

By the time the streetlamps come on, I’m no longer looking at my laptop screen. I’m blind to the photos of my friends and the flashing advertisements and the videos that play automatically without me clicking on them. My hand moves on its own as I scroll on the mousepad.

I’m queasy again. And I’m cold, despite the mugginess that loiters in the air.

I shut the lid of my laptop with more force than necessary, and wheel myself over to my bed, flinging myself out of my chair and onto my mattress, springs digging into my stomach where I flop down face first into my pillows.

There’s only quiet. When I breathe out, the air all but whistles from being cooped up too long inside my throat. The house creaks and groans, water pipes singing in the walls where they shouldn’t, because they’re not that old. I imagine hearing the rush of water on the other side of the plasterboard, and my head feels very cottony then, as if it’s been wrapped and stuffed with cheap muslin and has begun to fray and come apart in threads.  

The shakes come after a few minutes. I was almost wondering what was taking them.

The day catches up with me as tremors that start in my legs, creeping up my calves to become spasms in my knees and the feeling of my pulse on the insides of my thighs. I roll over onto my side, folding my arms around myself and dragging my legs up into a foetal position, and pinch my skin to try and stop the shivering in my shoulders. It doesn’t work as well as I would like.

I know that I’ve been emotionally winded. I know that I didn’t wake up this morning expecting to have to talk to my dad. And I reckon I wouldn’t have told my mom so many hard truths if I hadn’t already been pushed onto a precipice by dad’s harsh admittance. I know that my nervousness over mom meeting Marco’s family can’t have helped anything, and I know that from the moment I rolled out of bed, I was far too highly strung to cope with any of this.

I would’ve liked more time to prepare. For all of it— so that it wouldn’t feel like being punched in the sternum. So that I wouldn’t have to find myself curled up on my bed, waiting for the ricochets of dull pain to finish rippling through my ribs. So that getting my head straightened out didn’t have to be something done like this.

_It’s okay, it’s okay. Everything is fine— well, it’s not fine, but it’s manageable. Everything is manageable._

_You moved forward. You … you confronted dad. You talked to mom. That’s a good thing._

Yeah, yeah. I get it. Doesn’t stop things from still being tinged with grey thoughts when I stray too long on them.

_How do you not become scared of things that haven’t happened yet? How do you get to the point where you can look forward without wanting to shield your eyes? How does putting fingers on a door handle and willing yourself to open it when you can hear voices on the other side not become a task that makes you freeze?_

_How do I figure out how to be confident in where I’m going? If that’s anywhere at all, I mean—_

My phone buzzes at that moment, vibrating on the hardwood of my bedside table where I left it this morning. I frown on impulse, and roll over to fetch it, struggling with clumsy fingers to grab it from my lying-down position. It’s a Facebook notification from Connie, but I notice I have an unread message from earlier in the day.

**From: Marco-Polo  
Ring me when you can?**

My thumb hits the green dial-back button without even thinking. (Not that the response would have been any different had I allowed myself time to think. I wonder if Marco has a sixth sense about these sorts of things.)

I trap my cell phone between my ear and the pillow and struggle to heave my duvet up my bed as I wait for him to answer. He picks up on the second ring, almost as if he were waiting by his phone for a call.

“Hey—”

“ _Jean_.” He sounds almost breathless. It catches me off-guard.

“Hi, uh— _hi_. I’m here,” I say, “Sorry, I only just checked my phone and saw your message.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Marco gushes, “I was just— just worried. How— are … are you okay?”

 _How did it go?_ he asks without saying.

It would be easier to tell him that I was chewed out for nothing in particular. It would be easier to tell him that my dad berated me for switching my majors, and scolded me for not being grateful, and threatened to disown me, and all the things that should be believable and _normal_.

But normal is apparently a very skewed line right now, and my normal was never my dad’s normal, as it turns out.

“I’m fine. It was— it was fine, I guess. He didn’t have much to say. Just … just wanted to ask about school and stuff.”

_He didn’t have anything to say about you. I’m still thankful for that._

There’s a moment of silence, and I don’t think Marco quite believes me.

“You sound quiet,” he remarks and then repeats, more tenderly, “Are _you_ okay?”

I can’t tell him that I don’t want my dad overhearing this conversation through the walls. I lie.

“’M fine,” I say, shrugging even though he can’t see that. “Just tired.”

It’s not completely a lie. I’m exhausted.

(It doesn’t stop it feeling _dirty_ to lie to him when all he wants to do is _care_.)

“Was he mad?” Marco asks quietly, and I think he sounds reluctant to be asking, as if he knows how unwilling I am to answer. But Marco knows when not to push things, so I guess it must matter to him.

I can’t help but sigh, and I hope Marco doesn’t think it’s directed at him.

It would be better if dad was mad. Because mad is a feeling – a _strong_ feeling.

He was just disappointed.

“A little,” I admit, tugging my duvet up over my shoulders. “It’s— it’s hard to—”

_It’s hard to explain. It’s even harder to acknowledge._

“It’s okay,” Marco says. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“We— we have other things to worry about now,” I croak, skirting the topic when he gives me the leeway. “ _Like_ school.”

It’s Marco’s turn to sigh down the line.

“Like school,” he affirms. Something in his tone makes me think he’s nervous, and I feel guilty for bringing it up. I burrow deeper beneath my duvet, drawing it up over my head and blocking out all light, save for the glow of the buttons on my cell phone.

“We’ll get to see everyone,” I say, if only to fill the quiet. “Only been a week, but I kinda miss them.”

“Yeah,” Marco agrees, “I’ve been speaking to Bert a bit, but— yeah. It’ll be nice.”

There’s more quiet. It’s not uncomfortable – because it’s Marco, I don’t think any sort of silence can be uncomfortable with him – but I reckon it’s unnecessary.

“Should we tell them?” I say boldly, even if my voice sounds smaller than ever within the cave created by my blankets. “About us?”

“Do you want to?” he asks, before adding, “I think Connie and Sasha might already know. _Definitely_ already know.”

I scoff dryly at that, and think I hear the breathy smile of him sheepish on the other end.

“They’re giant gossips,” I say, “If we’re lucky, they’ll do the job for us before we even go back.”

Marco chuckles, and it eases some of the tension that has my fingers tightly knotted in my sheet without my realising.

“All the more kisses in the parking lot for me,” he laughs airily, if a little shyly, but then becomes serious again before I have time to think about blushing. “I’ll do what you want to do, Jean. I don’t mind if we tell people. I don’t mind if we don’t. The fact that _I_ know is enough for me.”

“You’re a sap,” I inform him.

“You _make_ me sappy,” he retorts with a chuckle. What I wouldn’t give to be _smothered_ by that laugh. It would be a good way to go.

It would be nice if things could be so simple.

I suck in a breath and steady myself.

“Can I ask you a question?”

I can almost hear the confused quirk in Marco’s expression; I imagine the valley of a frown appeared between his eyebrows and the squaring of his jaw.

“Of course,” he says, “You don’t need to ask.”

“What happened when you came out to your family?”

He’s told me before that it took him a long time to come to terms with his sexuality, and a longer time after that to gather the courage to tell his family. He’s told me that his parents didn’t gel with the idea immediately – and it always seems so odd, given what I know about Anita now – but that Mina didn’t even bat an eyelid.

He’s never been specific with the details. I suppose I’ve just never asked.

“U-uhm— well,” he hesitates, clearly caught off-guard by the bluntness of my question. “I— I told them in March. It was a couple of days after we got— we got dad’s third all-clear.” I hear him gulp on the other end of the line, and he pauses for a moment. “I wanted them to know whilst— before we— in case dad went back into remission and didn’t make it a fourth time. I wanted to tell him, just in case.”

He stops again, and maybe he’s waiting for me to say something, but my throat is dry. I have nothing to interrupt him with.

“I wanted him to know who I was. I wanted them both to know. And it was— it was pretty awkward. I don’t think I slept the entire night before, because I wanted to plan out exactly what I wanted to say, but it didn’t really help—

I sat them both down in the living room, and told them I had something important to say. Mom got really worried, and she thought it was something awful. In the end, I just blurted it out, and all she said was _oh_. And that was it, I guess. For almost three days, she didn’t say a word to me. I was terrified.”

“Was she angry?” I find myself asking. “Was she sad?”

“I’m not sure,” Marco replies, “Eventually she just told me that she was shocked. She had a Catholic upbringing, so— so it wasn’t something she was prepared for. I think she had been dreaming of daughters-in-law, and white weddings, and grandchildren, and then I— well, I informed her pretty bluntly that wasn’t a plan, per say.”

“And your dad?”

I hear something change in Marco’s tone. It seems wistful.

“It was about a week later. I was in the kitchen doing the dishes whilst mom was taking Mina to school, and he walked up behind me and slapped me on the back. Told me he was proud of me, whoever I decided I was. And then he sat down at the table and pulled out the paper, and that was that.”

I can hear his smile. It causes something inside me to twist and crumple.

“Mom warmed up to it after a while,” he continues. “Most of the time she would just avoid the topic, but sometimes she would point out girls on the street and ask me if I thought they were pretty. It was tough, but I knew that it wasn’t because she hated me, so it was— it was fine, I suppose. She changed her tune not long after I met you, actually.  Why— why do you ask?”

I grit my teeth and clench my jaw and close my eyes despite it already being dark beneath the duvet. I want it to be darker.

“I told my mom about us.” It comes out almost too quickly to comprehend, and I wonder if my words sound like actual words, and not just a string of garbled noises. My heart tries to scamper, but I rein it in. I try again. “J-just after you left. I told her. Or, uh— technically _she_ told _me_ , but—”

“What did she say?”

His severity chills me, but it’s understandable. How he can speak without stumbling is less understandable, especially when I feel shivers tickling my shoulders again.

“She was fine,” I say, and I hear Marco let out a breath. “Uhm— she cried a lot. In a good way though.” And then, in the thinnest voice, I add, “She said she was … happy. For me. For us.”

“Oh. _Oh_. I’m— I’m glad,” Marco breathes heavily, and then he grumbles. “Geez, Jean, you almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” I apologise weakly, folding my legs closer into my body. “Pre-warning next time. Gotc’ha.”

Marco laughs nervously, and I wish I could see his face. Hell, I wish I was pressed up so close against him that I could feel the minute movements of his muscles as his composure changes. It’s too hard to make assumptions of how he might be looking when he’s not here, or I’m not there.

“It’s alright, Jean,” he says lightly, “Wow, I— _wow_. I’m glad. I’m really glad. Hah.”

“Yeah, well,” I lament, “You weren’t the one who had to deal with mom confessing to you in the middle of a public street that she’d seen us playing footsie at the dinner table, and then start crying her eyes out in front of a stranger’s house when I told her that I lo— well. Y’know. It was _embarrassing_ , okay.”

He sniggers unapologetically, and I bark out a disgruntled, “Oi!”, which only tickles him more.

“Well, I suppose that means your mom won’t be flirting with me anymore,” he chuckles.

“She hasn’t flirted with you in months,” I gripe, “You were just too dense to notice.”

“Because I was too busy wanting _you_ to flirt with me, obviously.”

“These cheesy lines are doing you zero favours,” I deadpan. “I hope you know that.”

“Oh, I know,” he muses playfully, “Good thing you’ve already fallen for me, huh?”

“You’re _incorrigible_.”

Marco’s laugh is bright and effortless in that moment, unburdened by whatever it is that is grey about me. I still feel like I could be made of slate, even if that shell of concrete around me feels like it could crumble if he continues to laugh like that. I feel like pushing it – maybe it _will_ break.  

I don’t want to still feel sad. I want to enjoy the way he chuckles with a spotlight, and not just a candle.

He stops laughing when he hears nothing from me, and it dies on his lips like a candle too, snuffed out in a wisp of smoke that drifts away into the air. He knows I’m not quite with him.

“Jean?”

“Yeah,” I say, answering the unasked question. “Yeah. It’s been— tough. A tough day. I know.”

“But you did good,” he says— he insists. I mumble in response. He continues, in deterred. “Some days are bad. I can attest to that— your mom could attest to that, anyone can attest to that. Some days are bad. I suppose something wants us to work for— for our happiness. A little cruel, I guess. But it makes you stronger.”

“Sometimes it feels like too much at once,” I confess sheepishly, my timbre in my voice threatening to break beneath the weight on my shoulders. “I’m only just— I’m only just getting used to this. Getting better. I just wanted to … I dunno. Deal with everything in pieces. Bit by bit.”

I swallow thickly before continuing, “I woke up this morning just trying to get through my mom meeting your mom, and that going well. That was enough. And then dad happened. And mom. And— and a whole bunch of other shit that I was trying to ignore.”

_Like feeling like a tin soldier with a key in his back which has been wound and wound and wound, and then been let loose in the direction of a drop he can’t turn away from. Heck, maybe I’ve already reached that drop. Maybe this is falling._

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Marco says softly – and for a moment, I wonder if he can read my thoughts and means falling too. Maybe he likes the weightlessness. Maybe he likes the rush of air that stings his cheeks and reminds him what it’s like to hurt on the outside and not just on the in. Maybe he would just like to fall with me. I wouldn’t put it past him.

“You sound pretty sure,” I tease gently.

“I am sure.”

He says it with as much conviction that anyone would be fool not to believe him. It’s difficult to know what that says about me.

“I wish you were here,” Marco says, his voice an intimate whisper now. It curls in the dark around my throat, coaxing the underside of my jaw. It makes me grit my teeth.

“Me too,” I manage.

“I want to kiss you,” he says, imperviously. “Probably a lot. All over, ideally.” He knows I blush.

“You sound like a straight dude trying to text a girl.” He ignores me.

“I don’t like the empty bed,” he says, “I think I got complacent when you were here last week.”

“I bet my bed is emptier,” I say. It’s not a competition, but I guess I make it one. In the dark, I let one hand wriggle free of my duvet, feeling the empty space on the mattress between me and the wall. The night air is tinged with autumn chill.

“Pretend I’m there,” he says.

“Already do,” I murmur.

He asks to stay on the line after that, but tells me that we don’t have to talk – and I’m glad of it, because I’ve _talked_ a lot today and maybe I’ve run my quota of words into the ground. He tells me he’s happy to listen to me fall asleep and count my breaths as I do, but I don’t have it in me to tell him that I know he’ll drift off before I do. My eyes are heavy and my soul is heavy, but I feel insomnia running its fingernails across my skin.

I turn my phone on speaker and rest it on the pillow beside me; it doesn’t take long before Marco’s breathing slows and becomes gentle snores. I guess it’s kinda cute.

I think about resting a palm flat on his chest, feeling the vibrations that tickle in his chest simmer through my fingers. I imagine the rise and fall of his sternum beneath my palm. It’s warm— _it would be warm_.

I squirm my way out of the duvet cave and sit up. My room is drenched in shades of grey – thick and powdery and fuzzy. The glow of the streetlights through my blinds isn’t even orange tonight, but it catches the edges of my furniture enough to chalk the outlines of a ghost-like afterimage of a silent movie.

I see the stack of Chemistry textbooks sitting at the foot of my desk. I never threw them out over the summer. Thinking about school makes me queasy; thinking about how dad would watch me in reproachful silence as I dragged those textbooks to the kerb makes me feel sick to my stomach; thinking about walking into that classroom on Thursday morning only to be met with a dozen stares, asking the same question I ask myself as to why I’m there, squeezes the nausea into my bones.

I try to make it better by thinking about Marco – Marco in the passenger seat of my car when I undoubtedly offer to give him a lift into campus, Marco sat next to me at lunch as he shares his probably-homemade lunch with me; Marco offering a swift and chaste kiss before we go to class—

And then I think about all the stares, again, and— and I don’t want Thursday to come. Hell, I don’t want _tomorrow_ to come.

I think about ledges and falling and one step more in the dark. _Petrifying nothing_.

I don’t sleep well that night. I can hear dad’s _ugly_ snores reverberating through the walls from the spare room.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey hey! Wow, it's been six months! My bad, my bad. I didn't mean to disappear for so long, but I got real busy. Because I got good grades last year, I'm going to move to Barcelona in April to work for three months! I'm excited - also terrified shitless - but there has been so much to do, and I've been up to my eyeballs in applications. On top of that, uni started up again, and third year is hella busy and hella jam-packed with new material, and one of my modules had all its deadlines this term, so ... yep. Droplets had to wait for a bit. (But I hope ya'll enjoyed the other fics I published in the meantime!)
> 
> ANYWAY. Droplets. Thank you to everyone who's stuck with me over the break, and chatted to me, and sent me mail, and drawn me fanart, and been patient waiting for the update. Most of you were wonderful. 
> 
> As for the next chapter ... it's hard for me to put a date on it. Christmas is busy for me, and I have to start studying for my exams in March very soon. But, I've already started writing CH25, so maybe it'll happen in less than six months lmao. The next chapter will kinda start the last mini-arc of the story ... and it's definitely a lot happier, and probably a lot hotter, if ya feel me. (But oh my God, please stop asking me about smut on Tumblr. one ask is fine, but dozens is not! I will not answer you!) (Sorry.) Also, Connie, Sasha, Eren, and the rest will be all over the next chapter. They make everything better.
> 
> In terms of this chapter ... I am really sorry that it was mainly angst? Totally not planned. there was meant to be a bunch of fluff tagged on the end, but it didn't feel right, so I moved it to the next chapter. However, it's worth noting that whilst Jean is sad, it's the sort of pain that's going to be useful for him later. He is moving forward, as he said, which is important. And it's absolutely crucial that he's finally made the distinction between his dad, and who he thinks his dad is. Because Robert Kirschtein is not a villain. Jean just wishes that he was.
> 
> Also, I hope that the coming-out scene was okay? I dunno, man. There are parts of this chapter I'm super happy with, and parts that I'm not sure about ... but I feel it's okay enough to publish. 
> 
> Title song is "Storm" by Lifehouse. 
> 
> As always, please drop me a comment with your thoughts on the update! Hit me up on Tumblr any time, and drop stuff in the "fic: droplets" tag for me to see. Until next time!


	25. Brave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're scared 'cause I am too /  
> This feeling in my head, is being there for too long /  
> We sleep now with the light on /  
> But shadows make shapes in the light /  
> And I don't know what they might be
> 
>  _Brave_ , Riley Pearce (2016)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cue Gandalf gif* I have no memory of this place …
> 
> Uh, surprise? Or not surprise, if you’ve been following me on Twitter this week, where in a sudden burst of madness, I slammed out a 20k Droplets chapter in five days, despite having been missing for a whopping 21 months. I know, I’m sorry. Here are my list of excuses: I moved to Barcelona for 4 months and left my Droplets notes in England, I went into my Master's degree and had my research lab and thesis to deal with (but I graduated and I got a first!), I started watching Shadowhunters and fell hard and fucking fast for Malec and now I write fic for them, and I was job hunting, which has recently involved me moving to Cambridge and getting hired as a publishing editor! Look at me, a real adult now!
> 
> I also had a lot of motivation issues to deal with, which were made worse by some testy anons and the fact that I suddenly hit a brick wall with how to write first person. But you will be glad to know that a) I’m back writing this fic ~for me~ and because I’m passionate about finishing the story again and not feeling Exhausted 24/7, and b) because I watched this film, Edge of Seventeen, the other night, and it just steamrolled me with the Drops feels. Damn.
> 
> In case you’ve forgotten, previously on Droplets: Robert interrupted Jean and Celine’s lunch with the Bodts, Robert and Jean had a scathing talk about who the real villain is in this story, Céline told Jean that she knows about him and Marco and Jean had a lil bit of a panic but it turned out pretty okay, aaaaand now the start of the new school year is looming, leaving Jean pretty overwhelmed by everything that has suddenly happened. I hope it’s not too difficult to get stuck back in.
> 
> I also like to call this chapter: Lucy discovers Richard Siken and her entire writing style changes over the course of a day. It's kinda funny if you compare this chapter to the last chapter.

Stepping out on your own is a terrifying thing. It goes without saying.

 

It takes more than a few choice words and some friendly faces to shake that fear so deeply rooted in your bones: that fear of striking out. That fear of doing something you’ve never done before. That fear of the future ahead of you. That fear of _fucking up_.

 

And yeah - maybe the finish line for the race you’ve been wanting to race your whole life is in sight. Maybe there’s balloons and streamers and your mom waving behind the line and encouraging you to keep on running, and maybe your friends are there too, screaming and hollering your name -

 

And it’s still that very first step that you’re afraid is gonna trip you up. You’re still petrified that you’re going to lean out of the starting blocks and fall flat on your face, so you don’t even try to start the race. You’re scared of cuts on your nose and bruises on your jaw and gravel dug deep into the palms of your hands as you struggle to push yourself up again.

 

If you even _want_ to. Lying face down in the dirt requires no effort.

 

It’s a feeling I know all too well.

 

* * *

 

 

When I wake up, dad’s car is already gone from the driveway. There’s a baited breath slept-upon that seeps out of my lips like a hiss; him being gone, it should feel like relief, but it doesn’t. I feel tired, bone-tired, like I’ve been running and running and running in my sleep and now all my muscles are fucking screaming for it.

 

There’s stiffness in my neck and shoulders and a burning ache shooting up the back of my calves, and I was never made for these sort of long distance races, especially when that God-damn finish line is nowhere in sight. Give me short bursts, quick sprints - I can deal with that. I can be reckless, stupid even. Things that flare hot and fast are my forte.

 

My feet are lead-heavy as I traipse around my room, and it takes effort to even draw the curtains. The lethargy is familiar, a haze of very dark grey, dull and lifeless, that slows me down until I’m sluggish. Pulling on clothes is a chore. I shiver when I turn the tap on the brush my teeth for the first time in a very long time. I hate myself for it.

 

Mom tells me over breakfast that dad’s gone away for the week, and still everything aches. And it’s hard to tell if mom’s thankful for it - for dad being gone - or if she’s ashamed by it. We both know where he’s gone and why he’s gone.

 

Mom treads around me lightly – she talks about the weather, complaining about how she’s sure the temperature is going to drop any day now, and then about how she thinks she needs to take her car to the mechanic for a hum she keeps hearing – but she means nothing by it.

 

She doesn’t mention Marco and the secrets unspooled yesterday afternoon on the roadside. She doesn’t know how to mention it; I think part of her is scared of saying the wrong thing, of breaking this newly-reformed trust we have between us. Perhaps she still feels like it’s delicate. The fact that we made it through yesterday, me telling her these things about myself, tells me that it’s not, not really. But we are both here in the deep end, her thrown into it, whereas me, I’ve just been trying my best to tread water for a while now. She needs some time to figure out how this is going to be.

 

I don’t really mind. Her face is bare of makeup and she’s thrown on yoga pants and a cardigan and there’s a gentle wave in her hair that hasn’t been straightened out. She doesn’t mention Marco as we drink our coffee in the companionable croon of the morning radio. She doesn’t mention Marco when my phone beeps on the counter top and I can’t move quick enough to check it. She doesn’t mention Marco when she knows that I’m looking at her and remembering the tears she shed for me, and she’s looking at me and trying desperately to figure out how to live up to the promise of _nothing’s gonna change_. It’s a far cry from yesterday. It’s probably intentional.

  
She wants things to go on.  


Another step forward.

 

And ... that’s exactly what terrifies me. Has _always_ terrified me, you know?

 

Every bone in my body feels like it could be jelly. When I take my empty mug to the sink, I half wonder if my knees are going to buckle.

 

And even if they did -

 

It’s worth saying that things will go on, whether or not mom or I will them, anyway. Whether I do sink to the floor and find I can’t get back up again. World spins on, sun continues to rise, people get older, uglier, more—

 

More— I don’t know. More used to the way things work. Supposedly. (It’s yet to happen for me.)

 

But hell, it doesn’t mean that I can shake the fear in the hollows of my bones: how people ever get used to making headway, I will never know. How people muster up the courage to put one foot in front of the other, over and over again, and go forwards, it’s a wishing-well wish. Never gonna happen.

 

I’ve been pushed out of the starting block too quick, and collided head on with the first hurdle: _dad_ , and then just barely cleared the second: _telling mom about Marco_ , and now there’s so many more looming ahead and I’m still bearing the scrapes and bruises from those I’m tripped over.

 

It doesn’t matter that mom won’t talk to me about Marco. Everything else … it’s happened all too quick, and I wheeze with the head rush that threatens my balance. And I hate it - _the regression_. I hate how it took one bad conversation with my dad, and one good one with mom, to turn me back to … this.

 

Mom sees the bags beneath my eyes. Maybe some days, she ignores them, or has grown so used to them that she doesn’t see how the purple-grey stands out like stark bruises against my pale face – but today she sees, and she sees the slump in my shoulders, and my hanged man’s back when I return to the table and I poke and prod at the eggs she’s made for me without bringing a mouthful to my lips.

 

When we’re done, too fast, too much a blur, she cups my ear and pulls my head towards her as she passes on her way out the door to her morning yoga class, pressing a quick kiss to my unbrushed hair.

 

“Have a good day, sweetheart,” she says. My smile is unconvincing. There’s a text unanswered on my phone from Marco, and it says: _how’s your mom this morning?_ I’m probably going to answer with: _trying_. Would that be a lie?

 

I hope one day this swirling feeling that ties me up in knots will become useful to me. 

 

* * *

 

 

From the front window, I watch her pull out of the drive and whizz off down the road in her coupe. Five, ten seconds pass, maybe more, and I sway on my feet.

 

It feels like I’m on the precipice of a new start - and God, it’s so tentative. It’s the most fragile sort of balance - or Hell, maybe it’s past that now, and this feeling is because I’ve been hanging on a branch over a fast-churning river for such a long fucking time, and now at last I’ve been shaken off and fallen into the water and must adapt to the current or drown -

 

Or maybe the branch has just fucking snapped under the weight of it all.

 

Fuck.

 

I take a deep, shuddering breath, palming my hands through my bed-hair. Another breath. More hands threaded through my hair.

 

I find myself slumping down on a stool at the breakfast bar, unable to make it up the stairs. I bury my head in my hands and scrunch up my eyes and wish for the rest of the world to be the one drowning at the bottom of a swimming pool this time.

 

No such luck.

 

I feel more alone than I have done in a long time. And the worst part: it’s not the sort of alone that I know. It’s not the self-suffering, wretched, messy sort of alone that comes with stupid miscommunications and ugly fights with friends and parents dying.

 

Oh no. This is a special brand of alone, and it leaves me a jittery God-damn mess. This is having no clue about what’s coming next. This is the future opening up before me like a great, gaping chasm, or a gasping black hole, and the pull of inexorable gravity means I have no choice but to fall in. It’s the inevitable end of the road for whatever I decide to do, or don’t decide to do; that’s the best part. My stomach is already falling to the floor with the drop over the edge that can’t be avoided. Anxiety scampers up and down my arms. I want to scratch myself raw.

 

I told dad what I thought about his plans for me. I told mom about the boy I love. I’m starting new classes in a subject that I love in two days - two _fucking_ days. I made that first step in the race to change things. I did that. _I did that._

I just want to know for sure that it was the right choice. That all those things ... were the right choices. I think that’s fair. Anyone would want to know that.

 

The house is silent around me. Even within the hollow white walls, the noiselessness has no edges to be found; but my _aloneness_ , that is tangible.

 

I don’t want to prove dad right.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s hard to know how to fix yourself from something you’ve never felt before. How can you know how to sew up a wound when you have had no training … what if you forget to sterilise your needle, what if your stitches get all messy and can’t keep all the blood inside your weeping body, what if the cut becomes infected and then it’s a deathbed scene you’re playing out, all because you didn’t know what you were doing, and it’s all your fault.

 

I think all my coping strategies - which were never particularly healthy to begin with, let’s not fool ourselves - and all my poorly-guised methods of self-help … they’re not going to work this time. Lying around on my bed in the grey haze of depression, chain-smoking my way through a pack of cigarettes, hating and hating and hating myself until I rub myself raw and incapable of feeling anything else? They’re bandages that aren’t going to fit; plasters not big enough for the weird places I feel like I’ve been cut.

 

How do you make fear about the future go away? How do you go about stitching that back up? Needles and thread work on skin and cloth, but they don’t work on _time_.

 

I send that text I was dithering on, to Marco. He shoots one back almost instantly.

 

**From: Marco-Polo**

**Has she said anything more yet?**

 

**To: Marco-Polo**

**no**

**To: Marco-Polo  
i dont know if i want her to**

**To: Marco-Polo**

**i hate her not saying anything and i hate the thought of her saying something**

**To: Marco-Polo**

**how fucking stupid is that**

**From: Marco-Polo**

**It’s not stupid.**

 

I wonder if every kid on the threshold of growing up goes through this. Not just kids dealing with coming out to their parents, and reintroducing their moms to the people they love, and fretting over whether they’ll be looked at different from now on and how everything might change.

 

I mean, _all_ kids. Kids scared of leaving the house because of the colour of their skin or the language they speak when they’re on the train, wondering if today will be the day someone kicks them from the place they call home. Kids scared about exams and grades and God-damn _spelling tests_ when they’re eight years old that will determine every job they’ll ever be able to get, every horrible boss they’ll ever suffer under, every shitty house they’ll be forced to live in. Kids scared of saying the wrong thing to a volatile parent, and having to wear the bruises from that for the rest of their adult life.

 

Kids scared of falling in love, of touching and of intimacy, of moving too fast and pushing their _someone else_ away too soon, of saying _I’m in love with you too_ , because they’ve seen where love has gotten the people around them, and it’s not always been pleasant or pretty.

 

You’d hope by nineteen, I’d have a handle on all of this. That I’d suddenly have an epiphany moment on how to behave like an adult. You’d be wrong.

 

**To: Marco-Polo**

**u busy today?**

**From: Marco-Polo**

**Taking Mina shopping for school supplies. And she definitely doesn’t want to be here. It took us three hours to buy her a new pencil case.**

**From: Marco-Polo**

**If you mention fourth grade to her right now, I think she might rip your head off.**

 

Marco’s sister isn’t even ten yet, and she’s scared too. I think that’s the worst part, the truly unforgivable part. When you’re ten, you’re not meant to be terrified of getting older, doing things you’ve never done before, meeting people you’ve never met before. You’re meant to be getting filthy in the woods playing hide and seek, or going on adventures on your bike, or getting lost fighting aliens in video games with your friends. You’re meant to be excited. You’re meant to be a child.

 

Crippling anxiety is not meant to be your best friend.

 

Is it just one giant secret that nobody ever talks about? That you’re meant to suffer through in silence, because that’s the toll to pay for getting older? An: _if I had to suffer, you have to suffer too_ mentality?

 

I can’t believe I’m the only one who feels this way. And I’m not. I know I’m not. It just feels like I am, and that’s tough to ignore.

 

* * *

 

 

Wednesday – the last true day of my summer – is the last time Marco comes around to clean the pool. I text him the night before that he doesn’t need to bother, but he says it’s for old times’ sake and replies with a winking emoji that somehow feels a little hollow. But I’m not one to complain about his company.

 

I wake up after my alarm feeling strange. It’s hard to explain – and it’s not like I haven’t spent the last _forever_ feeling out-of-sorts – but it feels like a foreign body camping out within my chest, making the way I move feel off-kilter and unbalanced and not normal. And Mom still hasn’t _said_ anything.

 

I mean - she’s said lots of things, but that’s just it: it’s all _things_. Things that do nothing to tether me to the ground, things that do nothing to shove me forwards, things, things, _things_ ...

 

We exist in each other’s space and I can practically hear her swallowing back words every time she tries to gather something to say. There’s nothing malicious in it; there’s just awkwardness.

 

I want her to broach the topic again, but all she says is: _what do you want for dinner Jean? Are you ready for school, Jean? Do we need to give Marco a bonus for his last shift?_

She says that on her way out the door on Wednesday morning. She’s been out the door a lot in the last few days, and I don’t really blame her. The fresh air must be good for clearing heads; the yoga teacher down the street must be a welcome distraction.

 

I try to make Marco _my_ distraction, sat slumped on the deck chair on the patio, watching the back gate with eagle eyes, nursing a can of Coke in one hand.

 

I don’t think it works so well.

 

It’s hard to think of it all as an ending – not when everything else is suddenly sprinting away from the start line at my feet and leaving me in the dirt and the dust – but it’s weird to think that this, that _today_ , will be the last time it’s like this between Marco and I. Last time trying not to lean too far towards the water with a pool net. Last time trying to grab handfuls of leaves that wash up as slop on the pool steps. Last time unapologetically gawking over the way his polo shirt rides up above the waistband of his shorts to reveal a strip of freckled skin, because he’s grown an inch or two without me realising and the shirt is too small for his frame.

 

Letting go makes me feel sick, and not letting go makes me feel sick – because I hear dad echo inside my head with a booming voice, scolding me about the future.

 

And there’s another thing.  This - the end of this story that started out at the beginning of the summer with an unassuming handshake … it means Marco and I— we’re—

 

We’re definitely different now. We’re starting out on something new. And that’s a good thing, but it’s also—

 

It’s like trying to chase the tail of a kite cut free of its string. It dangles between my fingers, almost teasingly, and I don’t know what I’m meant to leave behind and what I’m meant to race after.

 

It’s just another thing that’s terrifying. Another thing moving in a direction that I don’t have a map for.

 

I love him. I want to be with him. I want to figure out how to let go and kiss him when it doesn’t matter and tell everyone about us like it’s casual conversation and ask him on a proper date without screwing up my words and—

 

And other things. When they happen. I want to make him feel good. I want to make him feel loved, because he is, even if I haven’t said it in so many words yet.

 

And all it becomes just another check on my mental list of: _things to learn and things to cope with_. It’s getting longer by the day.

 

Marco walks through the gate at one minute passed midday with a weary smile on his face. He wasn’t even meant to work today, but he asked Levi to trade shifts with him for some dumb, sentimental reason that I will begrudgingly admit to sharing.

 

It’s not an exaggeration to say the sight of him quells the something ragged in my chest. For a moment, the universe seems to shrink down around us, and there’s just me staring at him across the lawn, just the two of us in our own little pocket of time. The world feels infinitesimally small, made cosy and compact by the same thing that happens every time I see him after going a while without: _oh, there you are. Nothing else matters. I love you._

It lasts only momentarily.

 

Marco looks tired and he struggles to juggle all of his cleaning gear in his arms, clumsier than his usual composed self. There are dark circles beneath his eyes and a tightness to his smile that won’t easily be tuned out. I wonder if feelings and thoughts and bone-aching tiredness are shared across strings of fate that tie two people together.

 

I pull myself to my feet like I’m ninety and not nineteen, joints creaking and muscles straining and I wonder if my own burden is as obvious upon my face and beneath my own eyes -

 

And isn’t that a fucking selfish thought. Thinking that this weight on my chest - however much I resent it - is worse than all that Marco’s been through -

 

No.

 

No. Stop.

 

You’re not selfish for suffering.

 

 _Don’t devalue your own pain. It still matters._ Marco said that to me once. Hell, I _knew_ that once. Talk about going backwards.

 

( _It’s not backwards if you realise your mistake and correct it_ , a small part of me says. That part of me sounds a little like he’s shouting from the bottom of a chasm, his voice a tiny echo.)

 

“Hey,” I say then, and my voice now is rough and gravelly. I close the space that waits between us, across the lawn, and I know my steps are a touch too quick and desperate.

 

Colour seems to seep into Marco’s eyes then, warmth and honey-light and the skin at the corners of his eyes creases up. Something fond and indescribable is there, and maybe I’m shy about pressing up for a greeting kiss, but the warmth of his lips on mine is a promise first and foremost.

 

“Hi,” he says, soft and tender, pulling back but not leaving much space between us. His breath is still warm on my face; we find each other’s gazes and hold fast. _One heart, two heads._ I read in his eyes that he’s barely slept in days, that he’s stressed by school and home and family, that he’s been worrying too much for my sake _again_ -

 

_Oh no, it’s got its hooks in you too?_

 

I reach out and squeeze his arm. His taut smile softens for me.

 

The promise found in kissing him is this: everything might suck, and taking a step out of my house might terrify me shitless, but none of it matters when I still have to be there for him. I’ll run a fucking marathon for him, if he needs it. And that’s something that won’t ever change. Something that won’t ever _end_.

 

* * *

 

 

The sun is warm and balmy, but it’s cold in the shadows in that paradox of autumn that always has you confused how to dress. The grass between my toes is damp and I regret leaving the house barefoot as Marco and I pad around the pool, working in a companionable silence.

 

It’s hard to know if we should talk. Some part of me wants to suggest music - maybe he can play some of that pop punk he likes so much, the My Chemical Romance that fuelled the earlier parts of our eventful summer, and it would take us back to those times in an instant - but the other part of me, made bold and brave and foolish and _new_ , says we don’t need to go back to who we were then.

 

The people we are now have hurt and scarred and learned and coped, and those are the people who decide what must happen next.

 

Those are the people who are trying their damnedest to figure out this thing called adulthood.

 

“Marco,” I say then, and Marco looks up in an instant, across the pool, the pool net in his hands stilling. It looks like he’s been far away for a while, some other time, some other place, some other worry, and I watch as reality trickles back into his expression through the cracks in the facade of _being alright_. He smiles weakly. It’s funny how the intensity in his eyes can still make words stick in my throat and my stomach flip over itself; I give myself a moment or two to recompose.

 

“Jean?”

 

Swallowing thickly, I set my own pool net down on the grass and nod over my shoulder at the patio.

 

“Do you wanna … take a break for a bit?”

 

He looks at me like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve - which is certainly a familiar look - but he nods, and follows me ‘round the pool edge to the deck chairs.

 

I offer him the rest of my Coke without saying anything, but he shakes his head, still looking at me confused. Gently, I take him by the shoulders and manoeuvre him down into the waiting chair, pressing into his clavicle with the heels of my palms until he’s sat and gazing up at me.

 

God, he looks so _tired_. It’s a tragedy that won’t stop delivering its act three.

 

“Jean, what -” he starts, but doesn’t finish. I set myself down on his lap - with an unceremonious _humph_ \- and immediately his hands find my ribs as if drawn by magnets, his clever fingers hot against the ferrous knots I have tied myself up in. Maybe he’ll tug and I’ll unravel. Seems likely.

 

Maybe I can get in there first.

 

I take his face in my hands, palms cupping his jaw, and guide his lips to mine, clumsy and inelegant. I kiss him hard on the corner of his mouth and feel teeth against my upper lip, but it’s good, it’s _grounding_. 

 

He murmurs something - half surprise, half a garbled ruin of my name perhaps - but then he kisses back with enthusiasm, correcting the placement of my mouth on his. His lips are soft and warm and _home_ , and maybe I forget myself to the bite of his jaw where he shaved carelessly this morning, or to the way his fingers curl a little too tight in the shorn hair of my undercut when his hands slide upwards, or in the way his breath is clammy when he’s reluctant to pull back for air. He doesn’t pull back far, knocking his forehead against mine, brow to brow.

 

And so we breathe. In and out, together. Everything about him relaxes; his lips, parted pliant around a lingering kiss; the tension in his shoulders, melting away when I run my hands slowly and carefully across the breadth of them, before returning to stroke at his neck; the look in his eyes that was so focused and far away, returning to the present, to the _now_ that we shape with both our pairs of hands.

 

I bump my nose against his and his makes a huffing noise, eyes fluttering closed for a moment. I steal my chance to talk.

 

“Are you okay?” I ask, quietly, my voice barely audible. Marco’s hands are still holding my face, but he lets his palms slide down my throat and rest at the base of my neck. He rubs his thumbs in tiny circles into my skin and doesn’t open his eyes.

 

Everything he feels, I feel too. Maybe it passes between us, where our foreheads are still pressed together in prayer. Maybe I’m projecting all that tosses and turns within me, onto him. Maybe I’m not even asking for myself, because I know _my_ answer all too well.

 

“Marco?”

 

His lips twist uncomfortably; he’s reluctant to tell me his weakness. I lean in and steal a peck of a kiss again, which he tries hard not to chase.

 

“Marco.”

 

“I haven’t been sleeping well the last few days,” he says on the cusp of a breath. He doesn’t look me in the eyes, still focused on my mouth, an anchor. “Not since we were ‘round here at the weekend.”

 

“You wanna talk about it?”

 

That makes him look at me, squinting one eye and scrunching up his nose.

 

“Who are you and what did you do to Jean?” he teases. I roll my eyes and shove him gently; his hands slide down to my ribs again, and I rock back with him, his back hitting the wicker of the deck chair.

 

“Hey,” I protest, “I’m just _trying_. Forgive me for caring about your well-being, Freckles.”

 

He pushes up for another quick kiss, and I relinquish it to him.

 

“I should ask you the same thing,” he says then, pressing his fingers into my side and rubbing those small, soothing circles through the fabric of my t-shirt now.

 

“I asked you first. So tell me.”

 

Marco purses his lips and says nothing for a long moment. In the silence, the new-born autumn wind picks up and whistles around the rafters of the house, rustling through the hedgerow, steamrolling the short grass of the lawn. There are no birds in the sky; no cars on the street blaring horns. It’s uniquely quiet, and I wonder if I can hear his thoughts tumbling around inside his head, tap-dancing on the tip of his tongue.

 

“It’s Mina,” he says at last, and a weight settles back into his shoulders. “It’s just - she started back at school three days ago, and she’s already hating it. Mom already got called in last night because she lashed out at another kid -”

 

“Bet the kid deserved it.”

 

“ _Jean._ ”

 

“Just saying.” I shrug my shoulders insolently, before adding, “Do you know why? She told you much?”

 

Marco looks away, eyes tracing leaves dancing across the patio in the breeze. The look on his face is grief, plain and simple. I have learned how to recognise all its facets, and this one that he bears now is one that shines brightly even in the most glaring of sunlight.

 

“This morning, when I drove her to school, she _begged_ me in the van to let her stay at home. She was so adamant about it, I thought she would cry. She never cries. She was so -” Marco balls up one fist, and I feel his knuckles digging into my side. He scrunches up his eyes too, and I imagine for a moment that this was the look Mina was wearing. “That hurt. It hurt a lot.”

 

“Does the school … _know_. About your dad?”

 

“Yeah. We told them a week or so ago, and they knew about the cancer before, anyway. So they know. And all the kids know. And it’s just -”

 

“She doesn’t want them treating her like she’s different. I get it.”

 

I _more_ than get it.

 

“When you’re ten, a dead parent is a neon sign flashing above your head,” Marco murmurs, “Just begging for ridicule from cruel kids. I just wish I could - _help her_ , somehow. I want to be able to do something, but everything I’m trying feels trivial.” He breathes heavily, the sound wet and watery in his chest, clinging stickily to the inside of his throat. “She’s still grieving and doesn’t … doesn’t know how to cope.”

 

There are tears brewing along his lash line, glistening in the flat sunlight; he battles dutifully not to let them fall. I lean into his space, tasting the hitch in his breath as I rest my forehead back against his.

 

“She’s not the only one,” I whisper into the space carved out by sorrow, both mine and his. “You’re still grieving too. You need to look out for yourself too. You gotta be kinder to yourself, Marco.”

 

“Pot calling kettle,” he huffs weakly.

 

“Hey,” I say pointedly, sitting back again. Marco’s hands slide down, coming to rest now on my thighs. He holds tight and it’s good to know that he doesn’t mind that I notice. “I’m totally being nice to myself. I’m systematically ignoring my dad and my mom and instead I’m letting myself fill my _freak the fuck out_ quota by freaking the fuck out about starting back at school tomorrow. It’s totally therapeutic.”

 

“Something tells me you’re being sarcastic.”

 

“Bite me.”

 

That summons the ghost of a smile on Marco’s face, and what follows that is another misplaced kiss pressed into the corner of my mouth, and then another a little lower down, off-centre on my chin. Another - under the curve of my jaw, nipping at the skin, and then another that dissolves into his open mouth pressed against the slope of my neck and him just breathing into the hollow my throat. I bring my arms up around his back, palms flat against his shoulders, and I hold him close, as best I can.

 

“I’m scared about school too,” he mumbles into the neck of my shirt, voice muffled. “Can’t tell Mina that, though,” he adds ruefully, “I’m meant to be the strong and capable big brother.”

 

“Well, you’re definitely that, even if you’re scared,” I say. Marco huffs a breath.

 

“I’m a different person since I left college, you know?” he continues, “I can’t stop thinking about how many times I’m going to have to explain myself to people who ask, not knowing any better.”

 

“It’s none of their business. You don’t have to tell them shit.”

 

It’s hard to tell if my bravado is false or not. For Marco - for Marco, it feels like it could be true, but for myself, it’s far more shaky. His anxiety casts the same sort of shadow that sticks like tar to the soles of my feet and beckons all the skittering thoughts I’ve had about going back to university and explaining to my classmates and teachers and _friends_ why the sudden drastic change in direction.

 

That fear of being judged … that fear of people looking at you, scrutinising you … I know it well. Marco knows it too. We’re not even two sides of the same coin - we’re the same side, and both of us are trying our damnedest to balance together on this tiny surface area of a quarter dollar-thought and not fall off the edge.

 

Trying not to fall is hard, but admitting it all out loud is harder still. It’s easy enough to run yourself ragged in circles inside your head with these sort of thoughts, but spinning them into words, and spitting them out, and bearing your heart to the people who swear they’ll treat you well -

 

“I’m the same,” I say, despite everything. The words are thick and heavy, like glue in my throat, but I pull them forth anyway, like pulling teeth. The phantom taste of blood dangles from the roof of my mouth, baiting. “I’m worried that I’m not gonna be up to scratch too. It’s not just you.”

 

I always end up tripping over that fine line of _don’t make it about yourself_. It’s hardly more than a scratch in the dirt, isn’t it? One side being, I know what you feel and I sympathise because it happens to me too, and the other side being just, _it happens to me too_. I don’t want to talk about me; I want to talk about him. But I just don’t think we can separate ourselves anymore. He gets that, doesn’t he? He must do.

 

“But hey,” I continue on, powerless, I think, to the magnitude of the things I feel for him and things I have crossed my heart over doing _for_ him. “I guess we deal with it … uh, together?”

 

Marco lifts his head from my shoulder, our faces close once more. I shift uncomfortably on his lap as his gaze burrows deep into my wide eyes.

 

“What?” I frown, feeling self-conscious under his scrutiny. He _does_ get it, right?

 

Slowly, the corners of his lips turn upwards into a smile - a real smile, kind and wonderful, and it dawns over the apples of his cheeks and upwards, smoothing out his brow and trickling into the melting pot of his eyes. He tilts his head and looks at me like I’ve said something epiphanous and full of sunrise.

 

“You’re being very forth-coming today,” he says, low, the smile slinking into his words.

 

I shrug again, but feel heat splurging in my cheeks.

 

“S’nothing,” I say, and maybe it’s almost a lie, but hasn’t lying around him always been a chore? Maybe there’s more truth to it than I’m yet to realise. “I’m just trying this new thing lately. It’s called moving forward, apparently. You might’ve noticed I suck at it, but … baby steps. Only way it doesn’t make my head spin.”

 

Moving forward is damn terrifying, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not going for it anyway. If only in the knowledge that I can’t stomach one more summer spend sprawled out on my bed, staring at the ceiling, sinking in the fog of white depression. I can’t do that again. I don’t think I _deserve_ that again, and I think that’s an important differentiation.

 

I clamber off Marco’s lap with the least amount of grace one human can muster, and turn back to haul him to his feet with an outstretched hand. Pulling him up from where he’s fallen out of his own starting blocks, just as he’s done for me so many times.

 

“I wish,” he says then, face turned skywards, following the path of the clouds billowed and buffeted through the stratosphere, high above. “I wish my dad was still here to see me take those steps.”

 

“He’d be proud of you,” I say.

 

Marco’s smile doesn’t falter, but it does become a little crooked in its wistfulness.

 

“He always said that you have to work hard to overcome the difficult things and get where you want to go. I think that’s pretty true.”

 

A distinctly gross thought crosses my mind then - a thought comparing my dad to Marco’s dad. My father said a similar thing, not four days ago, up in his study, me with my back against the wall spitting out caustic words that burned me more than him. It’s funny how both he and Marco’s dad can talk about _working hard for what you want_ , and it can mean such different things.

 

I feel it like a physical itch, made worse when Marco notices and his smile drops.

 

This is difficult, isn’t it? One moment it’s sorrow, and the next it’s smiles, only for it to turn back to debilitating fear and wretchedness just a moment later. There are too many feelings, and some are liquid flooding through my fingers, and some are fire searing my skin charcoal-black, and some are sharp and dagger-like, and I’m juggling them all at once - and _I can’t fucking juggle_. I’m clutching all these things to my chest and trying so fucking hard not to let one drop and crack open on the floor.

 

“Jean?” he says, because he knows something’s wrong form the slightest quirk in my jaw. He would probably know without that, too.

 

I want to stick my head in the sand. I don’t want to dwell on dad, even if I wear the welts of him all over. I want to peel that skin off and step out of my old self with baby-new skin, red and raw but as the person I need to be.

 

I do the next best thing.

 

I yank my t-shirt up and over my head, tossing it carelessly over my shoulder. It splats across the patio table, knocking over my half-finished Coke can. Marco’s eyes go wide, flying immediately to my bare back - and they probably go wider still when I start unbuttoning my jeans and let them pool around my feet.

 

My choice in boxers could’ve been better today - but they’ll do as swimming trunks for now.

 

I look back over my shoulder at Marco, and nod my head with a dry smirk in the direction of the pool.

 

It’s going to be a while before we can swim again. We should make the most of what we know, before it changes.

 

“Swim?” I ask.

 

Marco opens his mouth to speak, but words fail him, leaving him gawping for a long moment.  I raise my eyebrows at him, and start walking deliberately towards the pool steps.

 

Marco is out of his polo shirt before I reach the water’s edge.

 

* * *

 

 

I don’t take the stairs. Maybe that is the true testament to how much the Earth has shifted beneath our feet in these last five, sun-baked months.

 

The water is not deep when I jump in - but I do jump, and I land with a splash in the pool that soaks my hair and feeds me a mouthful of chlorinated water that makes me gag. I know I grimace when the water splashes up onto my face; I know my gut coils up into a tight pit and a spasm ricochets up my aching bones; and I know I’m playing hooky with dark and out-of-control feelings wider and more unwavering than the surface of this stupid pool, but -

 

I jumped.

 

And Marco, on the pool side, illuminated from behind by the sunlight, throws his head back and laughs at me, loud and disbelieving and full of unbridled joy that might make me believe in happy endings. And might make me believe that he hasn’t noticed me trying to avoid things I’d rather not think about. No matter.

 

Marco steps out of his flip flops and hops down into the pool after me with a small splash, his shorts turning dark in the water. He wades over to me, the waves stirred up by us both sloshing up against his abs, and when he reaches me, his hands find my shoulders, and he draws us close again. Press of foreheads; eyes closed; hearts in sync with the unspoken acknowledgement of my behaviour and his fears and our solidarity for each other.

 

I remember once, standing on those pool steps and clinging onto him like my life depended on it. Maybe it did, then. Maybe it truly did. Not because it was him that fixed me, because it wasn’t. It was him who helped me become the person who has the capability to fix me, myself.

 

The fixing, of course, is an ongoing process. A lot of it still remains ahead of us, and some of that will probably remain unrealised long after our story ends. Not everything can be tied up in pretty bows and ribbons, and I think that’s what’s so daunting. Uncertainty.

 

The water swirls around my waist and I hold fast to him.

 

I’m trying to figure out where I’m going, but I know where I’ve come from and there’s security in what I already know. And I know I fell in love with him underwater.

 

Never in my life did I imagine I’d be thinking of water as something I don’t want to leave behind.

 

“I just want more time to do this,” I say, letting the words slip free, carelessly, a voiced thought that has nowhere to go saved drip, drip, dripping through our hairline cracks. Marco murmurs in assent, but says nothing. He agrees with me, I know he does.

 

I kiss him carefully, like I’m scared of saying goodbye to what we’ve come to know, and like I’m paving the way for a tentative path forward. I kiss his lower lip, and then his upper lip, and then he kisses the tip of my nose, the space between my eyebrows, the side of my temple. Marco drags his palm over the slope of my neck and jaw, pulling away just enough to feel the shape of my mouth with his fingertips before kissing me again, tender and intimate. I wet his lips with my tongue; there’s a gentle hum there, whispering along a shoreline.

 

I feel him getting lost in it, submitting to the drowning, welcoming the water filling up his lungs, and I begin to slip too. My fingertips glide through the water droplets speckling his skin, drawing out streaks across his chest, gliding down his biceps, pressing into his skin where there is no give. A low, stifled sound slips from his mouth, clumsy, but he smothers it beneath my jaw again, nosing at the skin beneath my ear.

 

I feel so many things at once: the thrumming of my pulse in my ears, the marbled surface of the pool as I curl my toes in the cold water, the weightlessness of my boxers around my thighs, the fabric drifting. Marco throws his arms around my neck and with my hands I tilt his face to deepen another kiss, and then another, and then it’s not really kissing any more, but the press of open mouths and slow, heady breaths and spinning heads and _no thinking, just touching_.

 

Pushing into him, I guide us backwards, his feet clumsy, and me, standing on his toes as I try to nudge us against the pool wall without having to separate. He bites down lightly on my lower lip when his back grazes the concrete, rough against his bare skin. His hands search for purchase on my sternum, heels of his palms pressing into my chest. I love the way his breathing changes as he touches me; it real, it makes me _feel_ real. It makes me feel like the present is the only thing that matters.

 

Vaguely, I remember us being here before - but him crowding me up against the poolside and not the other way around. I remember the flick of his fingers over my piercings; and I remember his expression ripped open; and I remember the viscous sort of heart pooling deep in my abdomen. I remember pulling away from him before, so this time, I slide my thigh up between his, and welcome his sharp huff of breath into my own mouth, hungrily.

 

There are no words, just touches, slow and syrupy and maybe a little bit nervous, but good. So very _good_. I’m hyper aware of everywhere we touch: fingers squeaking across wet skin; the shock of warmth when I feel his tongue lick against the corner of my mouth, and then in a scattering of butterfly kisses down my neck that do not linger too long in one spot; and the strange, enticing hardness I feel pressing against my thigh where I have it between his legs. His hands trail south, picking and plucking at my waistband - not desperate, but curious, and it spins a coil of new feeling in my stomach that leaves me kind of breathless.

 

 _Possibility_ sings a pretty song: my mouth, a tinderbox, the clever lick of his tongue, a match. My fingers sink into his skin a little deeper than an innocent touch, carving out _shoulds_ and _coulds_ and _what would happen if I didn’t stop kissing you this time_?

 

There are thoughts to entertain - thoughts about the water swallowing us up and trapping us in this unending moment, forever. Thoughts about hotter kisses and less clothes and just diving in to something unspokenly intimate. Part of me thinks that wouldn’t be so bad. The other part of me knows that there are hundreds of moments like these laid out before us, waiting to be made.

 

I pull back for breath, and find Marco’s pupils blown, eclipsing the colour of his eyes almost entirely. The look in his eyes is dazed and eager and we both know what will happen if we go any further, and I know those anxious, swirling thoughts extend to intimacy enough that stumbling into this might be something I regret later. I press a closed-mouth kiss to his lips, and take a step back, watching the rise and fall of his chest as he fights to get his breathing back under control. My heart flutters and my head spins, the world swaying just a little.

 

“Sorry,” I say, my voice airy, hardly my own. The heat beneath my skin doesn’t flare, but it simmers, it lathes, it balms, like a hot summer day. “I, uh - I don’t want this boner to get any worse. My mom might see.”

 

Marco huffs on a laugh, a sinks into the water, bending his knees until his shoulders are submerged. Quickly, he ducks his head below the surface, and when he comes back for air, his hair is flat against his head and water drips from his nose and some of the redness in his cheeks has cooled.

 

This is good. _Going slow_ , that’s good.

 

I let my hands waft through the water and for a moment, my gaze lingers on the lethargy in my fingers, sifting through the pool water. I let the tension drift away.

 

When I look back at Marco, he’s smiling again, serene. I can’t help but smile too.

 

“Let’s make a deal,” he says then, “When I’m going backwards, you tell me. And when you’re doing the same thing, or are worried you’re falling too fast into things, I’ll tell you too.”

 

“I’ll call you out if you call me out,” I nod. “I like it. Efficient.”

 

“ _Efficient_ ,” Marco snorts. My grin stretches, and I sink down into the water to match him. The water pushes and prods at my upper arms and at the top of my chest, hefty punches to my sternum, but here’s the thing:

 

“Y’know, if I can overcome this - this thing with water -” _This aquaphobia_ , I say without saying. “-then I reckon tackling everything else can’t be so much worse.”

 

When Marco grins, broad and unrepenting, I think that could easily be the finish line I’ve been searching for for so damn long.

 

* * *

 

 

Mom catches us a while later, when we’re sat on the top of the pool steps, playing footsie in the shallow water, thumbs running over knees, and heads bowed together. I’m thankful to have my clothes back on - not making _that_ mistake again - whilst Marco is leisurely drying in the sleepy sun, his shorts still patchy with pool water.

 

It’s almost funny, it’s almost comical, the way mom swans through the back door already halfway into a conversation she wants to have with me, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair, only to stop and freeze, almost mid-step, a word in her mouth slithering away into nothing more than an unintelligible sound, when her eyes fall on Marco. Marco tenses, and that’s probably an automatic reflex, something that he’s honed in all the years he’s known he’s liked boys in a world that doesn’t like him. I watch mom carefully as she seems to realise with a jolt that she’s paused half-way across the patio, and then as she quickly backtracks back inside and disappears.

 

Marco throws me a look, one part confusion, the other part concern, but I trust mom, and it pays off. She is many things, but someone who goes back on her word isn’t one of them.

 

She comes back not two minutes later with her arms laden with fluffy towels, and when she smiles at Marco, it’s a little hesitant, a little unsure, but it’s genuine. There’s affection in her eyes that cannot be doubted.

 

“Marco, darling,” she says, and there’s something different about her voice now, different from every other way she’s said his name in the past. She looks at him with the strangest sort of fond adoration; she looks at him like she’s never had the chance to look at him before.

 

And I suppose she hasn’t. This is the first time she’s seeing Marco for who he truly is. _To me_.

 

She holds out a towel to him, and he smiles as he takes it, and so she smiles back, and then they both laugh in that semi-awkward way two people laugh when they both know there’s an elephant in the room.

 

I suppose it’s slightly better than her just walking up to us and announcing: _so Jean told me yesterday that he’s in love with you. Isn’t that super?_

The secondhand embarrassment of just the thought alone is too much.

 

“Jean says today is your last day with us,” mom says then. She shifts her weight around, unable to stand still as Marco looks up at her. She threads a lock of hair behind her ear. “I hope they don’t send that angry little man as your replacement. He’s always scowling, it’s so unnerving.”

 

Marco laughs politely whilst I roll my eyes.

 

“I’ll have a chat when I go in to get my last pay check. Maybe I can get Erwin to take up my clients … I think you’d like him.”

 

“No-one will be able to replace you, sweetheart,” mom says, “We’ll miss you.”

 

“He’ll … still be around, mom,” I cut in. “I mean - because - _you know_. Yeah.”

 

Heat creeps into my face, and beside me, Marco ducks his head, colour in his cheeks too as he picks deliberately at the short grass. No-one says anything for a moment that stretches out just a little too long to be comfortable, but then mom nods, vigorously, as if she’s more than just agreeing with me.

 

“Right,” she says, determined. “ _Right_. Yes.” Her smile changes then, becoming smaller, but becoming softer. It’s a fond smile as she returns her eyes to Marco. In my chest, my heart squeezes, and fuck anyone who thinks _coming out_ is a one-time thing. You don’t just tell someone, and then it’s over - Christ, no. The opening of that door - the spitting out those words - maybe that’s the easy part. The part no-one seems to tell you about is how it’s like stepping out into a spotlight, and suddenly it feels like everyone is staring.

 

Not that mom is staring. But she’s looking, and it’s easy to know _why_ she’s looking, and whilst I don’t hate it, it’s - well, it’s like an itch. I can’t help but fidget. It’s a lot of attention I’m not used to getting, and I know - I know this is good attention, because it’s mom, and she promised things won’t change between us - but you can’t help but worry.

 

She’s trying her best to get used to this, and a part of me is still shaking on that sidewalk and wanting the world to swallow me up.

 

“Well then, Marco, darling,” mom continues, resolute, “I should wish you all the luck going back to school, and say that you’re welcome here any time that Jean wants you here.”

 

“Thank you, Mrs Kirschtein. It means a lot,” Marco smiles.

 

“Oh - how many times - it’s _Céline_ ,” she laughs brightly, wagging her finger at Marco. “Enough with the manners, Marco - we’re practically _family_ now.”

 

“ _Mom!_ ”

 

“What?” she squawks at me, “He’s your boyfriend, Jean! He gets special treatment now, it’s only fair. Now -”

 

She reaches out and wiggles her fingers at Marco, expecting for him to take her hand and be pulled to his feet. He obliges her - of course he does - looking a little sheepish and pink, and when he’s standing, mom hooks her hand through his arm and starts to tow him towards the patio table.

 

“-you’re going to stay for lunch, aren’t you?” she croons, much to my chagrin. Marco shoots a look back at me - somewhere on the threshold of snickering laughter and running for the hills (and I don’t think he’s decided which, either) - and it’s all I can do to drop my head into my hands and groan.

 

“Jean!” mom calls, “This doesn’t mean you can get out of setting the table!”

 

* * *

 

 

As the sun dries my hair, the chlorine makes my scalp itch, and I aggressively scrub my fingers back and forth through my roots as I try to block out every embarrassing thing mom has to say over lunch.

 

You would think there’s only so much blood in your body that can rush to your face, but - somehow, my skin just keeps getting hotter, even as I try and scowl it all away. Marco elbows me in the side when he catches me glaring daggers at my sandwiches, a conspiratorial smile now replacing the bashfulness he had at the poolside.

 

Mom is talking - something about how she met her first boyfriend, many, many years ago - so she misses me sticking my tongue out at him, and him pinching my arm in retaliation.

 

(And people say romance isn’t real.)

 

Marco leans in, presses quick words into my ear, below his breath.

 

“I can’t tell if I’m living in a  fever dream or not.”

 

I roll my eyes, unable to fight the beginnings of a smirk.

 

“Just you wait,” I whisper-reply, “It’s gonna get so much fucking worse. She hasn’t shown you _anything_ yet. Prepare to be doted on till kingdom come.”

 

Marco laughs breathily, leaning back into my space, lips closer again to my ear.

 

“I love you.”

 

The half-strangled noise in my throat is drowned out by mom cooing and clapping her hands together in front of her chest in delight, a tilt to her head, sentimental.

 

“I miss being young and in-love,” she says, sighing wistfully. Marco smothers an ugly laugh in his arm, bowing over the table as he clutches his stomach, and I all but throw my hands in the air.

 

“Oh my _god_ , mom. Stop!”

 

* * *

 

 

I don’t think I’ll ever be truly comfortable with attention. It all comes back to wanting to hide from my dad’s withering glare, or laugh off the reasons why I never wanted to go to the pool with my friends in the summer, or shove anyone who looked at my funny in the school corridors into the nearest locker during the Year That Was Bad.

 

But mom dotes on us both in a way that I have to begrudgingly accept. I roll my eyes at her and scoff at all her sappy remarks and long to slither away under the table, but at the end of the day, Marco reaches out across our thighs and takes my hand and squeezes it, and all in the clear and present view of my mom. And we don’t have to hide it.

 

We’re easing into this together: me, and Marco, and mom too, and soon, everyone else around us, as we slowly decide to tell those that matter to us. There’s a lot of moving forward, a lot of taking blind leaps of faith, a lot of _coming out_ ahead of us; you never really get away from that, having to reintroduce yourself to each and every person, one after the other, but these new people we are becoming are going to be people worth knowing. I’ve decided that.

 

Marco leaves in the early afternoon - he has to go pick Mina up from school, which he says a little sadly, reminded of her troubles and settling back into the mould he has carved out from grief - but mom gathers him into a tight hug, her arms squeezing the life out of him, even though she only comes up to his shoulder height. She yanks him down by his shirt collar to plant a smacker of a kiss on his forehead, and then decides she has to hug him again, just for good measure.

 

I walk him to the back gate and steal a kiss and a promise of a text later when he gets home, and mom joins me at my side as Marco climbs into his van, mom nudging my shoulder with hers, looking up at me from the corner of her eye.

 

I make a _tsk_ sound low in my throat, but it means little, and she knows that. She wraps one arm around my waist - and her hand, as small as it is, holds so tightly onto the fabric of my t-shirt that I wonder if she’ll ever be able to let go again. I don’t suppose I want her to. 

 

Mom pulls me against her side, and for once, it doesn’t make me feel like a kid occupying a body too large for my small and wobbling thoughts. I feel my heart rooting in my chest; I feel like my skin fits my soul, at last. The moment is pleasant, and transient, and surreal, and as we watch Marco disappear down the road, I feel like I’m caught in a tide, and that tide is carrying me forward, weightless, my feet barely scraping the earth.

 

“I seem to owe Marco a lot,” she says, tenderly. Her voice is so quiet, little more than a sleepwalker’s mumble. Maybe she doesn’t even mean to say it out loud. She tips her head onto my shoulder and her hair tickles my neck. “He helped you come back to me. I never realised how much I might be missing.”

 

“He helps me with a lot,” I admit.

 

“And you help him too.”

 

It’s not a statement.

 

“Yeah,” I say, “I do.” And there’s no question in my words, either. No doubt.

 

It beats running.

 

* * *

 

 

The clouds are high and the swallows are spinning in dizzying circles on the first day of the new semester. Autumn is always the sort of season that creeps in without you really noticing: with dew on the grass and mist clinging to the distant sides of the valley, with hedgerow leaves turning that done-with-summer yellow-green and slowly crisping up in the dry heat that has yet to abate and turn to frosty mornings. And Autumn mornings like these taste like a post-coital cigarette and they sit on the edge of my bed with effortless cool, unflappable and well-fucked, which is appropriate, given how fast and hard this summer had me bending over backwards.

 

There’s something about fall that makes the sky seems bluer and the sun seem sharper, colours no longer drowned out by drought, pricks of orange in the trees and green in the grass once more. There’s a silver sheen to the mornings, and a bronze in the dawn, and it feels like it’s been an awful long time since I sat down with September and shook its hand and congratulated it on finally kicking summer in the ass.

 

It makes the summer feel like it has lasted forever.

 

A lot has happened since I last set foot in a university classroom. I look back at that time, and I see a road I’ve walked stretches out behind me, a dark and gleaming ribbon against a drought country, asphalt baking in sweltering heat, catching the sun where the world around it does not. I see a road that is a story. (Hell, it’s hardly a road. It’s a God-damn _freeway_.) The person I was when I sat next to Connie in a an exam hall, rueing the day I ever picked up a chemistry textbook, is so far a cry away from who I am now that I would not recognise him if I didn’t still wear the scars that hurtling down that road at a hundred miles an hour in a semi has put on him and me. And on my nerves. I don’t know what’s more frayed, the break lines on that metaphorical truck, or -

 

To be fair, they’re probably one and the same thing.

 

That crispness in the autumn air, it lingers in me too, a breath held sharply, a breath that won’t dislodge, however clumsy I am with myself, knocking into the sink with my hip when I shave, or accidentally splashing the hem of my t-shirt with water and cringing for it, or even letting myself stand at the window for a long five minutes just to have a moment to spiral into anxious thoughts.

 

I go through three different outfits before I decide that I’m being stupid and procrastinating going downstairs (and I settle on a flannel that is way too big because I like the way it feels like it swamps me), and then I find mom’s note on the kitchen counter wishing me _good luck on my first day back_ (which I spend ten minutes making into a paper airplane), and then I drink three cups of coffee so that my legs are jittering before I even get in my car and turn the key in the ignition.

 

I haven’t driven anywhere since the funeral, and as I climb into my car, I haven’t forgotten that. Perhaps a moment of that day has been trapped in the car ever since, and now, sat still in the driver’s seat, I’m breathing it in and it's absorbing into my blood. My knees want to jackhammer, but I beg them still. I lean forward and rest my forehead on the steering wheel, feeling the stitches in the leather leave red imprints in my skin.

 

I want to feel brave, and some part of me is always going to scream that I don’t have it in me for courage; I’m not made of that sort of mettle, and I have a track record to prove it.

 

It’s just school. _It’s just school_. I have my sketchbooks on the backseat; I have my pencil case and my watercolours in the front, beside me; there are the new paintbrushes mom bought me in the trunk. I have wanted this for so long, my fingers itch for it, they itch for graphite, for charcoal, for acrylic paint, for being _exactly where I need to be_.

 

I don’t really know what Mr Bodt’s voice sounded like, when he was still alive, before he got sick, but I hear some fabrication of it in my head, made up by begging thoughts: _you have to work hard to get there, to that place where you need to be. Others may carry you into the pit, but you get nowhere off any back but your own._

 

My phone bleeps in my pocket with a new message.

 

**From: Marco-Polo**

**Here goes nothing.**

**From: Marco-Polo**

**Mina even gave me an emotional support hug this morning. I think I must look a wreck!**

**From: Marco-Polo**

**I’ll see you in twenty minutes?**

 

I quickly tap out a reply, elbows resting on the wheel, the Jag still humming beneath my feet.

 

**To: Marco-Polo**

**just leaving the house, omw now**

**To: Marco-Polo**

**number of crises ive already had today: 3. are u impressed**

**From: Marco-Polo**

**Honestly, three is a little low for you, I expected more!**

**To: Marco-Polo**

**uhm ??? i thought u were trying to be more supportive, what about our deal**

**From: Marco-Polo**

**It turns out I’m a horrible human being. Sorry it took this long for you to notice, but you’re stuck with me now.**

 

That begs a smile, and I lock my phone with a sly grin as I toss it onto the passenger seat. I suck in a breath, drum my hands against the wheel, count to ten. Here’s the river. Jump in.

 

* * *

 

 

Campus hasn’t changed since before the summer, and I guess that’s a good thing. The grey concrete buildings are a constant in which I’ll be able to trust for years, because I’m pretty sure not even the end of the world would be able to wipe this place off the map, so surly and stout and overrun with students already so exhausted by the first day that if they all decided to lay down right now, they probably wouldn’t ever budge.

 

I’m still on-edge, fingers gripping the steering wheel as I scan the parking lot for a space, but the taut breath leaves my lungs as a whistle as I spot the scabby outline of the roof of Connie’s pickup truck. It’s a simple thing, but the sight of that four-wheeled death trip is a comfort. It’s something else that will never change - which is ironic, because we’ve been telling Connie to take that thing to the dump for years. There’s a space three cars down from it, which I steal from out under the nose of some spotty kid in an old Sedan, who then flips me off and smacks his car horn. _You snooze, you lose_.

 

The first day of school has such a peculiar, distinct feeling. It’s hard to pin down, but it’s not just the satisfaction of new stationary, or the nattering excitement of seeing your friends again, or nerves in the pit of the stomach, or even the short-lived drive to _really work hard this year, things are going to be different_ that you seem to promise yourself _every_ year. It’s the opportunity to be handed a brand-new timetable, become a sophomore, and be given confirmation that yes, I have grown, if not in mind, in time and body at least. It’s in the air too. Everyone’s internal body clock has them fidgeting with the strange, almost manic, need to shine all their shoes and sharpen all their pencils at the same time of year.

 

Climbing out of the car, I taste all that on my tongue. It makes me antsy - all these things at once - but glancing around at all the frantic-looking freshmen, I figure I’m probably not alone. Not in this, at least. It counts for something.

 

I stuff my sketchbooks and pencils into my satchel and throw it over my head, already able to hear Connie and Sasha’s crowing, way, _way_ too fucking loud for this time in the morning, as I lock the car behind me.

 

I’ve missed them. It’s not been long since the beach, but - _I’ve missed them_.

 

I won’t ever tell them that. I wouldn’t hear the end of it. Our friendship is based on a very, very carefully-crafted form of tough love, perfected over years of giving each other shit. It’s best that way.

 

“Jean!” I hear Sasha shriek, followed by her actually falling out the bed of the pickup where she’s sat nursing a thermos like she’s already on the brink of a college-induced mental breakdown. I see Connie’s head pop up from where he’s lying down in the truck bed too, looking bleary-eyed and disoriented, blinking into the autumnal sunlight and probably wondering how on Earth it’s still only the first day of the new year. Same.

 

“Wow, you guys look rough,” I remark crassly as Sasha barrels into me, flinging her arms around my neck and wrestling me into a hug; I suffer it, allowing her to strangle me and jab me with her pointy elbows.

 

“The summer’s just over and I already want it to be summer again!” Sasha complains, and then Connie deadpans, “I want to die.”

 

I roll my eyes and Sasha and I haul ourselves up into the trunk bed, causing Connie to grunt when we force him to squeeze out the way.

 

“Connie quit smoking,” Sasha says, by way of explanation. Connie flops back down onto his back and flings an arm dramatically over his eyes. He’s wearing tatty shorts and the ugliest, most garish Hawaiian shirt I’ve ever seen, testament to how much he’s trying to wilfully deny the end of August. His shoes are nowhere to be found. “We flushed all his weed down the toilet last night. We had a funeral for it and everything. It was pretty taxing.”

 

I raise my eyebrows and nudge Connie in the leg to make him look at me. Honestly, the expression on his face makes me wonder if he’s still all there inside. Some part of his will to leave seems to have vacated the premises.

 

“You quit?” I ask. “How come?”

 

“Ymir ... told us ‘bout Marco,” he grumbles, “Said about his dad.”

 

“And then I figured, Marco’s starting back at school today, right?” Sasha continues, but I’m still looking at Connie, almost curiously. “And he won’t want to hotbox with us at lunch, like we used to - ‘cus that’d be cruel or insensitive or what have you. And then you quit too, didn’t you? So we thought, why not quit altogether. Make it a team effort.” She glances at Connie and frowns. “And here we are now. Suffering.”

 

“That’s … pretty decent of you guys,” I say. Sasha smiles warmly and shrugs as if it’s no big deal; Connie groans again, curling over onto his side and folding himself up into a self-pitying ball. I don’t really know what his deal is - you don’t have nicotine cravings when you never smoked nicotine, and it’s not like he smoked weed enough to justify this - but you know, it’s Connie, so I would expect nothing less than a flair for the dramatic.

 

“So, are you ready?” Sasha then asks, taking a sip from her thermos. Whatever it is, it smells strong … and not _coffee-strong_. (These two were definitely made for each other, I’ll give them that.) She sits cross legged in the trunk bed, eyes glazed and sleep-exhausted, whilst I let my legs swing over the edge, heels knocking against the license plate. “Ready to lose all grasp on your soul once again for another year?”

 

“Something tells me you’re not excited to be back,” I remark flatly, “I thought you liked theatre. You’re _majoring_ in it.”

 

“Jean,” Sasha states, staring me down. She wags her finger at me, circling it in front of my eyes before tapping me on the nose. I scrunch up my face. “ _Jean_. I’m a slacker. You know this. I’m allergic to work.”

 

That makes me snort, and as she takes another deep swig of what is probably ninety percent alcohol, I turn my attention to checking my phone - there’s no new message from Marco, but he’s probably still driving. I scan the parking lot anyway, looking for his van - or maybe it’ll be the Honda, I don’t know - or maybe just for his familiar head of hair. A tug of longing kneads at my stomach like a vagrant cat.

 

And then Connie kicks me in the back.

 

“Oi!” I frown, twisting back to look at him, slapping him on the leg, “What the fuck was that for?”

 

He rolls over to fix me with a withering glare and at least five double-chins. It’s definitely a _look_.

 

“I heard you’re abandoning me in Math,” he grumbles, “Ditching me for fucking _Ymir_. How could you.”

 

“Ymir has always ranked above you on the friend rota, sorry you’re just finding this out now.”

 

“Fucking bite me, Jean,” Connie says, but then he sits straight up, and it’s honestly scary how fast he goes from near-death to perfectly alert and awake. “Oh, hey, look - is that Eren and Mikasa? And Marco too?”

 

My eyes immediately snap to where he’s looking and Sasha is pointing, and sure enough, there’s Marco, flanked either side by Eren and Mikasa, making their way across the parking lot towards us, chatting happily between themselves. Mikasa looks as smart and well put-together as ever, elegant in a black jersey dress and boots, and Eren - well Eren always looks like he’s just tumbled out of a moving car on the freeway, and he has the grazes on his face and knuckles to prove it - and as for Marco -

 

Well, the smile he’s wearing is nervous and polite, but it shifts when he sees me, and I feel that same relief untangling the knots in my gut.

 

“Marco!” Sasha cries, leaping out of the trunk to throw her weight at him - which he barely catches, spluttering greetings and apologies.

 

Eren heads straight for the truck, hopping up into the back with me and Connie, shoving our bags out the way to make space to lie down. He yanks his hoodie up over his head and pulls sharply on the drawstring to close it across his face until he looks a bit like a human-worm hybrid. Whatever is really dragging Connie’s balls is clearly dragging Eren’s too. I decide not to mention it - and if that isn’t that the biggest sign of me making changes to myself, I don’t know what to tell you. Ribbing Eren used to be one of my favourite past times.

 

Mikasa smiles at me prettily, and maybe, before, we would’ve exchanged pleasantries about how we’ve been - and the past me who was hung up on her might have stammered over something intensely cringeworthy and embarrassing - but then Sasha is dragging Marco up to join our little group in the truck bed, shoehorning Marco into perching in the space next to me. His shoulder knocks against mine, and it settles me like nothing else; he turns to look at me and offers me a knowing, if a little exasperated, smile.

 

“Fancy seeing you here,” I murmur, smiling back at him. His fingers pluck at the fabric of the flannel I threw over my t-shirt when I got dressed for the third time this morning. I dare to brush my fingertips over the backs of his knuckles, a coy and careful sort of greeting. Sasha’s early morning alcoholism hasn’t dampened her ability to notice things she should keep her nose _out_ of. She hollers.

 

“Ooooh!” she grins, eyes wide and excited. She makes a point of glancing between Marco’s hand as it retreats back to his thigh, and my face, which I know is staining a telling red. I try to frown the blush away, but it probably doesn’t work. “What’s this? I’m sensing there’s news you want to tell us, right? My spider senses are tingling!”

 

“Your spider senses can fuck off,” I grumble, and behind me, Eren barks out a laugh. 

 

“I give you nothing but love and support, and this is how you treat me?” Sasha gasps, pressing a hand to her heart in offense. “Marco, you put up with this on the regular? I don’t understand it.”

 

Marco shrugs and he looks at me, asking a question he doesn’t need to say out loud. We _did_ talk about it. It’s not that I don’t want to tell them because I don’t want them to know - I do, I want them to know, I want them to know who I am now, and I want to know that they care, out loud and in words I can repeat to myself as a mantra when things get tough again - it’s more … I don’t want to tell them out of spite. I’m nothing if not one hundred percent driven by a need to hold things unforgivingly above Connie and Sasha’s heads. I am the _best_ sort of friend.

 

I sigh through my nose, but give him a nod anyway. It’s not like they don’t already know … especially after the beach … _especially_ after them blasting REO Speedwagon outside my window when I was trying to sleep that one time ...

 

But Marco doesn’t know they did that, so when he turns back to Sasha, his smile is crooked and handsome and completely innocent to all the evil they’re going to get up to with this information, and looking at him, you would never believe he’s nervous about all this.

 

I don’t really know how you’re expected to come out and say: we’re dating now, and keep a straight face about it. It seems such an awkward thing to try to get into words. Might as well call a group meeting or send an email around with the news, because it would feel just as cringey.

 

Marco, of course, just goes all in.

 

“Supposedly I like him,” he says, a little bashful, “And … he likes me. So, it works out.”

 

I make a noise somewhere between a splutter and a snort, and then try to pretend that I didn’t. He says it so fucking plainly that I don’t think I can look at him a moment, my face flaring something hot and incriminating.

 

Sasha looks like she’s about to say something, but she changes her mind, crossing her arms over her chest and grinning like a proud parent. Her cheeks must hurt. Mikasa is smiling too, and so is Marco, and I maybe let my frown slip into a tiny smile of my own, barely a twitch of my lips, but present, none the less, which is immediately spoiled by Connie kicking me again.

 

_What is his problem -_

 

“Do I have a fucking target on my back this morning?!” I gripe, twisting around to shove him hard again. “Can you not get my attention like a normal person?”

 

Connie wrinkles his nose at me, and then he grumbles, “Glad you guys finally sorted it out,” as if he’s angry at _me_ for the fact he has to say it. No, I _don’t_ understand.

 

Connie stares at me, flat and unblinking, and then his eyes flicker to Marco. He nods at Marco … and then flops down onto his back again with a thump, wriggling up next to Eren who may very well have passed out cold, far too sleep deprived to give a shit about whether or not Marco and I are now -

 

Hah. I haven’t really thought the word to myself in a long while. He’s my _boyfriend_. That’s a thing.

 

Marco doesn’t catch onto my distinct fight not to let my smile broaden into something self-congratulatory, and instead he raises his eyebrows at me, and then at Connie, as he glances over his shoulder.

 

“Honestly, I expected worse,” he says to me, genuinely surprised. He’s so naive.

 

Sasha pats him on the knee in reassurance.

 

“We have plenty time for _worse_ ,” she says, with a mischievous glint in her eyes, “Don’t you fret.”

 

* * *

 

 

We hang out together in the parking lot until the last possible moment. I’m pretty sure Eren _has_ fallen asleep, because it’s the only time he doesn’t fidget like he’s got wasps shoved up his ass, but Connie drags himself upright when he realises he’s being left out of the circle of conversation. The others want to know about Marco: Mikasa asks him how he’s feeling, if he’s nervous, what pre-med classes he’s taking; and Sasha asks him - much too invested for anyone’s liking -  how long it’ll be before he gets to dissect things.

 

Armin turns up after a while to encourage everyone to class - and it turns out he has math with both Connie and Marco now, which I can tell eases some of the burden on Marco’s shoulders. As Mikasa and Sasha try to talk Connie out of the pickup truck, I steal a moment between their prying voices to pull Marco to the side, out of the way.

 

I drag him ‘round to the front of the pickup truck, gently pushing him against the hood so that our eye lines become level. His focus is on my mouth, unabashedly, and a thrill chases some of the anxiety that skitters up and down my spine for doing this in the open, for all to see. His eyes don’t waver. I feel it low in my chest, a tingling warmth rippling outwards, pooling in fingers and toes.

 

Marco knots his fingers in the tails of my flannel shirt, running his thumb back and forth across the soft fabric as I step between his knees.

 

“Good luck,” he whispers, nose to nose with me. His eyelashes cast shadows on his cheeks as he keeps his gaze turned down, focused on his fidgeting fingertips. I almost want to clip off a piece of me and give it to him to keep in the breast pocket of his shirt, if it means he won’t stop touching a part of me at all times. Keep it against his heart, so that I might feel it tremble, so that I might feel it burst.

 

“Right back at you,” I murmur, basking in the light of just being close. “You got this.”

 

“I can do this,” he says. He closes his eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath. “And even if I can’t -”

 

“You have to,” I finish, smiling a small crooked smile. “Math ain’t all that scary, despite what Connie is going to tell you for the next three hours. I’ll see you at lunch? Stick with Armin, I’ll find you guys.”

 

Marco hums in acknowledgement, and then looks up, meeting my eyes. I can tell he’s thinking about Mina again, clinging onto him in the van and refusing to let him go, and he’s also thinking about his mom, supporting the whole family on the salary of a hospice worker now, and then about his dad too, and the wounds are weeping. I hold him by the arms, letting my fingertips press into his biceps, not minding if they get a little bloody in the process. There’s no point saying: _I’m sorry about this mess, I wish it was mine._

 

Our stitches are still raw; some scars are yet to heal, and won’t heal, I don’t think, for a long while yet.

 

We don’t have to say a word to know. I feel the ridges of his scars beneath my fingertips, and he probably feels the way I’m fighting off the nervous twitch in my hands and in my jaw. Between us, the silence speaks loud enough: _I’m still sad, and you’re still sad, and sometimes we can’t even tell the people we love the most, but we’re moving on and getting better._ Getting older and wiser seems to happen without you really realising, just like the Autumn. Our young summer is becoming a holiday slideshow steeped in sepia.

 

We’re not really kids anymore. We haven’t really been kids for a long time, awkwardly straddling this threshold between teenage angst and an adult’s grin-and-bare-it, but now it feels like scales have tipped in favour of one over the other.

 

It hurts now - the fear of looking foolish - but in five minutes it’s not going to matter. That’s what you have to remember. No-one’s going to care if you said something dumb on your first day of school in two weeks’ time. No-one’s going to point and laugh when you tell them why you’ve had to take a year off to care for your family. No-one’s going to mind if you’re different. Everyone has a tragedy, somewhere along the line. Everyone has a story worth a book. Everyone has fears, whether they be swimming pools or the weight of pity or fresh starts.

 

Marco reels me in by my shirt, as if he’s scared to disturb the air around us. His nose brushes my nose and he searches my expression for something: I make sure to give him everything, everything I know, imaging myself pushing it all with both hands out through my eyes, or at least dying trying. Whatever he needs from me, he finds, and when he kisses me, lingering and slow, that parking-lot kiss I’ve been craving so bad, something begins to glow in the centre of me, flickering into light like streetlamps illuminating a city on the cusp of dusk. One by one, specks of light appear inside my chest, pinpricks in the dark, until everything gives way to man-made stars.

 

He kisses my mouth, and then he kisses the shell of my ear, holding the sharp edge of my jaw in his palm, and I whisper, “again”, so that I might have the static of the kiss playing on my lips for the rest of the day, and people will wonder why my index finger keeps straying to my mouth when I’m caught up in thought. I want them to be jealous. Of this, of us.

 

I never thought I’d get this. I never thought I’d be brave enough. And yet -

 

Here we are. Leant against the hood of a dusty pickup truck, staring down the road ahead, looking at how far we still have to run before we reach the finish line, but knowing how much easier it is when you’ve got someone by your side, counting your steps and keeping time. It’s a simple thing.

 

“Hey, Marco!” Connie shouts then, waving in our direction. He’s out of the truck now, his backpack slung over one shoulder, looking as if they last twenty minutes haven’t happened and he’s raring to go. “We leaving or what? Don’t make me come over there! I don’t want Jean cooties!”

 

Marco ducks his head on a wry smile, squeezes his hand against the side of me, and then calls back, “I’m coming.”

 

 _I love you so much_ , I think. I try with all my might to push the thought from my head, putting my weight behind it, heaving it with my shoulder. _Out, out, out, come on. I love you, and I know you already know, but I need it in words. I need it in contract, with your name and mine as an X on a dotted line._

 

“You’ve got this,” I tell him, again. Again and again until it can’t be anything but a universal truth. _You really do._

 

I watch the three of them leave - Marco, Connie, and Armin - and then Sasha and Mikasa split off to go to class too, and then it’s only me. I gaze upwards at the sky, the endless blue of fall that’s somehow different to that of summer, richer, deeper, wider without the oppressive heat. The world around me gains some clarity; my ears attune to the rumbling engines of cars that have been driven too much in the last few months, I hear the boisterous laughter of friends seeing friends again and recounting their holiday adventures, and then the wolf-whistle of the wind is a low note beneath it all, appreciative. I run my hand along the flank of the pickup truck, feeling the flakes of rotting paint rough upon my palm, and the metal, cool, the sun not strong enough to bake it red-hot. There’s humidity, at last, sly upon my lips. Everything flips into high definition. Oh, and -

 

Eren sits up in the bed of the pickup truck, flopping over the edge to jab me in the shoulder. The expanding world around us is sucked back down the plughole abruptly. I almost forgot he was there.

 

I turn to fix him with a flat, unimpressed stare. He doesn’t seem to catch on, pressing his cheek into the side of the truck bed and looking at my sideways and lazy. .

 

“So ... you’re in art now, huh?” he asks, before I can drill him as to whether he plans on spending the entirety of our first day back napping in the back of someone else’s car.

 

I hitch my satchel up higher on my shoulder, eyes flicking back in the direction the others just walked - but they’re out of sight now.

 

“Yeah,” I say, casual.

 

Eren looks thoughtful. He rolls himself upright, slings his backpack over one shoulder, and vaults cleanly over the edge of the truck. His hair is a mess, all stuck up on end, and I notice there are bruises on the backs of his knuckles. All this talk of change makes me wonder how much he is the same person I once knew, and how much of him is different. I glance at those grazes on his hands again: red-brown and scabby. He doesn’t look all that different.

 

“Damn,” he says, “That’s cool though. Gonna miss you in Euro His.”

 

He starts walking away from the truck in the direction of his class, a man suddenly with a mission seized out of thin air, strides fast and purposeful and probably a little scary to all the freshman who take one look at him and _scatter_ , but then he glances back over his shoulder to check if I’m following. He frowns when he sees that I’m not on his heel.

 

“You didn’t say a word to me in Euro His for an entire year,” I call to him, a little sourly, as I take my time in catching up. His frown deepens as if this is new information.

 

“Snap,” he says, “You’re right. Guess I won’t miss you at all.”

 

I shove him in the shoulder, and his shoves me back with more force, and then a car honks its horn at us for roughhousing in the middle of the road, so Eren flips the driver off. I punch him in the arm, and he grins, wolfish and childish and full of that reckless hedonism that I doubt he’ll ever lose.

 

“New year, then,” he remarks, as we both hop up onto the sidewalk; he’ll walk one way, and I’ll walk the other. But he stops, turning to face me, looking a little bashful. His eyes scamper across everything but my face.

 

“... Yeah,” I agree, a little curiously. Eren chews on the inside of his cheek like a kid. I think he’s embarrassed by whatever he’s about to say. It’s only two words.

 

“New start.”

 

His eyes snap to me then, like a gunshot, and he looks at me long and hard and scrutinising, flurries of new students walking past us to their classes, talking animatedly, the air full of their excitement ... but the fixation in his stare seems to make the world slow down, until everything is crawling, drowned out. He has such a knack at being the centre of attention when he wants it.

 

“New us?” he asks.

 

“New us,” I agree.

 

He holds out his fist with a grin and I bump it, and then he’s off, running into the crowds and ducking between eager freshmen, knocking them out of the way when he doesn’t care to look where he’s going.

 

I think that was as close to feelings as we’re ever gonna get, but it works. It works for us, and where we’ve come from. So maybe he has changed a little bit. And maybe he’s still far too much the same. Eren’s always been a bit of a paradox. I don’t think I’d like him any other way.

 

Turning away, I suck in a deep, deep breath. Some passing seniors squint at me funny, but I try not to cower. Breathe in, breathe out.

 

_Alright then. Let’s go._

 

* * *

 

 

Suppose for a moment you’re driving up the side of a mountain, on a single track road, in a car that you rented from some dodgy guy at the bottom of the hill, a car that you don’t really know, and the sun is bright, streaming in through the windscreen, blinding you enough that you have to take one hand off the wheel to shield your eyes. And there’s a hairpin turn coming up ahead.

 

You ease yourself round that sharp, horseshoe bend, and there’s a thrill to it, isn’t there? A thrill and a fear, so close to the edge, the mountainside falling away into rubble beside you. And you can’t help but entertain that morbid thought of your crumpled body at the bottom of the valley in the car wreck that would happen if your grip in the wheel slipped just a moment.

 

That’s what this feels like.

 

I stand outside the art studio for a while, pacing back and forth, watching groups of students walk in ahead of me, all already chummy, some carrying large and intimidating portfolios under their arms, some looking like they’d jump into some morose, academic analysis of a renaissance painter I’ve never heard of at the drop of a hat, some dressed like they drink tea out of mason jars in overpriced coffee shops in their spare time unironically. 

 

It takes a lot of summoned courage before I’m able to walk through the door myself, and I swear each step I take must be leaving a trail of wet footprints on the floor for how I feel like every inadequacy is leaking out of me.

 

The studio is large and spacious and white, and it reminds me a lot of home: the big white house with its echoing rooms and colourless walls and bright sunlight streaming in from high above, where you can’t reach to close curtains and bask in much needed shadow.

 

I don’t recognise anyone. Some people look up - I’m new; they’ve never seen me before; there’s a passing curiosity there - but most don’t even bat an eyelid, chatting with friends or doodling in sketchbooks or comparing folders of summer work and techniques I’ve never heard of and artists I do not know.

 

I take a seat at one of the tables near the back, next to a couple girls who glance at me, smile politely, and return to flicking through what looks to be a book of paint splatters. I kick my bag under the table, and busy myself tapping away at my phone, and repeat, like a mantra: _you deserve to be here. You’re good enough. You need to prove dad wrong._

 

The longer I say it, the quieter it seems to become inside my head, the words slowly growing fainter and fainter, fading into the background of chatter and commotion.

 

The professor only makes it worse. He’s a strange man - fond of bright coloured corduroys and neck ties - with a face lined with wrinkles and condescension. He talks through the syllabus for the semester - _and how can art have a syllabus_ , I find myself thinking, whilst everyone else around me seems to be nodding in approval I don’t get - and then he sets everyone the task of some speed draws from still life whilst he goes around the room talking to everyone individually and having a look at their portfolios.

 

I don’t have a portfolio. Not like everyone else, with their shiny black cases as large as the table top. I remember what Marco said, about having a bright, flashing, neon sign above your head, an arrow pointing downwards and blaring something loud and obnoxious, drawing everyone’s attention and - yeah.

 

Yeah, I get that now.

 

I try to busy myself in the chicken-scratch of my pencil on the paper, willing myself to focus on the array of bottles and vases in front of me that I’m supposed to be recreating - but my eyes keep flicking to the girls across the table from me as they chat to the professor, eager to guide him through their work.

 

One of the girls is a photographer - and she fills her sentences with buzzwords that might as well be a second language or at least win her a round of Jeopardy - and the other girl starts gushing about the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, which has the professor nodding thoughtfully, and my head fucking spinning.

 

I can’t tell you the difference between neo-impressionism and post-impressionism. I couldn’t name a single painting by Jackson Pollock, Paul Cézanne, or even fucking Rembrandt. I don’t have a clue what _chiaroscuro_ means.

 

I clutch my pencil so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t _snap_ when the professor finally makes it over to me.

 

He glances down at my paper, blinks slowly, and says, without pause, “Have you done many timed drawings before?”

 

I hear the real question here.

 

Oh _God_.

 

It doesn’t really get any better than that: I tell him _no_ , he purses his lips and raises his eyebrows, and then asks to see my portfolio. I don’t have a swanky black case, or my pieces all set out on mounting card, and from the corner of my eye I can see the professor making note of that when I pull my tatty sketchbooks out of my bag and carefully slide them towards him.

 

He flicks through them without really looking - he can’t really be _looking_ , not going that fast - and his face doesn’t change, which unnerves me to Hell. He passes over my drawings of Marco like they’re nothing. As if they’re just like everything else. Maybe they are. Maybe this is what dad promised would happen: someone grabbing me by the ankle and yanking me back down to the brutal reality of Earth. The crash is going to hurt, if it isn’t already hurting.

 

_You’re an imposter here. You’re a fake. Everyone’s going to laugh at you, and you brought it on yourself. You were stupid enough to think -_

 

“You need to work on your composition,” the professor says, haughtily. And then he asks, “Are you familiar with Sullivan?”, and my blank face is an answer enough.

 

“Right,” he continues, pursing his lips, putting my sketchbooks back on the table top pointedly. _Now I know what Anne Hathaway felt when Meryl Streep looked at her like that in Devil Wears Prada_ \- “You should also consider Freud and Francis Bacon for colour study. What is it exactly you want to focus on here?”

 

I swallow thickly, and know, whatever my answer is, it’s not going to be what he’s looking for. I duck a little lower in my seat. I wonder if the girls across the table are snickering at me.

 

“I just … y’know,” I mumble, pathetic. “Wanna draw people. That’s what I like.” _I thought it was what I was good at too, but now I’m not so sure._

 

The professor’s expression doesn’t change. He taps his finger once on the table top. I feel like I’m being squished by that finger, ground down into the faint sheen of charcoal dust that coats the surface of the desk.

 

“Make sure you look into those artists,” he says, and then, after a moment of silence where he’s clearly thinking damning thoughts about what sort of _idiot_ he’s left take his class this year, he leaves, falling into comfortable conversation with another student across the room.

 

My heart plummets inside my chest; I feel it fizzle and burn in the acid inside my stomach, a putrid, horrible mess.

 

I glance sideways at the girls across the table; neither of them are looking at me, both of their eyes darting back and forth between the arrangement on our table and their own paper, tongues peeking between lips in concentration. But I’m sure they were. I bet they were staring.

 

_Christ._

 

I hear the studio door slam shut behind me, and there’s chatter ringing through my ears, and I swear the scratch of pencils on paper has me feeling the same scratch on my skin, incessant, infuriating. I fold myself over my half-finished drawing, shielding it from prying eyes with my arms, and clench my jaw so tight it hurts.

 

And then someone slaps their hand across my back, and I _yelp_ , jumping a mile, and I jab my pencil into the desk, smashing the led.

 

I turn, terrified, to face a brackish and unapologetic grin. _Ymir_.

 

“Kirschtein!” she says, and now everyone is definitely staring - and scowling too, in that way people do when they want to scold someone for causing a ruckus, but they’re in public, so it’s not _proper_. “You said you were gonna text me when you knew whose class you got dumped in!”

 

“Do you have an inside voice, Ymir?” I grit out through my teeth, cowering further over my drawing. I swipe the remnants of my pencil off the side of the table and start digging around for a sharpener. My heart is beating a mile a minute, a wild rabbit trapped between my ribs, kicking at the inside of my chest with its back feet, and it makes me feel like I’m about to vomit. Ymir decides to pull out the stool next to me, dropping down onto it like she’s a regular at a bar and spends her life living here - which, I guess, she kinda does.

 

And doesn’t she look like she fits in here? She’s wearing an oversized t-shirt probably thrifted from goodwill, and her tattered, too-short jeans and sneakers are already covered in paint (or maybe have always been covered in paint, and she just never bothers to wash them because who has time to wash clothes when the muse strikes you hard with a smarmy backhand, huh?), and she has a well-worn paint brush threaded through her stubby ponytail, another tucked over her ear. There’s a silver ring through her septum today, and a bar through her ear, and a smudge of charcoal or paint or maybe barbeque sauce on her chin.

 

She looks like someone’s going to care about her opinion on Rembrandt or Freud or _whoever the fuck_. She looks like she could laugh all of them away, these great masters of art, and everyone else would laugh with her, because it’s the cool thing to do.

 

And she doesn’t listen to what I have to say, immediately making a grab for my sketchbooks, still on the table top.

 

“Oh - can I see?” she says, already getting her grubby hands all over them. I slap her nosey fingers away with my pencil on her knuckles. “C’mon, Jean, play fair. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. In a non-sexual way. Obviously. That’d be gross. Get your mind out of the gutter, _God_.”

 

My sigh sounds more like a tsk, but I push the sketchbooks over to her whilst squeezing the bridge of my nose in resignation.

 

“Knock yourself out, Ymir.”

 

She grins like a cat who has got the cream, and dives straight into the dog-eared pages. I try not to watch her, busying myself with obsessively sharpening my pencil and drawing the outline of the next _thrilling_ bottle in my still life, but her reactions are too distracting. She hums a lot, and clicks her tongue, and then I think that vomit almost spews out my mouth when she slides the open book across the table to one of the girls on the other side to show them a set of facial studies I did of Marco not long ago. I reach out to claw her hands back, but she’s already talking, and I want the world to swallow me up.

 

“Hey, Hannah, Nifa, look at these,” she says, with a sly grin. I can’t bear to watch their reactions.

 

Of course Ymir knows these people by name. Of course she does. Of course she swans in here like she owns the place, and of course she can strike up conversation with anyone in the room as if her gruff exterior and near-permanent scowl are nothing, no deterrent at all. Of course one of the girls points something out on the page and Ymir makes some crass remark that makes everyone laugh whilst I’m stuffing my ears with cotton wool, begging not to listen, blocking it all out, one step above screwing my eyes tightly shut. And of course the professor comes back over when he notices her, and she falls straight into aggressively demanding some new supplies from him, which he obliges without batting an eyelid, asking, at the same time, after some big gallery piece she’s been working on lately.

 

She’s meant to be here. People look at her, and they know she has interesting things to say, interesting things to create, an air about her that begs intrigue. She’s complicated, in a good way. In a cool and artsy and effortless way.

 

As for me? I don’t know who fucking Lucian Freud is. I’m a _liar_. I lied my way here. And the one who fell furthest, _hardest_ , for those lies?

 

Yeah, it was me.

 

Somewhere, wriggling beneath my skin, a parasite, Dad is practically goading me: _“you will get nowhere in life majoring in art. I hope you realise that.”_

 

And it’s awful. Worse than tripping out of the starting blocks before you’ve started the race. This is falling flat on your face an arm’s length before the finish line, and looking up with streaming eyes and a bloody nose as everyone else passes you by. _So close._

 

* * *

 

 

Lunch doesn’t come soon enough, but by the time I scramble to get out of class, the thought of meeting up with everyone in the canteen and sharing how my first morning went … it fills me with dread in the pit of my stomach, mangled and disgusting. I don’t want to have to look into their faces and tell the truth. I don’t want to have to look into their faces and _lie,_ either. I don’t want to be made to say it; I just want to be handed the bandages to patch myself up.

 

I know I’m slipping into bad habits, keeping my mess to myself, out of fear of getting everyone else filthy. Or worse, out of fear of their _pity_ that would only ingrain that grime into my skin and bones.

 

My feet take me to the cafeteria anyway.

 

It’s easy to find the others - and if not for Marco, and the way I’m sure my eyes could find him in any crowd, in any foreign labyrinth of a city, then for the way Connie and Eren arguing is able to permeate through any space and drown out all other noise. I see them after I hear them, Connie and Eren both half out of their seats, debating hotly about something insipid, and Ymir beside them, arm slung over Historia’s shoulders and a placated, entertained grin on her face, and then Mikasa, Armin, Sasha, and Bert -

 

People fall so easily into orbit around Marco. Strangers, family, friends, there’s no difference. I stop for a moment, jostled by freshmen hurrying past with their lunch trays, hoping to not be the one kid left without anyone to sit with at lunch, and just watch: watch the way Marco is laughing, clutching his stomach, his eyes half-moons, creased-up and happy. Watch the way Sasha’s leaning into his space eagerly, attentive and expressive as she hangs on whatever he’s saying. Watch the way Mikasa offers a word and then nods thoughtfully when Marco replies.

 

People are drawn in by him, by his gravity, and I’m still just a passing comet, watching from the outside and wishing, praying, fucking _begging_ that I could crash land there.

 

I’m happy it’s turned out well for him. I’m happy he’s slid into a space that seems carved out for him; I’m happy he fits here. I’m happy people can look at him and just _know_ … know that’s a guy who’s studying to be a doctor because he wants to _save_ people, no other questions asked. He deserves it.

 

I feel all too much a stranger. Too much a fake, too much a shadow, too much a straw man living in a straw house and living a straw existence, waiting for the big bad wolf to come along and blow it all to kingdom come.

 

And then Marco’s eyes find mine, and my heart stutters tellingly, so set into a rhythm of panic and self-deceit, that the trip up almost has me forgetting how to breathe. I wonder if this ever goes away, this healing, this rejuvenation, this dizzying, all-consuming kid-with-a-crush feeling that swallows me up and spits me out into an ocean of heady love. I pray, to any God that will listen, that it doesn’t. 

 

 _How is it that every time - every damn time - it’s like looking at the sun? No, not the sun - it’s like he’s_ swallowed _the damn sun, and the light is pouring out from every gap between his stitches, and that’s what keeps me warm, and it’s magnificent. Every. Damn. Time._

 

I don’t know how he always knows to look. I don’t know how he knows I’m here, watching from afar, a distant planet jealous of the life on his own Earth. Maybe he was just looking up out of curiosity and got lucky. Maybe not. I don’t think Marco deals in chances.

 

The others around him, they keep talking, they keep laughing, they keep nudging each other and stealing fries from each other's plates and chatting like nothing else in the world matters besides being right there, right now - but Marco is looking at me, and only me. His eyes cut through the commotion, a bronze-coloured bullet that sinks into my chest and radiates heat. I wait for the pain too - that’s usually what happens when you allow bullets to pearl inside your chest, isn’t it? - but it never quite arrives. I raise my fingers, a half-assed wave. He smiles, almost shy, and nods his head towards their table.

 

_Come here._

 

There’s a free seat next to him, almost deliberately, occupied by his bag. Everyone else has gathered around that, as if it’s a quantum point in time and space, and they cannot change it. They don’t _want_ to change it. It’s a designated landing site; a crater that has yet to be carved out by something coming in very hot and very fast from out of the stratosphere.

 

Here is the relentless drowning of my body in his gravity. I can’t really fight against it. I’m no more special than any of the others. I’m not _different_.

 

_Keep going. Carry on. One step forward._

It amazes me how, after everything, after all the shit that we’ve been through, after all the things we’ve shared now in holy whispers and pliant thought, it can still feel this way, when I look at him. It can still be like looking in a mirror, but a mirror that only reflects back the best parts of me. A mirror that shows me what I need to see, always and without fault, to make it through the day.

 

 _This is where you belong. You’re not fake, the rest of the world is, and you know it. This is where you belong. These are the people who_ know _you._

I make my way through the cafeteria crowd, to him. My legs are weary and my brow is lined with stress and the shadows beneath my eyes are dark and telling and my voice is cracked, but my prize for crossing the finish line is a kiss. Connie and Sasha whoop. Eren snorts and rolls his eyes. Mikasa jabs him in the ribs and mouths at him a reproachful _hey_. Marco takes my hand beneath the lunch table, our fingers tangling, holding tight. I feel like I’ve come home to rest.

 

* * *

 

 

September passes lazily. The summer dies a slow and lingering death, hanging on by its nails to the skirts of autumn. It tries to wriggle its way back in the daytime, in the bright, flat sunlight, in the Indian-summer heat, in the endless blue of the sky and in the billowing of white clouds so magnificent they could carry storms. But autumn’s patience seems to wither, hedgerows crisping golden-brown despite the mild weather, and apples falling from trees ripe and spongy, and sunset creeping in closer, in smearings of vibrant copper and whiskey-wash across the horizon. The mornings dawdle on the precipice of frost, as if they can’t quite make up their minds yet about breath fogging in the air, and dew twinkles in the grass on the front lawn like a carpet of diamonds when I look out the window from upstairs each morning that sidesteps closer to October.

 

Dad comes back after ten days, and neither mom or I comment on the extension of his business trip. Neither of us want to. It’s ironic to say that nothing changes, especially when every single other thing has. But he doesn’t talk to me, and I don’t talk to him, and we play a game of hide and seek around the house, listening with ears to doors and watching cars disappear from driveways before sneaking downstairs.

 

Or maybe that’s just me.

 

But school gets better.

 

I think it’s worth saying that it wouldn’t have got better if I was still the same person I was a year ago. If I was still sulking on my own in cafeterias at lunch time, and trying not to glare at old friends passing in hallways so pointedly devoid of words, and thinking the world was out to get me. (News flash: the world is never out to get anyone. I know that now. As if the world could care about just one person. The only real God is cruel, cruel coincidence.)

 

The person I was a year ago wouldn’t have gone back to that art class. He would’ve crawled back to student resources and begged them to put him back on the Math and the Chemistry that he hated, but that he knew. He would’ve let his wounded pride wither and fester, turning gangrenous inside his chest until it stank. He would’ve given up.

 

That person is only a memory now. A memory that shaped me, that changed me, that made me, but still a memory.

 

Marco tells me as much, and when it becomes words, spoken from his lips and pressed between breaths into my own, unforgiving, it must be true.

 

I know who Lucian Freud is now. And I don’t like him. His paintings are ugly, and I don’t understand his use of colour, and I definitely don’t get why the professor recommended him to me - but I _tell_ the professor that much, and I see something change in his expression at last, something quietly amused. His next set of suggestions are a lot better. I smirk to myself when I leave the studio that day, and Marco looks at me proudly when I meet him in the parking lot still buzzing.

 

I sign up for a life drawing class and it’s infinitely better than endless still life. It’s strange, learning the contours of a stranger - shapes and folds that should be intimate - but my hand is familiar with eyes and noses and lips and the planes of a face. There’s something missing, sure, some piece of the soul that you can only find in someone you know well, but by the end of the three hour session, I’m looking at something that I feel proud of. I’m looking at something that compares to the person next to me.

 

Ymir somehow manages to blag me easel space in her studio - and she’s not even a senior, so I figure she only gets her way because she’s already picking up commission offers, or everyone’s just terrified shitless of her. (Probably the latter.) It’s hard to pin down a word to describe our relationship; we never really had one before the Eren incident, and what we’ve developed is not really the most conventional of friendships, but there’s something about her tough talk that’s always reassuring. Predictable. She never has any room for fools, and I know where I stand with her.

 

Whether or not she thinks _I’m_ a fool is another matter, but ... she always grunts in greeting when I wander in in the mornings, when she’s already up to her elbows in paint, and I’m wondering if she even slept the night before. It’s the sort of friendship built on the back of stale beer and lounging around on couches eating instant noodles and shit-talking professors, and I like that. It’s not high-maintenance. 

 

I spend a lot of time between classes on her dorm couch, actually. Marco’s classes are a lot more intensive than mine, and he has the gall to actually _like studying_ in the library in his down-time, and so there’s a lot of time for me to kill in the afternoons waiting for him to be done with lectures, and Ymir is the sort of person who doesn’t have to fill silence with noise, unlike some of our other friends. She’s happy enough for me to flop across her sofa and shoot people on her Playstation whilst she groans and grumbles about whatever book she has to read next for her minor, often giving up halfway through to go chug something that smells like paint stripper in her suite kitchen.

 

Sometimes Historia will be there, and I have to hold myself back from laughing at how Ymir can transform in a second from grouchy and willing to bite fingers off, into a cat rolling over and begging for her belly to be scratched. I think we all know that she’s a sap, deep, deep, _deep_ down, but it’s nice to be trusted with this side of her, the soft and gentle and _in-love_ side.

 

It’s one of those lazy afternoons, right now, where Ymir is sat at her desk, chin resting in her palm, shooting goo-goo eyes at her girlfriend and not doing any work, whilst Historia leafs through some of the canvases we have propped up in Ymir’s bedroom. I snort to myself, shaking my head as Ymir lets out a longing, disgustingly _insipid_ sigh.

 

“It’s a fucking miracle you ever get any work done,” I say, tossing the French book I was looking at, but not really reading, to the side.

 

Ymir turns on me and glares, withering.

 

“If your girlfriend was that beautiful,” she says, flat, before sighing again, over dramatic. “You’d be the same.”

 

“You know she’s not gonna disappear if you, like … look away for one second.”

 

“I’m an artist, Kirschtein. I live to appreciate the pretty things.”

 

She glances quickly at Historia again, and when she sees she’s not looking at us, Ymir sticks her tongue out at me. I do the same right back.

 

“Ymir,” Historia says then, not looking up from the paintings she’s admiring. Her sixth sense for mischief is not something to be messed with, _damn_. “Don’t you have an essay to write?”

 

“ _Babe_ ,” Ymir whines.

 

“Jean’s right, Ymir,” Historia replies. She looks up at us, an angelic smile plastered across her face that I just _know_ is actually some sort of threatening. I can’t help but snicker as Ymir gawps like a fish. “You’re procrastinating. If you finish that paper before six, I’ll cook you dinner tonight.” Ymir shrinks down at her desk, muttering curses and hexes on _my_ family, probably, beneath her breath.

 

“And afterwards -” Historia continues, feigning indifference as she inspects her nails, which are neatly clipped. She doesn’t finish the sentence, because something like a spark shoots down Ymir’s spine, and she sits bolt upright, pen immediately soaring across her page, writing notes at lightning speed.

 

“Un-fucking-believable,” I mutter as Historia laughs lightly. I learned long ago that if you try to tell these two _not_ to talk about their sex life, they’ll aim to drive you out of the house. I’d say I’m almost used to it by now. (Almost. Operative word.) Historia goes back to looking through the paintings, and I’m just about to pick my French textbook back up and try again, when she says, “ _Oh_ ,” as if she’s pleasantly surprised.

 

“Ymir,” she continues, curious, pulling out a smaller canvas from the pile and holding it up to the shitty light in the dorm room. “This isn’t - ?”

 

Ymir doesn’t look back over her shoulder, still scribbling frantically, eager to finish her paper, kick me out, and get laid as soon as possible, but says, “‘S’not mine. It’s Jean’s. Was in my stack in the studio, so I accidentally brought it back with me. Remember to take it home with you tonight, Kirschtein, or we’ll fuck on it or something.” 

 

“This is yours, Jean?” Historia says, smiling prettily. She shows me the canvas, and yeah, it is mine. I painted it last week when I found a couple free hours between still life sessions that were turning my brain to mush. It’s a bit of a mess, if I’m honest, the colours too heavy-handed and my inexperience with acrylics fucking _shining_ through, but -

 

Of course it’s of Marco. It was the first one I did of him in the studio actually, and it had been fucking terrifying, painting him where everyone could see. Those life drawing models, I don’t know how they get naked every other day and feel so comfortable in their skin - because having Marco sit down on a stool in front of my easel, both of us _very much_ fully clothed, was the most naked and vulnerable I’ve felt in a long time.

 

Marco had come by, and I’d manhandled him into twelve different poses before finally settling if only to save my nerves, and my wrist had been shaking, and my eyes darting back to the door every time I heard a noise that might be someone coming in to ask a question or probe me for _deeper meaning shit_ about my work. When it was done, Marco had sauntered round to my side of the easel and slipped his arm over my shoulder and grinned into my hair as he pulled me close.

 

 _You were meant for this_ , he had said, plainly, giving my arm a squeeze and kissing the crown of my head. I had shrugged, and then blushed some, and tried to deny it all, of course, but he’d taken my hands in his and begun to run his fingers over the backs of my knuckles, toying with a touch as he’d returned to admire the painting, a hum on his lips, appreciative.

 

Academically, the painting is nothing special. Just him, perched on a stool, leaning forward just a little, a gentle and endearing smile on his face, made up of my sloppy attempt at slathering acrylics onto canvas with a palette knife. I didn’t even bother with a background. It’s kinda amateurish.

 

But - and I see this in Historia’s expression now, her lips curving up at the corners and her eyes crinkling - there’s truth in it. There’s Marco in the curves of the lines and in softness of the colour. I look it at, and I don’t see a need to explain it. I think its meaning is pretty clear.

 

There’s a knock on Ymir’s bedroom door then, and someone calls from outside, “It’s only me!”

 

Ymir and Historia both fix me with a knowing look.

 

“Speak of the devil,” Ymir smirks. I roll my eyes, and as I haul myself to my feet to answer the door, I kick the back of her chair in passing. She laughs unsparingly.

 

It’s funny. I guess I’m trusting them with my _in-love_ side too.

 

* * *

 

 

“Woah!” Connie shouts, “Is this me? This is me!”

 

I kick open the front door again, struggling with the last two canvases I’m dragging in from the car. As usual, Connie is being a giant help, and absolutely _not_ offering to assist me in moving all my paintings inside, and now we have a pile-up just behind the door. God knows where Sasha has dragged Marco off to, but they’re here too, somewhere. Probably up to no good. I don’t try to pretend otherwise. I don’t think I really want to know.

 

“What’s you? This great unhelpful _lump_ stopping me from getting into my own house? Then, sure.”

 

“No, dude!” Connie complains. He’s crouched down by one of the paintings I’d left propped up in the hallway, one hand holding tight to the top of the frame, his eyes positively sparkling. “This painting! It’s me!”

 

I squint at him, and then squint at the painting in question. It is completely and unquestionably a painting of Connie Springer. I’ve been doing a whole set of facial studies on him lately, but I’m not exactly about to tell him that. So I shrug.

 

“Maybe I have another bald friend. Don’t assume everything is about you, God.”

 

“Yeah, right, Jean.”

 

I look down at him, and find he’s staring at the painting again, grinning broadly as his eyes roam across the canvas, drinking in the colour.

 

“Can I have this?” he asks, “When you’re done with it, ‘course.”

 

I set down the paintings I’m carrying, and scratch the back of my head, pretending to be indifferent despite the pride unfurling in my chest.

 

“Well, you’re gonna have to wait and see which one my mom wants to keep -”

 

“As much as I know Céline loves me,” Connie smirks, “I don’t know if we’re quite at the stage of her wanting to hang up a giant painting of my face in her bedroom. But, I mean, if that’s what she wants -”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

Connie laughs boisterously, and then Sasha and Marco appear around the corner from the kitchen, drawn by the noise.

 

“Are we done?” Sasha asks, although she hasn’t help unload the car either. “Can we go swim now? I’ve been sat in class _all day_ waiting for this! This might be the last hot day of the year, we gotta make the most of it, boys!”

 

“That’s everything,” I grumble, whilst Connie stands, and pretends to wipe tears from his eyes, adding, with a fake sniffle, “Jean was just denying how much he truly loves me.”

 

“And I’m gonna deny it to the fucking end of time,” I retort, “Dream on.” I glance to Marco, who’s just standing there smiling, like an idiot. “Hey. What time can you stay ‘til?”

 

“Mom’s picking Mina up today,” he says, gently, “So I can stay ‘til five?”

 

Connie and Sasha both whoop loudly, slapping their hands on Marco’s shoulders as they rush off into the house, already discarding clothing along the way, flinging tshirts across lamps and jeans across kitchen counters. I wait for a moment, listening to them skid through the kitchen and the backdoor slam open against the side of the house and then the tell-tale splash of two idiots cannon-balling into the pool.

 

I shake my head, and Marco laughs, light and airy, covering his mouth with his hand. I know I’m gazing at him too fondly, because when he looks up, he raises his eyebrows and says, “what?”, as if he doesn’t already know.

 

“Nothing,” I say. “Just happy.”

 

“Just happy,” he echoes back, stepping in close to me. It hasn’t been _just happy_ in a really long time. He runs his hand down my arm, taking my fingers and knotting them with his with a little squeeze. “Even with them here?” he teases.

 

“Believe it or not,” I snort. “What about you?”

 

“Getting there,” he says. I nod, understanding. It never has to be more than that, and anything else is just a bonus. “Today’s been a good day.” He then frowns, a pout on his lips. “Even if I’m just learning now that you’ve started painting Connie, instead of me. What’s that about, Jean?”

 

I grin at him, tongue poking out between my teeth.

 

“What, jealous, are we?”

 

Marco reels me in closer, hand on my jaw, thumb running a line across my cheek as he pecks me on the mouth. My smile broadens, uncontrollably.

 

“Naturally,” he says. “So. Pool?”

 

* * *

 

 

Sasha is right, of course. It probably is the last warm day of the year - or at least, last day warm enough for swimming outdoors. It’s a Friday, an unremarkable, could-be-any-other Friday, the much needed end to a long week, and September is creeping towards its end: there’s a bite in the air, just enough for me to regret all my life choices when I strip down to my swim trunks on the patio, tossing my clothes over the back of a deckchair.

 

The pool is steaming slightly, which is nice, but there’s still the issue of crossing the lawn to get _in_ it, and I’m already freezing. Sasha is floating in a rubber ring in the middle of the water, turning in aimless circles, and Connie is lent back against the poolside, arms spread out and relaxed, and he’s grinning as he gathers up a handful of leaves floating on the water’s surface, and chucks the glob at his girlfriend. It hits Sasha on the side of the head, and her shriek is piercing.

 

I’m antsy, and I don’t pretend I’m not. Going in the pool with Marco is different to going in the pool with Connie and Sasha. I think back to the beach, and the ocean, and them _staring_ at me as realisation finally dawned on them. And then I remember how it felt to be squashed into an apologetic hug beside my car by the both of them too.

 

I breathe in deeply, trying to steady the churning of my stomach that threatens to become a whirlpool. I wrap my arms around my chest and give myself a reassuring squeeze. The world begins to do that thing where it blurs on all sides, and I will it not to.

 

_You can do this._

 

“Jean, you coming?” Connie calls, head lolling back against the poolside, watching me from upside down. “Are we doing this swimming lesson or not?”

 

Sasha splashes him.

 

“Connie, you can’t say that! Insensitive!”

 

They devolve into bickering, but I don’t really listen. I don’t really mind if they have some detached notion of helping me swim or conquer my fear or whatever. I know they mean well. But them meaning well doesn’t matter when it’s me, and me alone, who has to take the first step towards something brave.

 

That’s something so many people don’t understand. They mean well, and they want you better, but no amount of taking a nice long bath, or treating yourself to a pile of chocolate, or “have you tried just being happy?” is going to make the blindest bit of difference.

 

Getting better is an uphill struggle. Sometimes you end up tripping over and tumbling back down the way you came. Sometimes you think the finish line is just over the hilltop, and then you finally stagger on up there, only to realise this is lap one of a hundred more. Sometimes it feels like you just can’t run anymore, your whole body burning, convulsing, spurting blood, and the effort of getting better can’t be worth the pain of it all, especially when your bed is calling out to you to come and sleep it all away.

 

All that really matters is that you try. You have to believe that you deserve to get better; you deserve a happy life; you deserve the chance to move on from the things that cake your legs in mud and try to hold you fast and firm to something stagnant. _I_ deserve that.

 

Marco jogs past me then, giving no warning but a yell as he launches into the deep end of the pool, the splash that surges up soaking both Connie and Sasha and making them squawk. When he surfaces, flicking his hair back against his head, Sasha flails off the side of her ring, an elegant flop of limbs, and wraps herself around Marco as he tries to stay afloat, laughing shrill as she tries to dunk him in revenge.

 

The vigorous splashing is still enough to turn my blood cold, and maybe it always will. It’s not something I can just hope to wake up one day and be rid of. You can’t just snap your fingers and demand a happy ending now that everything else has come to a close and moved on in stories of different directions. But it is something I can learn to ignore. Tune out. Learn to live with.

 

 _Live_ … that’s the operative word. That’s what I’m doing now. No more just getting by. This is a conscious choice.

 

“Hey, watch the splashing!” Connie snaps, wincing and trying to cover his eyes as he pushes away from the wall and doggy-paddles over to the shallow end. I find myself walking over to join him at the steps, just as he parks himself on the lowest one, his chin just cutting the surface of the water.

 

I step down carefully into the pool, one, two, three steps, like I’ve done so many times before, and sit down on the fourth with a sharp expulsion of the breath that had been sticking in my throat. I draw my knees up to my chest and rest my folded arms on top, fixing my eyes on Marco picking Sasha up around the waist and tossing her into the water.

 

“Can I ask you a weird question?” Connie asks then, pulling me from my thoughts, wafting his hands curiously through the water. “You don’t have to answer.”

 

Well, _that_ never bodes well.

 

“Shoot.”

 

He puffs out his cheeks and blows a few bubbles across the surface of the water. I frown at him.

 

“What is it that you hate about water?”

 

Fear is not something easily penned by words. Fear manifests itself as so many different things at once: fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of the future, fear of change, fear of love. Fear of water. Fear is unpredictability and lack of control and thinking you should be able to do something, that you _can_ do something, only for the rug to be pulled out from under your feet without warnings. Fear is a chokehold; fear is a red light haemorrhaging out of you at every point; fear is standing in the blazing sun and sweltering, but having to smile anyway, whilst knowing there are blisters forming on your insides.

 

“I guess … there isn’t really one big thing,” I reply. “I don’t think you always get to pick a justification for … uh. For stuff like this.”

 

“That makes sense,” Connie nods thoughtfully, “Must suck though. Makes dealing with it so much harder if you don’t really have a starting point to tackle, huh?”

 

I don’t really know how to say that I’ve gotten used to picking gravel out of my teeth. Or - or that I had. I _had_ gotten used to it. I’m not sure if I’m putting up with it anymore.

 

Learning how to give yourself a break is like learning how to write with your left hand when you were born to use your right. It takes time and it takes practice to accept that you deserve more than painful love and suffering as penance for the sort of person you’ve tricked yourself into believing that you are.

 

And that _conscious choice_ I mentioned before is this: confronting the things that terrify you, because at last, you’ve had enough. It’s the sunlight pummelling you in a constant downpour of fists, and finding the strength just to _get back up_ , even when the referee tries to call you down for the count. It’s doing up the zipper that runs the length of your spine and telling yourself that this is the skin you live in, so time to occupy it likes it’s a home and not a damn cadaver. It’s not being sorry for the small victories won in the summer’s dark: it doesn’t matter how small or inconsequential those triumphs were; it doesn’t matter if I gave myself a medal for just getting out of bed and eating a proper meal; it has all lead to me, here, being able to sit down in the water and find my body no long a floodplain and my blood no longer washed away by a defining fear.

 

You can only be brave after you’ve been afraid.

 

Or maybe it’s not that deep. Maybe the choice I’ve made is simple: _hang out in the pool with my friends_. Perhaps that is consequential enough on its own.

 

“I’m working on it,” I say, low. Marco is laughing freely as Sasha clambers up his back and swings her arms around his neck, her cheek pressed against his cheek, the pair of them grinning so hard their faces might split open with refractal sunlight.

 

I’m not just talking about swimming.

 

“You know what I’m terrified shitless of?” Connie continues after a moment, “You know how Sasha’s dad likes to pretend he’s some hot shot hunter when he goes up to the lake to shoot clay pigeons with all the up-themselves guys from his work who like to pretend they’re richer than they actually are? Well, he brought back this stuffed fox from a trip last summer and put it in the guest room, right. Except ... I don’t know if Sasha’s dad has ever _seen_ a fox in the wild or whatever, but they really don’t look like _that_. It’s honestly the ugliest, most grisliest motherfucker I’ve ever seen in my life. I swear it looks like it’s come out of some nightmare and then fallen into a meat grinder and _then_ reassembled but really badly by someone who doesn’t know how limbs work.”

 

I laugh. He shoves me, and water laps up against my chest.

 

“Don’t laugh! I didn’t laugh at you!” he gripes, but it’s playful. “It’s going to kill me, I know it is! Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but when I least expect it, and _then_ you’ll be sorry, Jean! I’m fucking terrified!”

 

* * *

 

 

Mom is the kitchen when I go back inside, after everyone has left. She’s humming to something on the radio, something soft and weepy, but she seems content, busying herself with preparing dinner.

 

She looks up when I come in through the back door, a towel draped around my shoulders, my mouth a little ruined from secretive goodbye kisses behind the hedgerow.

 

“Marco not want to stay for dinner?” she asks, with an easy smile. I shake my head.

 

“Nah, he had to get back. Maybe next week, though?”

 

She nods, a brightness in her eyes that seems to make the white walls of the kitchen just a little less dull. Her hair frames her face is loose and tousled waves, the darker colour of her roots slowly breeding out the tawny shade she chooses to dye her hair to match my own. Her makeup today is soft and glossy; her manicure is a treat to herself; her loose chiffon shirt chosen because it makes her feel beautiful.

 

_Just happy._

 

“Sounds perfect,” she tells me. And even if it’s not - it’s getting closer by the day. Our _one day_. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten that promise, or that goal.

 

I bundle the towel around me, wearing it like a cloak, fisting my hands in the soft and downy fibres, and head for the stairs. The hallway is still crammed with my paintings, but some have been moved, shuffled around: the one of Connie has been pushed to the back, and there are others, some of Marco, some of mom, some of strangers from life drawing class, in the foreground.

 

“Mom, did you move my paintings?” I call, curiously. “I’ll move them upstairs in a bit - sorry!”

 

“I haven’t touched them,” she calls back, “But I do want to have a proper look before you pack them away! I’m sure there are some I want to steal for the living room. The sooner I can replace that ghastly piece your _mamie_ forced me to bring back from France, the better -”

 

I lose whatever else she says to the sound of static in my ears when, from the corner of my eye, I spot dad’s car pulled up on the driveway.

 

“Mom -” I start, and my voice is unsure of itself. It’s not stammering, and it’s not shaking, and I don’t know what it is that pools in my chest then, save uncertainty. “Is, uh. Is dad back?”

 

Mom leans her head out of the kitchen, worry already etched into the lines that have grown more prominent on her face in these weeks of late. She glances up the stairs, as if she’s expecting dad to be waiting there, staring me down. I don’t like the flash of panic that crosses her eyes; that should never be justifiable.

 

“Yes, he just got back,” she says, stern, “Why? What’s wrong? I’m sure Marco was already gone before he -”

 

“It’s … it’s nothing,” I say, confused. I stare hard at those shuffled-around paintings, and wonder just who might have been the last person to have a nosey through them. I wonder if that person was surprised by what they saw. I wonder if that person was impressed. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be … back down in a second.”

 

A curious feeling blooms in my chest then, loud, triumphant, dangerous, almost. It’s the sort of feeling that might guide you off the edge of a mountainside road, car wrecks be damned. And it’s also the same feeling that tells you that people drive this way all the time, you’re going to be fine.

_Don’t worry_ , it tells me. _Don’t worry_.

 

And, somehow, I find that I don’t.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Violet Chachki voice* Come through, Jean! Come throoooooough!
> 
> But anyway, the chapter! I’m sorry this was such a mundane chapter to break the hiatus … not much happened … but next time! Next time will be a doozy, and there won’t be a 21 month wait, either. I intend to Nano this year, and I hope to power my way through CH 26 and 27 (and the epilogue), which will see the fic to its end. However, the theme in this chapter is overarching and significant for me. It’s about moving on and growing up and comparing the person you once were to the person you are now, and knowing that all your past experiences helped shape the improvements you are making. Be brave, Jean, be brave!
> 
> Appropriately, the song for this chapter is [Brave](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tnfFhpHHyA) by Riley Pierce (also because I fucking love Malec, bite me). 
> 
> Next time: the Romance gets Real, Mike and Nanaba are back, Mina turns 10, Jean’s dad royally Fucks Up, and rub a dub dub two men in a tub?
> 
> In the mean time: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/bootheghost) or [Tumblr](http://the-prophet-lemonade.tumblr.com) are the places to find me. If you like my SNK work, but haven't been here in a while, have you tried [my JM Pacific Rim AU](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8962363/chapters/20503183)? Or [my Yumikuri deep space angst fest](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7816564/chapters/17838982)?
> 
> Also, please share [this tumblr post](http://the-prophet-lemonade.tumblr.com/post/165876830310/read-droplets-chapter-25-here-read-from-the) with your friends to get the word out! And leave a comment! I can't profess enough how useful all the comments were on CH 24 for me getting back into the swing of this. You guys rock, as always. Drop anything you want me to see in a comment, in my inbox, or in the tumblr tag "fic: droplets". 
> 
> Until then!

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I attempted a multi-chapter fic, but these plot bunnies have been running rampant in my head for the duration of Easter break. So here we go.
> 
> I can't even remember how this idea started. Probably the thought of Jean being increasingly distracted at how Marco's freckles seem to pool in the small of his back. Or something. Maybe I just wanted to torture poor Jean with the thought of his freckled angel semi-naked most of the time. 
> 
> I just had to get this out. Hopefully it'll go places... I have pretty much a general direction for the rest of the story. I hope you've enjoyed the beginning. Jean's a fun character to (attempt) to write.
> 
> Next time: Jean is forced to engage in conversation with another person his age. And actually, freckled pool boy isn't as bad as he expected?
> 
> All feedback is lovingly appreciated.


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